second son of Edward, Lord North of Kirtling, was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, entered Lincoln's Inn in 1557, was presented with the honorary freedom of Cambridge in 1568,[1] was appointed captain of three hundred men raised at Ely in the Armada times, had something to do with the gaugers of ale and beer in 1591, was reduced to accept a relief of £20 from the town-council of Cambridge in 1598, and that he and his son received further help from his brother's will in 1600—these are the facts that form the exoskeleton of his life. We are at present more concerned with his literary productions. These are three; all of them translations. The first was a version of Antonio de Guevara's Libro aureo, a Spanish adaptation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, which had an extraordinary vogue throughout Western Europe at this time: North translated mainly from the French version, but did the last part into English from the original.
- ↑ From his familiarity with French and Italian, we might surmise a grand tour about this time. The "G. B." who wrote one of the introductory sonnets of our book was probably an Italian friend thus acquired. Could he have been Giordano Bruno, who came over to England thirteen years later, and had therefore relations with this country?
