beth's possession, and she retained it for her own purposes, together with the whole of his episcopal estates, for fourteen years. North himself bore no malice to Bishop Cox. In 1580 he made a present to the bishop's son Roger, to whom he had previously stood sponsor, and whom he always treated as a friend.
In May 1577 he purchased the house and estate of Mildenhall in Suffolk, with the lease of some lands adjoining. North frequently led a country life at Kirtling; but a running footman at these seasons was always kept to bring him the news from London. He visited the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth, and enjoyed very confidential relations with the earl. In September 1578 he attended Leicester's private marriage to the Countess of Essex.
In July 1578 he paid a visit to Buxton, and in September the queen paid a memorable visit to Kirtling while on her progress from Norfolk. She arrived before supper on 1 Sept., leaving after dinner on the 3rd. North had been long busy with preparations for her coming. The banqueting-house was improved, new kitchens built, and there was a great ‘trymming upp of chambers and other rowmes.’ The ceremonies of reception over, an oration was pronounced by a gentleman of Cambridge, and ‘a stately and fayre cuppe’ presented from the university in the presence of the assembled guests. Lord North's minstrels played her in to supper; Leicester's minstrels, too, were there to swell the band, together with his cooks. The amount of provisions consumed during the visit was enormous. A cartload and two horseloads of oysters, with endless variety of sea and river fish, and birds without number; while the cellars at Kirtling supplied seventy-four hogsheads of beer, two tuns of ale, six hogsheads of claret, one hogshead of white wine, twenty gallons of sack, and six gallons of hippocras.
On the day after her arrival the queen was entertained with a joust in the park, and within doors her host played cards with her, losing in courtier-like fashion. After dinner, on 3 Sept., she passed to Sir Giles Alington's, North presenting her before she left with a jewel worth 120l., and following the court to the end of the progress. He returned to Kirtling on 26 Sept. During the progress he quarrelled with the Earl of Sussex, lord chamberlain, in presence of the queen. Leicester wrote to Burghley that the strife was ‘sudden and passionatt.’ Elizabeth took upon herself the office of mediator. On 14 Sept. 1583 North was among the mourners at the funeral of his friend Francis, second Earl of Bedford, which took place with great pomp at Chenies. In February 1584 he complained to the lord-treasurer of the conduct of the two chief justices, especially of Anderson, whom he calls ‘the hottest man that ever sat in judgment,’ for their discourtesy in crediting himself and other magistrates of the county, in open court, with a miscarriage of justice in consequence of their ignorance of the law. In May the same year he was appointed to act, with Sir Francis Hinde, John Hutton, and Fitz-Rafe Chamberlaine, as her majesty's deputy commissioner to inquire into and settle all disputes on the subject of keeping horses and brood mares in the county of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely.
In October 1585, on Leicester's appointment as captain-general of the English forces sent to assist the Dutch in their struggle for independence, North volunteered for service, together with his son Henry, and followed Leicester to Holland. He distinguished himself greatly in the campaign. Leicester applied, unsuccessfully, for the governorship of the Brill for North, ‘who hath bine very painfull and forward in all these services from the beginning, and his yeres mete for it.’ Leicester also wrote to Walsingham and to Burghley in North's interest, requesting that he might either be placed on the commission for the states, or have leave to return to England. But his health improved, and, after his release from attendance at the Hague, he chose to remain in the Netherlands. ‘I desire that her Majesty may know,’ he said, ‘that I live but to serve her. A better barony than I have could not hire the Lord North to live on meaner terms.’ ‘I will leave no labour nor danger,’ he wrote to Burghley, ‘but serve as a private soldier; and have thrust myself for service on foot under Captain Reade.’
At the battle of Zutphen (2 Oct. 1586) North behaved with splendid courage. He had been wounded in the leg by a musket-shot in a skirmish the day before, and was ‘bedde-red;’ but hearing that the enemy was engaged, he hurriedly rose, and, ‘with one boot on and one boot off,’ had himself lifted on horseback, ‘and went to the matter very lustily.’ North was given by Leicester the title of knight-banneret. He was in England on 16 Feb. 1587, when he rode in the procession at Sir Philip Sidney's funeral at St. Paul's. But he returned to the Netherlands during the campaign of 1587, and, after Leicester's recall, remained there for some months under Lord Willoughby, who formed so high an opinion of his courage and ability that, in view of his own retirement in No-
