Prime Minister Lord North.
Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732 - 1792), usually known as Lord North, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1785. Lord North presided over the British response to the growing American Crisis, and put down the resulting North American Rebellion of 1775 - 1778. Following the Rebellion, Lord North steered the Britannic Design through Parliament, reorganizing Britain's North American possessions into the Confederation of North America.
North was born in London on 13 April 1732, the son of Francis North, the 1st Earl, and Lady Lucy Montagu. North was educated at Eton College, and Trinity College, Oxford, where he was awarded an MA in 1750. In 1754, at age 22, North was elected unopposed to the House of Commons, and five years later joined the government as a junior Lord of the Treasury. Although he initially considered himself a Whig, his natural sympathies lay with the Tories, and by the 1760s he was generally regarded as one.
In December 1767, North succeeded Charles Townshend as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and within months he succeeded Henry Seymour Collins as Leader of the Commons. When the Duke of Grafton resigned as Prime Minister, North formed a government on 28 January 1770. In addition to his position as Prime Minister, North also enjoyed the confidence of King George III.
Following an early success in the Falklands Crisis, North responded to the Boston Tea Party by introducing the Coercive Acts, which altered the government of Massachusetts and closed the port of Boston. Rather than being cowed by the Coercive Acts, the American colonies grew more rebellious, meeting in the First Continental Congress and declaring an embargo of all British goods. When General Thomas Gage sent an armed force from Boston in April 1775 to seize military supplies being stockpiled by the colonists, the result was a clash that marked the outbreak of the North American Rebellion.
North largely left the conduct of the military response to the Rebellion to his colleagues Lord Germain and the Earl of Sandwich. When Gage's replacement, General William Howe, was forced to withdraw from Boston in March 1776, the colonists responded by declaring independence four months later. However, Howe carried out an amphibious attack on New York City that drove out the rebels that autumn. The following year, Howe carried out another amphibious attack that captured Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while General John Burgoyne led a second army south from Quebec that defeated a rebel army at the Battle of Saratoga and captured Albany, New York in October.
The double defeat disheartened the rebellious colonists, allowing moderate conciliationists led by John Dickinson and Joseph Galloway to gain control of the Second Continental Congress. Lord North, meanwhile, convened a secret Cabinet meeting on 16 February 1778 in which he proposed to send the Earl of Carlisle to the Congress to propose an armistice and the return of the colonies to British rule. North won agreement for his proposal, and Carlisle set out for America on 16 March.
Mass desertions from the Continental Army following the resignation of General George Washington left the Congress in a precarious position, and Galloway was able to gain acceptance of Carlisle's proposals. On 12 June, a formal armistice was signed, and most of the remaining rebels surrendered.
Over the strong objections of King George, Lord North stated his intention to punish only a handful of the most prominent rebel leaders, while granting general amnesty to the rest. In a speech to the House of Lords on 12 November 1778, North proposed his Brotherhood Policy of creating a new instrument of government for the colonies. North invited several prominent American Loyalists to London, including Galloway and Dickinson, to assist in the drafting of the Britannic Design. In spite of the King's opposition, North was able to gain passage of the Design, which was signed by George III on 23 January 1781. The Design went into effect on 2 July 1782, when Burgoyne was sworn in as Viceroy of the C.N.A.
Having brought the American crisis to a successful conclusion, North resigned from the government in 1785 and retired to his family's home at Wroxton Abbey. He died on 5 August 1792.
Sobel's sources for the life and career of Lord North are Rodney Brown's Parliament and the Cabinet in the Age of North (London, 1911); Sir Charles Williamson's The Grand Design: Decision in London (London, 1939); Henry Collins' Lord North and the Rise of Parliament (New York, 1956); Warner Jones' Lord North: The British Richelieu (Mexico City, 1958) and Lord North's Master Plan: Genius or Ignorance? (Mexico City, 1960); and Winthrop Wadsworth's King George III and Lord North: The Struggle for the American Soul (London, 1971).