North soon regained the king's favour. He took part in the state procession to St. Paul's on 26 March 1620, when his majesty attended a solemn service there, ‘to give countenance and encouragement to the repairs of that ruinous fabric;’ and in 1622 he conducted the Venetian and Persian ambassadors to audiences with the king. But he was no blind supporter of the new king, Charles, and the favourite, Buckingham. In the parliament of 1626 he was prominent among the peers in opposition in the House of Lords, and was closely allied with William Fiennes, lord Saye and Sele. Lord Holland said of him in his public career, ‘he knew no man less swayed with passion, and sooner carried with reason and justice.’
Subsequently North spent much time at Kirtling, and was soon content to learn what was passing in London from the letters of his brother, Sir John North, the king's gentleman-usher. In March 1637 he vainly protested against the demolition of the church of ‘St. Gregory by Paul's,’ which was the burial-place of his father, and wrote two poems lamenting its destruction.
In February 1639 North attended Charles I at York, in the expedition to Scotland; but he soon returned to Kirtling, resolved to devote himself exclusively to ‘the œconomy of his soule and family.’ Nevertheless public affairs caused him continual anxiety, and, after the dissolution of the Short parliament, he signed, in August 1640, with seventeen other peers, a petition praying that a parliament might be summoned with all speed. In November 1640 the calling of the Long parliament, which required North's presence in London, filled him with new hope. In his letters to his family and friends he expressed his faith in the king's ‘wisdom, goodness, and constancy,’ and was ready to vote plentiful supplies. He was no bitter partisan in church matters. ‘I would be sorry,’ he says, ‘to see cutting of throats for Discipline and Ceremonie; Charity ought to yeeld farre in things indifferent. But must all the yeelding be on the governours' part?’ At the close of the year he returned to Kirtling, but the course of affairs apparently drew him to the side of the Commons, although he took no part in the civil war. In 1645 he was placed by the parliament, with the Earls of Northumberland, Essex, Warwick, and others, on a commission for the management of the affairs of the admiralty, and he served as lord-lieutenant of Cambridgeshire.
His later years, owing to ill-health and a greatly impaired fortune, were passed quietly in the country at Kirtling, where also resided his son Sir Dudley, with his wife and children; Roger, and Francis, the future lord-keeper, and North's widowed eldest daughter, Lady Dacres. Sir Dudley's wife made it a grievance that her husband was required by his father to contribute from 200l. to 300l. a year towards household expenses. When his fortune and family increased, the sum touched 400l., sinking again in 1649 to 300l. His son's children took part with their mother, and his grandson Roger gave him a grim aspect in his ‘Life of the Lord-keeper Guilford.’ Francis was at one time an especial favourite with his grandfather, who, when the young man was rising at the bar, loved to hear from him all the gossip from town, to listen to his fiddling, or play a game of backgammon with him. But he gave offence by some interference with the domestic arrangements, and the old lord cut him out of his will, and professedly cast him off altogether, but had still a lurking affection for him, ‘and was—teeth outwards—kind to him,’ as Roger puts it. To his son Dudley, North finally gave up the control of his estates, receiving only an annual payment. ‘I have made myself his pensioner,’ wrote the old man, ‘and I wish no worldly happiness more than his prosperity.’ He was, however, long an active justice of the peace; and, besides interesting himself in gardening, ‘found employment with many airy entertainments,’ his grandson Roger wrote, ‘as poetry, writing essays, building, making mottoes and inscriptions.’ He was an accomplished player on the treble viol, and delighted to gather his family and household to join in concert with him, singing songs the words of which he had himself composed. About a mile from Kirtling lay a wood called Bansteads, in which he cut glades and made arbours, and ‘no name would fit the place but Tempe. Here he would convoke his musical family, and songs were made and set for celebrating the joys there, which were performed, and provisions carried up.’
North was an author on divers subjects. An excellent French scholar, he translated into that language many passages from scripture, which he committed to memory, and repeated each morning before rising. Of his essays and other prose works, the greater number were written during the years 1637–1644; the poems, he tells us, were, for the most part, of earlier date. ‘The idle hours of three months brought them forth, except some few, the children of little more than my childhood.’ In 1645 he made a miscellaneous collection of his essays, letters, poems, devotional meditations, and ‘characters.’ This very rare and curious work was privately
