Thomas North

Sir Thomas North
Born	1535 London
Died	1604 (aged 68–69) London
Nationality	English
Alma mater	Peterhouse, Cambridge
Occupation	Justice of the Peace, author and translator
Known for	Translating Plutarch's Lives into English
Parent(s)	Edward North, 1st Baron North, Alice Brockenden
Relatives	Roger North, 2nd Baron North (brother); Christina North, Mary North (sisters)

Sir Thomas North (1535–1604) was an English justice of the peace, military officer and translator. His translation into English of Plutarch's Parallel Lives is notable for being a source text used by William Shakespeare for several of his plays.

Thomas North was born in 1535 and was the second son of the Edward North, 1st Baron North.

He is supposed to have been a student of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1557. In 1574 he accompanied his brother, Lord North, on a visit to the French court. He served as captain in the year of the Armada, and was knighted about three years later. His name is on the roll of justices of the peace for Cambridge in 1592 and again in 1597, and he received a small pension (£40 a year) from Queen Elizabeth in 1601.

He translated, in 1557, Guevara's Reloj de Principes (commonly known as Libro áureo), a compendium of moral counsels chiefly compiled from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, under the title of Diall of Princes. The English of this work is one of the earliest specimens of the ornate, copious and pointed style for which educated young Englishmen had acquired a taste in their Continental travels and studies.

North translated from a French copy of Guevara, but seems to have been well acquainted with the Spanish version. The book had already been translated by Lord Berners, but without reproducing the rhetorical artifices of the original. North's version, with its mannerisms and its constant use of antithesis, set the fashion which was to culminate in John Lyly's Euphues.

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