THE PERCIES.—SECOND FOUR HUNDRED YEARS.
WE left the Percies ruined, the family estates assigned to the Duke of Bedford, the young heir of the House a prisoner in the hands of the Scots. Had Henry IV. lived, there is little doubt that the family, like hundreds of others, would have disappeared, but his successor was at once more generous and more deeply interested in the affairs of the Continent. He was statesman enough to see that the deep-rooted power of the Percies, sanctioned by the traditions of four hundred years and the attach- ment of the population north of the Trent, was the best counter- poise to the dangers always imminent from the alliance of Scotland and France. He restored the dignities of the family, and so backed the heir's petition to Parliament that in 1414 that body voted a restoration in blood, and the restoration of all the estates held in tail,—those only held in fee simple passing away to the King. Henry V.—sent Sir John Neville and the Lord Grey to bring the young lord from Scotland, and on 16th March, 1415, he did homage to Henry in presence of the Estates as second Earl of Northumberland. The Duke of Bedford, moved by the King, resigned the lands assigned to his share, in consideration of an annuity of 3,000 marks a year, and the House, once more invested with the wardenship of the Border, was reestablished in all its dignity. The family attributed this restoration to the personal grace of Henry, and for three generations following staked and lost their lives, and liberties, and pos- sessions for the sake of the House of Lancaster. The restored Earl, after escorting the captive King of Scotland, his own fellow pupil, back to Edinburgh, and endowing the three Divinity Fellow- ships in University College, Oxford,—now held by Mr. Charles Musgrave Bull, Mr.-Francis John Headlam, and Mr. Horace Davey —took up arms for the son of his benefactor. He was slain fighting, on 20th May, 1455, in the battle of St. Albans, along with the Duke of Somerset, and lies in the Abbey Church. He held the Northumbrian and Yorkshire and Petworth property, Crawley, and two other manors in Sussex, Wrentham in Suffolk, Wilton- Hokwold in Norfolk, eight manors and the hundred of Canyng- ton in Somersetshire, and sixteen manors and the hundred of Folkes- tone in Kent; had also a joint part with Sir Robert Manners of the goods and chattels of Sir Robert Ogle, outlawed, possessed Dagenham and another manor in Essex, fifty-eight manors in Lincolnshire, the manor of Foston in Leicestershire, and the castle and manor of Cockermouth, and eight and a half manors, besides parcels of another manor, several advowsons of churches, and a fourth part of the "barony of Egremont," in the county of Cumberland. His son Henry was at the time in his thirty-fourth year, and had already served in several very important capacities. He had married, through the influence of Cardinal Beaufort, the heiress of the three Baronies of Poynings, Fitzpayne, and Bryan, and, with his paternal estates, possessed, therefore, in all probability, a larger territorial dominion than the family have ever since held, one of the largest ever owned by a British subject. It was all staked again, the Earl supporting the Lancastrian cause by force throughout the North, and falling sword in hand while lead- ing Margaret's vanguard in the decisive battle of Towton. Three of his brothers also fell fighting in the same cause,—one, Sir Richard, along with him at Towton, another, Sir Thomas, who had been 'made Baron Egremont, at the battle of Northampton, in 1460, and the third, Sir Ralph, at Hed,geley Moor, near Chillingham Castle, in 1464, exclaiming as he died, "I have saved the bird in my bosom !" i.e., his faith to King Henry. The next heir was thrown into the Tower, the Yorkist Parliament held in Novem- ber at-tainted the family, the earldom and estates were granted to John Neville, Earl of Montagu, brother to the Kingmaker, and once more the House seemed to have been torn up by the roots. This time the eclipse was of short duration. In October, 1469, King Edward, jealous of the excessive power of the Nevilles,
bethought himself of the Percy, and summoned the prisoner to his presence. The Percy, believing further resistance hopeless, or tamed by eight years of confinement, took the oath of allegiance, and regained at once his honours and his estates, the Earl of Montagu receiving in exchange the barren title of Marquis.* The battle of Barnet, which crushed the NeviRes so completely that the clergyman who now holds the lands of Abergavenny is the only Peer directly representing that almost regal house, confirmed the Percies in their inheritance. They resumed their old function of ruling the Border, and in 1482 Earl Henry was second in command to Richard of Gloucester on his triumphant march to Berwick and Edinburgh. He acquiesced in the revolution which placed Richard on the throne of his nephew, and which was, in spite of Shakespeare, perhaps only the last illustration of the principle always floating through the Norman mind—the right of the eldest efficient male. Disgusted, however, with Richard's tyranny or annoyed by his obvious determination to break down the baronial power, the Earl, on Henry Tudor's arrival, obeyed the Lancastrian instinct of his house, and, like the Stanle3rs, remained on the field of Bosworth only a spectator. If the act were treacherous it was expiated, for Henry VII. contrived to bring the Percy, for the first and only time in the history of the House, into direct conflict with the people. Parliament, in 1489, granted a heavy subsidy to the King for the war in Bretagne ; the Earl in vain endeavoured to obtain an abatement, and the populace, wild with disappointment and rage, murdered him in his house at Cocklodge, near Think, in Yorkshire. Skelton wrote an elegy on his death. His successor, the fifth Earl, was a man in whom the second attribute of the family—a stately fondness for learning and magnificence, flowered out so fully as to conceal or efface their first—the passion for military success. At the age of twenty he fought and defeated James Touchet, Lord Audley, in 1497, in the battle of Black- heath, and was with Henry VIII. at the battle of the Spurs, in France ; but be disliked active life, obtained leave to resign the wardenship of the Marches to the Earl of Surrey, and devoted himself to study and stately ceremonies. The "House- hold Book" of this Earl, which has been preserved, presents a singular picture of the semi-regal state of a great noble of those days—a state which combined the feudal power with the social magnificence of later times. There was a Council of the great officers of the Household, who assisted the Earl in drawing up his code of economic laws ; the constables and bailiffs of his castles waited on his person in regular succession ; all the officers of the household were gentlemen, and the table at which they sat was called the Knights' Board. He kept eleven resident priests and a doctor or bachelor of divinity as Dean of his chapel, with a regular establishment of choristers. The number of persons permanently supported in his household was two hundred and twenty-three, and the annual cost of housekeeping was, in our money, 8,951/. This magnificent Peer died in 1527, and was succeeded by his son, Henry Algernon, sixth Earl of Northumberland, who as a lad had been educated in the household of Cardinal Wolsey, and fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. It is still doubtful whether he had not entered into a contract of marriage when the Cardinal interfered, and Henry Percy was married offhand to a daughter of the Talbots. The interference seems to have permanently affected his character. He plunged into debt till he acquired the nickname of Henry the Thriftless, and was compelled to sell the Poynings estates, lived unhappily with his wife, and separated from her without children. His brother, Sir Thomas Percy, in 1536 joined the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was executed at Tyburn, and his whole family attainted in blood. Within a month, June, 1537, the Earl died of heartbreak, and, as the nephews could not inherit, the House of Percy-Louvain came momentarily to an end.
During the momentary interregnum the title and the estates were transferred to the Dudleys, Northumberland, the Protector, being of that family, but the catastrophe of Lady Jane Grey swept them out of the road. Henry Percy, the nephew, regained Scar- borough, (seized by a son of Lord Stafford,) and Queen Mary annulled the attainder, and regranted estates and earldom to Henry, with a clause in the patent including his younger brother. Queen FAizabeth confirmed these grants, added Sion House, which had been built by the Dudleys, and re-appointed Earl Henry warden ; but the Cecils detested the Earl. They worked on the mind of the Queen till she bestowed the wardenship of the Middle and
The ease with which these transfers were effected is one of the many difficult social questions presented by the Wars of the Roses. We believe, however, the ex- planation is this. All the classes benefiting by the feudal system admitted the royal right to transfer estates after attainder; and the people, however deeply Irritated, could not resist the armed class. They, however, liked their old lords beet; and the moment the King's word replaced them resistance became impossible. A transfer
AVM them was accepted like an act of conquest, a retransfer to them like • grace. West Marches on Lord Grey de Wilton, and seized a copper mine discovered on the Percy estates, and from which the Earl appears to have expected unbounded wealth. The Earl, personally dis- gusted, and, perhaps, enraged at the Queen's persistent perse- cution of the Catholics, with two other Lords, took up arms in the movement known as the Rising of the North. Their forces were soon discovered to be inadequate to the enterprise, and after some slight successes the Earl fled, taking refuge with an old friend, Hector Graham, of Harlaw. In January, 1570, Graham be- trayed him to the Regent Murray, and in July, 1572, Morton delivered him up to Lord Hunsden, and he was beheaded at York, affirming with his last breath the supremacy of the Pope. He left no heir, but the clause in Mary's patent saved the House, and his brother was summoned to Parliament as eighth Earl of North- umberland. Though an active conunander in the field, and hostile to his brother's policy, he incurred the sleepless jealousy of the CeciLs, was committed to the Tower, and on 21st June, 1585, was found dead in that areanum of secrets with three bullet wounds in his chest and a discharged pistol on the floor. A coroner's in- quest ended in a verdict of suicide, but popular rumour loudly ac- cused Lord Burleigh of one more successful crime. England was getting too hot for Catholics, but Henry, the ninth Earl, accom- panied Leicester to the Low Countries, and joined in the siege of Ostend, and when England was menaced raised a squadron at his own charge, and under the Catholic Howard of Effingham helped to defeat the Armada. He might, strong in the history of his family, have lived down the jealousy caused by his creed, more especially as he was himself a Moderate, but unfortunately he did a Stuart a ser- vice—the one offence which that family, like the Bourbons, never forgave. The Earl was looked up to by the Catholics as their natural chief, and James promised him in return for his support all manner of favour to the members of the oppressed creed. The letters which passed were left in the keeping .of Thomas Percy, the Earl's agent, and when that person was arrested for his share in the Gunpowder Plot, James had the baseness to permit them to be received in evidence against the Earl. lie was sent before the Star Chamber, and sentenced to a fine of 30,000/., the loss of all offices, and imprisonment for life in the Tower. James not only confirmed the sentence, but pleading some delay in the pay- ment of the first instalment, seized the estates and leased them for his own benefit. The Earl remained in prison till July 18, 1621, fifteen years, which he spent in mental culture. He studied mathematics and astronomy—perhaps also astrology—gathered learned men round him, three of whom were called Northumber- land's Magi, and earned for himself by his researches the nickname of Ilemy the Wizard. He was, perhaps, the most accomplished gentleman of his age, and with his fellow- prisoner Sir W. Raleigh turned the side-rooms of the Tower into a school, to which the flower of the rising generation re- sorted for instruction. At last, released by the intervention of the Earl of Carlisle, who had married his youngest daughter (Lady Lucy Percy, Waller's goddess), he exhibited his contempt for the Court in an outburst of characteristic magnificence. Buckingham drove six horses, Sc) the Earl traversed London with eight, and re- tired first to Bath and then to Petworth, where he maintained a court thronged by nobles and men of learning. The Stuarts paid for their baseness. The son, Henry, who, in 1632, succeeded him as Tenth Earl, who was, in 1637, Lord High Admiral, and a man of such in- fluence that Charles I. said "he had courted him like a mistress," and of so stately a character that oven Clarendon half forgets his party hatred, stood through life the unswerving foe of the royal power. On the breaking out of the Civil War he was one of the Peers who remained at Westminster. He tried to negotiate with the King at Oxford, sat in 1645 a recognized leader of the Inde- pendents, and after the King's death took the oath to the Com- monwealth. On Monk's advance from Scotland, the Earl strove fiercely to secure guarantees before re-admitting the Stuarts, and resisted to the last the punishment of the members of the High Court of Justice, avowedly because the execution, which he had at the time opposed, "would be a wholesome warning to future sovereigns." For the rest of his life the stately old man occupied himself with magnificent gardening at Petworth, and dying, was succeeded by his son Joseeline, namesake of the first of the House, Eleventh and last Earl of the House of Percy- Louvain. He died at Turin, 21st May, 1670, and once again the line ended in a daughter. It had lasted five hundred years all but a few months, and during that entire period had never been named in Scotland without a sense of fear, or in England without the feeling that here, at least, was one family which could be trusted to face the throne. From the signing of Magna Charts to the
last protest against the re-admission of the evil Scotch House as Kings, the Percies had done battle with lives and fortunes against the royal power, were the only great nobles who tried arms against the imperial Henry VIII., and the last of the Barons who ventured to trust their followers in the field against the organized power of the Crown.
A brief interregnum carried the family over the Revolution. Earl Josceline's only surviving daughter, the Lady Elizabeth Percy, carried the estates, by her third marriage, to Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and as if the family spirit had passed into his brain as its revenue did into his purse, he was among the first to welcome the Prince of Orange in the Revolution by which the great nobles saved England from tyranny and themselves from slow extinction. His son Algernon was created Baron Percy, but he again had but one daughter, who, on July 18th, 1740, married Sir Hugh Smithson, Bart., of Stanwick, Yorkshire. The Smithson baronetcy arose with Hugh Smithson, the second son of Anthony Smithson, Esq , of Newsome or Newshaw, in the parish of Kerby-on-the-Mount, Yorkshire, who was thus rewarded for his past Royalist services in the year 1660. The grand- father of the bridegroom had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, but conformed to the Church. The Duke of Somer- set strove for influence, and on 2nd October, 1749, he was created Baron Warkworth and Earl of Northumberland, with remainder to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh, and all heirs male of the Lady Elizabeth, and next day Baron Cockermouth and Earl of Egremont, with remainder to his nephew, Sir Charles Wyndham, son of his sister Katherine. With this latter peerage went the estate of Petworth, which thus, on the death of the Duke, passed away from the Percies to the family in which it still re- mains. The Duke dying in 1750, Sir Hugh Smithson succeeded him under the patent, and sixteen years after, on 22nd October, 1766, was created Earl Percy and Duke of Northumberland. Petworth was almost made up by the estates at Stanwick, at Armine, in the West Riding, and at Tottenham, in Middlesex, which Sir Hugh brought into the family, and the new house revived to the full the magnificence of the Percy-Louvabas: The first duke rebuilt Sion House, Northumberland House, and Alnwick Castle, and planted a great part of the county of Northumberland, planting annually, for twenty years, from eleven to twelve hundred thousand trees. He also devoted great attention to agriculture, and for these services—sup- ported doubtless by the purchase of Werrington in Cornwall, which commands the borough of Launceston—he obtained in 1784 the Barony of Ahiwick, with remainder to his second son, after- wards Earl of Beverley, the wearer of which title stands now nearest to the family succession. The second duke, also Hugh, served in America, especially at Lexington; the third was the popular and convivial Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and the fourth, Algernon, who succeeded in 1847, was first Lord of the Admiralty to Lord Derby's Administration, and has been noted for years for a liberality princely in its degree. He has built, rebuilt, and endowed more churches than any Peer in Great Britain, and he established at his own expense a complete system of life-boats along that wild north- east coast, where his name has so long been a household word. The vast possessions of his House have been increased to an extent which probably only the Duke knows by the development of the under- ground wealth of his estates, and in 1863, as in 1100, there is in the North no rival in magnificence or social weight to the represen- tative of the Percies. Throughout that great interval, the whole of our English history, there has never been a period of ten years during which the vote of the Percy has not been of the first import- ance to the Government, scarcely a century in which the lives and lands of the House have not been staked in defence of the popular cause. There is no other house in England with a history ap- proaching theirs, but their career is enough to indicate why Eng- land accepts and Liberals bear the aristocratic influence which foreigners believe to be supported entirely by astute but unprin- cipled intrigue.
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