So on the trial of Lord Stafford, though he privately affected severely to condemn the proceeding, he would not venture to save Lord Nottingham,[90] the high steward, from the disgrace of assisting in that murder; and he dryly gave his own opinion that two witnesses were not necessary to each overt act of treason.
We have still more flagrant proof of his baseness on the trial of Reading, prosecuted by order of the House of Commons for trying to suppress evidence of the plot. North himself now presided, and having procured a conviction, in sentencing the defendant to fine, imprisonment, and pillory, he said, “I will tell you your offence is so great, and hath such a relation to that which the whole nation is concerned in, because it was an attempt to baffle the evidence of that conspiracy, which, if it had not been, by the mercy of God, detected, God knows what might have befallen us all by this time.”
We now come to present North on the political stage, where he continued to act a very conspicuous and disreputable part down to the time of his death. In the year 1679, when the king adopted his new plan of government by a Council of Thirty, of which Shaftesbury was made president, and into which Lord Russell and several of the popular leaders were introduced, it was thought fit to balance them by some determined ultra-royalists; and the lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, who had acquired himself the reputation of being the most eminent of that class, was selected, although he had not hitherto been a privy councillor. At first he seldom openly gave any opinion in council, but he secretly engaged in the intrigues which ended in the abrupt prorogation and dissolution of the Parliament, in the dismissal of Shaftesbury, and the resignation of Lord Russell and the whigs. The scheme of government was then altered, and a cabinet, consisting of a small number of privy councillors, was formed, North being one of them. To his opinion on legal and constitutional questions the government was now disposed to show more respect than to that of Lord Chancellor Nottingham.
There being much talk against the court in the London coffee houses, it was wished to suppress them by proclamation; and our chief justice, being consulted on the subject, gave this response—that “though retailing of coffee may, under certain circumstances, be an innocent trade, yet as it is used at present in the nature of a common assembly to discourse of matters of state, news, and great persons, it becomes unlawful; and as the coffee houses are nurseries of idleness and pragmaticalness, and hinder the consumption of our native provisions, they may be treated as common nuisances.” Accordingly, a proclamation was issued for shutting up all coffee houses, and forbidding the sale of coffee in the metropolis; but this caused such a general murmur, not only among politicians and idlers, but among the industrious classes connected with foreign and colonial trade, that it was speedily recalled.
The meeting of the new Parliament summoned in the end of 1679 having been repeatedly postponed, there arose the opposite factions of “Petitioners” and “Abhorrers”—the former petitioning the king that Parliament might be speedily assembled for the redress of grievances, and the latter, in their addresses to the king, expressing their abhorrence of such seditious sentiments. The “Petitioners,” however, were much more numerous and active, and a council was called to consider how their proceedings might be stopped or punished. Our chief justice recommended a proclamation, which the king approved of, and ordered the attorney general, Sir Creswell Levinz, to draw. Mr. Attorney, alarmed by considering how he might be questioned for such an act on the meeting of Parliament, said, “I do not well understand what my lord chief justice means, and I humbly pray of your majesty that his lordship may himself draw the proclamation.” King.—“My lord, I think then you must draw this proclamation.” Chief Justice.—“Sire, it is the office of your majesty’s attorney general to prepare all royal proclamations, and it is not proper for any one else to do it. I beg that your majesty’s affairs may go on in their due course; but if in this matter Mr. Attorney doubts any thing, and will give himself the trouble to call upon me, I will give him the best assistance I can.”
Sir Creswell, having written on a sheet of paper the formal commencement and conclusion of a royal proclamation, carried it to the chief justice, who filled up the blank with a recital that, “for spurious ends and purposes relating to the public, persons were going about to collect and procure the subscriptions of multitudes of his majesty’s subjects to petitions to his majesty; which proceedings were contrary to the known laws of this realm, and ought not to go unpunished;” and a mandate to all his majesty’s loving subjects, of what rank or degree soever, “that they presume not to agitate or promote any such subscriptions, nor in any wise join in any petition in that manner to be preferred to his majesty, upon pain of the utmost rigor of the law, and that all magistrates and other officers should take effectual care that all such offenders against the laws be prosecuted and punished according to their demerits.”[91]
Parliament at last met, and strong measures were taken against the “Abhorrers,” who had obstructed the right of petitioning. An inquiry was instituted respecting the proclamation. Sir Creswell Levinz was placed at the bar, and asked by whose advice or assistance he had prepared it. He several times refused to answer; but being hard pressed, and afraid of commitment to the Tower, he named the Lord Chief Justice North, against whom there had been a strong suspicion, but no proof. A hot debate arose, which ended in the resolution, “That the evidence this day given to this house against Sir Francis North, chief justice of the Common Pleas, is sufficient ground for this house to proceed upon an impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.”
He was a good deal alarmed by the vote of impeachment,[92] but it raised him still higher in favor at court. Next day, presiding in the House of Lords as speaker, in the absence of the lord chancellor, and seeming very much dejected, King Charles (according to his manner) “came and clapped himself down close by him on the woolsack, and ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘be of good comfort; I will never forsake my friends, as my father did.’” His majesty, without waiting for a reply, then walked off to another part of the house.
A committee was appointed to draw up the articles of impeachment against the chief justice; but before they made any report, this Parliament too was dissolved.
Soon after the summoning of Charles’s last Parliament, North was obliged to set off upon the spring circuit; and notwithstanding his best efforts to finish the business rapidly, he could not arrive at Oxford till the two houses had assembled.