After the death of Roger North in 1509, Christiana married, as her second husband, Sir Ralph Warren, Lord Mayor of London.

Edward North had a sister, Joan, who married William Wilkinson (d. 1543), a mercer in the city of London, and sheriff in 1538–9, by whom she had three daughters.

[3] Edward North studied at St Paul's School under William Lyly,[4] and later entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, but seems never to have proceeded to a degree.

He then entered one of the Inns of Court, was called to the bar, and became counsel for the City of London, probably through the influence of Alderman Wilkinson, who had married his sister Joan.

In 1545 he was one of a commission of inquiry as to the distribution of the revenues of certain cathedrals and collegiate churches, and about the same time, he was promoted, with Sir Richard Rich, chancellor of the court of augmentations.

In 1546 he was made a member of the Privy Council of England, received some extensive grants of former abbey lands, and managed by prudence to retain the favour of his sovereign, although on one occasion towards the end of his reign Henry VIII was induced to distrust him, and even to accuse him of peculation, a charge of which he cleared himself.

He continued as a Privy Councillor during the young king's reign, and was one of those who attested his will, but his name does not appear among the signatories of the deed of settlement disinheriting the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth.

On the accession of Elizabeth she kept her court for six days (23 to 29 November 1558) at Lord North's mansion in the London Charterhouse, and some time afterwards he was appointed lord-lieutenant of the county of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely.

[6] By this marriage he acquired a fortune large enough to enable him to purchase the estate of Kirtling, near Newmarket, which remained in the possession of his descendants until 1941.