Encyclopedia > Frederick North, Lord North

  Article Content

Frederick North, Lord North

Frederick North, Lord North, Baron Guilford, (April 13, 1732-August 5, 1792) was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782, and a major protagonist in the American Revolution.

He was educated at Eaton[?] and Oxford where he was a member of Trinity College. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1754 to 1790 and first joined the government as a junior Lord of the Treasury on June 2, 1759 during the Newcastle[?]-Pitt coalition. In December, 1767, he succeeded Charles Townshend[?] as Chancellor of the Exchequer. When the Duke of Grafton resigned as Prime Minister, North formed a government on January 28, 1770. He resigned on March 27, 1782, as a result of the British defeat at Yorktown the year before. Most of his government was focused first of the growing problems with the American colonies and later with the actual Revolutionary War.

In April, 1783, North returned to power as Home Secretary in an unlikely coalition with the radical Whig leader Charles James Fox under the nominal leadership of The Duke of Portland. George III, who detested Fox, never forgave this supposed betrayal, and North never again served in government after the ministry fell in December, 1783.

He left his seat in parliament when he went blind in 1790. Later he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Guilford, so he spent his final years in the House of Lords. He died on August 5th, 1792 in London.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Islip Terrace, New York

... of all households are made up of individuals and 4.4% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 3.21 and the average family ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 38.9 ms