Roger North, KC  English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, biographer, and amateur musician, was the sixth son of t he fourth Baron North

Dudley North, 4th Baron North

Dudley North, 4th Baron North K.B. was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1640 and 1660.-Life:...

.

He attended Thetford Grammar School

Thetford Grammar School

Thetford Grammar School is an independent co-educational school in Thetford, Norfolk, England. The school traces its origins back to 631, and through its Roll of Headmasters to 1114, though it appears to have ceased from around 1496 until its refoundation from the will of Sir Richard Fulmerston in...

 from 1663 and later acquired a good practice at the bar, being helped by his elder brother Francis, who became lord chancellor

Lord Chancellor

The Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor, is a senior and important functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. He is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking only after the Lord High Steward. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Sovereign...

 and was created Baron Guilford, and in 1684 he became Solicitor-General

Solicitor General for England and Wales

Her Majesty's Solicitor General for England and Wales, often known as the Solicitor General, is one of the Law Officers of the Crown, and the deputy of the Attorney General, whose duty is to advise the Crown and Cabinet on the law...

 to the Duke of York

James II of England

James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...

. In 1685, he was chosen as a Tory

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Dunwich

Dunwich (UK Parliament constituency)

Dunwich was a parliamentary borough in Suffolk, one of the most notorious of all the rotten boroughs. It elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1298 until 1832, when the constituency was abolished by the Great Reform Act....

. But the Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...

 stopped his advancement, and he retired to his estate of Rougham

Rougham

Rougham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk.It covers an area of and had a population of 152 in 69 households as of the 2001 census.For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of Breckland....

 in Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, and increased his fortune by marrying the daughter of Sir Robert Gayer.

He collected books, and was constantly occupied in writing. But he is best known for his Lives of the Norths, published after his death, together with his own autobiography (see the edition in Bohns Standard Library, 1890, by Augustus Jessopp

Augustus Jessopp

Augustus Jessopp was an English cleric and writer. He spent periods of time as a school master and then later as a clergyman in Norfolk, England....

), a classic authority for the period. His comments on musical performance practice, in particular, have proven invaluable for musicologists researching the Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 style in England. In addition to his writing on performance practice he wrote on musical aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

, on pedagogy, and on tuning

Musical tuning

In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...

 and temperament; one of his most important achievements in this regard was devising a practical and detailed system for mean-tone tuning

Meantone temperament

Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, which is a system of musical tuning. In general, a meantone is constructed the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a stack of perfect fifths, but in meantone, each fifth is narrow compared to the ratio 27/12:1 in 12 equal temperament, the opposite of...

 in the age before equal temperament.

He died at Rougham on 1 March 1734, leaving a family from whom the Norths of Rougham are descended.

Notable descendants

Notable descendants include Marianne North

Marianne North

Marianne North was an English naturalist and botanical artist-Life with her parents:Marianne North was born at Hastings, the eldest daughter of a prosperous land-owning family descended from the Hon. Roger North, younger son of Dudley North, 4th Baron North...

, the botanical illustrator, and Frederick North

Frederick North (MP)

Frederick North DL, JP , was a British Liberal politician.-Background and education:A member of the North family headed by the Earl of Guilford, Frederick North was the son of Francis Frederick North, great-grandson of the Hon. Roger North, younger son of Dudley North, 4th Baron North...

, a Liberal politician.

Sources and references

• Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian and Theory of Sounds: digests of the manuscripts, edited by M. Chan and J. C. Kassler, University of New South Wales, Kensington, 1988.
• Roger North’s the Musicall Grammarian: 1728, edited with introductions and notes by Mary Chan and Jamie C. Kassler, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
• J. C. Kassler, The Honourable Roger North, 1651-1734: On life, morality, law and tradition, Ashgate, Burlington, Vermont, 2009.