“I could see the rottenness of men. Those against the government were mad, and those for it generally fals[e]” (223). In this pessimistic appraisal the common lawyer Roger North summarized the conflict of faction during the Restoration. Escaping the tensions of high office under Charles II and his brother James II, North found refuge in a country estate where he made original contributions to law, music, architecture, estate management, and even the writing of biography. He urged his readers to seek their protection from untrustworthy politicians in the common law. Although often regarded as a backward-looking Tory with absolutist sentiments, Jamie C. Kassler’s new study examines North’s thinking on moral philosophy and language and probes his constitutionalism during a time of fundamental political change. The second half of the book also includes an annotated bibliography of North’s printed writings and an edition of his “Of Etimology.” This book has much to offer: Kassler exploits North’s surviving papers (numbering over fifty thousand leaves) with assiduity to establish greater coherence to North’s sprawling intellectual accomplishment.

Though blessed with many gifts, North never realized extraordinary fame in his life. Protected and mentored by his brother Francis, chief justice of the Common Pleas, North rose quickly within the legal profession and became legal counsel to James II and his second wife Mary of Modena. Though he gave zealous service in his prosecution of the Rye House plotters and supporters of the Monmouth Rebellion, his ardor waned in the new reign, giving way to misgivings over royal policy on religion. North’s counsel of the Anglican bishops who resisted James II exemplified the hard choices that he and his contemporaries faced in a world of often crisscrossed and combustible loyalties. As the wheel of fortune began to turn, he withdrew from government, and in 1689 he was among the nonjurors who refused to swear the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II. Vindictive Whigs questioned his loyalty to the new regime even as he spent the remainder of his life in political retirement continuing his research.

Kassler’s book commences with a short biography of North, which like her subject’s own writings about his famous brothers has a polemical purpose. Expanding on the insights of earlier commentators, she challenges whether North’s political views and motivations can be labeled Tory. Instead, North was a constitutionalist devoted to monarchical authority and was pushed out of government by the growing influence and extremism of George Jeffreys (though he also seems to have incurred the dislike of the Earl of Sunderland). In the new reign North’s refusal to swear the oaths to William and Mary was not a political gesture of Jacobite defiance but reflected his religious belief in the sacrosanct nature of the oath that he had taken to James II and his devotion to the principle of hereditary monarchy.

Kassler also penetrates into North’s moral philosophy and his views on language and law. In doing so, she proceeds by the traditional method of examining those who influenced North, such as Michel de Montaigne. Kassler claims that North was a “sceptic.” Individual morality was a process of “self-governance” that distilled morality from critical reflection on experience rather than blind submission to external rules. The emphasis on experience and reflection is the thread that ties together North’s disparate thought and can also be found in his examination of law and language. Law, and the language in which it was stated, reflected a society’s experience and wisdom as it strove to become more just. North’s historical jurisprudence, with its basis in the writings of Edward Coke and Matthew Hale, contrasted with the natural law school of his day with its demand for obedience to sovereign rules. Kassler traces in particular how North repudiated several of Hobbes’s arguments for sovereign power, and his constitutionalism is apparent in his claims for the privileged place of the common law tradition and judicial authority.

This study contributes to three distinct historiographies. Its comprehensive bibliography and original analysis make it the starting point for future studies of Roger North. Yet, due to this very focus, the book may disappoint those expecting a “life and times.” It is sometimes not clear how North actually interacted with divergent philosophical viewpoints: for instance, what is the significance, occasionally hinted at (12, 180–81), of his disagreement with the natural law school? Kassler may also weaken her contextual analysis by leaning too much on particular sources: J. H. Baker on the common law and J. B. Schneewind on moral philosophy, in particular.

This book belongs to a growing number of studies dedicated to assessing the relationship of early modern common lawyers to the rising tensions between subject and sovereign. Kassler develops a compelling analysis of the connection between language and law that other scholars, such as Richard Ross, have recently begun to examine. Yet, the book’s discussion of North’s awareness of the historicity of the common law might have benefited from comparisons with the works of other common lawyers of his day and the political debates between Tory and Whigs.

Finally, those interested in the renewed attention to Toryism as a dynamic force in the Restoration period will query how North reconciled his common-law constitutionalism with his participation in the government of James II. The same might be asked of common lawyers earlier in the century whose compliance with royal wishes is usually explained on grounds of expediency. North’s career suggests that it was possible to hold deeply constitutionalist ideas about the rule of law, yet ultimately reconcile them with faith in divine right and passive obedience. Acknowledging this suggests that there is much yet to understand about Toryism. This is not the least of the contributions made by Kassler’s admirable study.