Guilford, Barons And Earls Of
GUILFORD, BARONS AND EARLS OF. FRANCIS NORTH, 1st Baron Guilford (1637-1685), was the third son of the 4th Baron North (see NORTH, BARONS), and was created Baron Guilford in 1683, after becoming lord keeper in succession to Lord Nottingham. He had been an eminent lawyer, solicitorgeneral (1671), attorney-general (1673), and chief-justice of the common pleas (1675), an d in 1679 was made a member of the council of thirty and on its dissolution of the cabinet. He was a man of wide culture and a stanch royalist. In 1672 he married Lady Frances Pope, daughter and co-heiress of the earl of Downe, who inherited the Wroxton estate; and he was succeeded as 2nd baron by his son Francis (1673-1729), whose eldest son Francis (1704-1790), after inheriting first his father's title as 3rd baron, and then (in 1734) the barony of North from his kinsman the 6th Baron North, was in 1752 created 1st earl of Guilford. His first wife was a daughter of the earl of Halifax, and his son and successor Frederick was the English prime minister, commonly known as Lord North, his courtesy title while the 1st earl was alive.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
