The Stately Homes of England

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt; S. C. Hall

On Alnwick Moor, and in many places in the neighbourhood, are some remarkably interesting camps and other earth-works, and also some barrows, in which various relics have been discovered. In one of these was found a stone cist, containing a skeleton in the usual contracted position of Celtic interments; and in another, in a similar cist, was found a fine food-vessel, ornamented with a lozenge pattern. In other barrows Celtic remains, including cinerary urns, drinking-cups, food-vessels, flints, celts, and other implements of stone, bronze daggers, &c., have been found, and prove incontestably the early occupation of the site of Alnwick. In the neighbourhood, too, occur many of those curious remains of antiquity, sculptured stones, bearing circles and other rude and singular characters, which are supposed to be inscriptions.

It may be accepted as probable that the first Norman by whom this barony was held was Gilbert Tyson, standard-bearer of the Conqueror, the kind of personage who very naturally would be intrusted with the charge of a remote and turbulent northern district. His descendants continued to hold some estates under the lords of Alnwick in the reign of Edward III., but there is no foundation for the legend that the barony of Alnwick passed to Yvo de Vesci by his marriage with Alda, a granddaughter of Gilbert Tyson. Still, by whatever means he may have acquired possession, Yvo de Vesci was lord of Alnwick about the year 1096; and he also is the first Norman baron of this barony whose history, scanty as it is, rises above doubt and speculation. He died about the year 1134, leaving, without any male issue, an only daughter, Beatrix, his sole heiress.

Before we pass on to trace the fortunes of the descendants of Yvo de Vesci, a brief notice must be taken of a memorable incident which took place in the immediate neighbourhood of Alnwick before Yvo himself had become its lord. After the Norman Conquest many of the Anglo-Saxon nobles found a sympathizing refuge to the north of the Border, under the protection of Malcolm Caenmore, or “great head,” King of Scotland, whose queen was an Anglo-Saxon princess, being sister to Edgar Atheling. Malcolm, in his zeal for the fallen Anglo-Saxon dynasty, five times made incursions into Northumberland, laid waste the country far and wide with fire and sword, and carried away almost the entire adult population as slaves into Scotland. This devastating warfare was suspended in consequence of a treaty, during the concluding years of the reign of the Conqueror; but it broke out afresh after the succession of Rufus, and Malcolm, accompanied by Prince William, his eldest son, in person led an expedition as far south as Alnwick; and there, on the 13th of November, 1093, the king himself fell in an ambuscade, his son at the same time was mortally wounded, and the Scottish army was dispersed by Earl Robert de Mowbray, the governor of Bamborough Castle. The body of Malcolm, having rested about thirty years at Tynemouth, was removed and re-interred at Dunfermline by his son Alexander. There still remain two fragments of a rude memorial cross, which, from an early period, has marked the spot assigned by tradition to the scene of Malcolm’s discomfiture and death; and, in 1774, one of his descendants, Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, erected on the same spot another cross, designed in accordance with the debased architectural taste of that period.

The Barbican.

The one circumstance connected with the career of Yvo de Vesci that has come down to us is the fact that he began to build the earliest parts of the existing castle of Alnwick. With the barony, the castle of Alnwick passed to Eustace Fitz-John by his marriage with Beatrix, the heiress of Yvo de Vesci. In the hands of this able baron, Alnwick Castle was “most strongly fortified:” he also founded the monastery of Alnwick, and in 1157 was succeeded by his eldest son, William, who, in honour of his mother, assumed the name of De Vesci. In the time of this baron, another King of Scotland found that the neighbourhood of Alnwick Castle was no place of safety. In the year 1174 William the Lion, while besieging the fortress of the De Vescis, was taken prisoner, and the large army under his command was completely routed, De Vesci himself taking an active part in the fierce struggle. His descendant, John De Vesci, who died in 1288, leaving no issue, founded and endowed Hulne Abbey; and he was the first baron of his house who was summoned by the king to the parliament by writ, his predecessors having been barons by tenure. William De Vesci III., one of the claimants of the Scottish crown, was born in 1245, and succeeded to the barony of Alnwick on the death of his brother. The last baron of Alnwick of his race, he died in 1297, without legitimate issue, having infeoffed the celebrated Anthony Bec, Bishop of Durham, with all his lands and his castle of Alnwick, to hold them in trust for an illegitimate son. But in 1309 the bishop sold the castle and barony of Alnwick to Henry de Percy; and this conveyance was confirmed by Edward II. in 1310.

Deriving, as it would seem, their memorable name from that district in Normandy in which from an early period, long before the Norman Conquest of England, their family had been established, the Percies were represented in the ranks of the Conqueror at Hastings by William de Percy, who assumed the additional name of Le Gernons, or Algernon, as a personal epithet denoting the mass of hair which he wore about his face. About 1166, or almost an exact century after the battle of Hastings, the wealth, dignities, and power of the Percies centred in an heiress who, perhaps in 1168, married Josceline de Louvain, second son of the Duke of Brabant, and half-brother to the second queen of Henry I. of England. A legend has been preserved, which relates that on her marriage with Josceline, Agnes de Percy stipulated that her husband, at his own option, should assume either the arms or the name of Percy; and it is added that the bridegroom elected to retain his own arms, the blue lion rampant of Brabant, while he assumed the paternal surname of his bride. This legend, however, must be regarded as the poetic offspring of a later age, since at the time of the marriage of Agnes de Percy armorial insignia had neither assumed any definite character, nor had any such insignia become hereditary.

The Prudhoe Tower and Chapel.

There is nothing to show that Josceline de Louvain ever bore the name of Percy; but it is certain that the surname of his mother was assumed and borne by the second son of Josceline’s marriage with the Percy heiress, Henry de Percy; and by his descendants and successors the same name was regularly borne. It was Sir Henry de Percy, third of the name, who in 1309, the second year of Edward II., when already he was possessed of vast wealth, and great power, became the first Lord of Alnwick of the House of Percy, by purchase from Bishop Anthony Bec. Having taken an active part in the wars with Scotland and otherwise distinguished himself among the foremost men of his time, Henry, first Baron Percy of Alnwick, died in 1315, and was buried at Fountains Abbey, to which institution he had been a munificent benefactor. One of the powerful barons who signed the memorable letter to Pope Boniface VIII., in which the peers of England refused to recognise or allow the interference of Papal authority with the independent sovereignty of this realm, he married Eleanor Fitz-Alan, daughter of Richard, Earl of Arundel, by whom he had two sons, and of these the elder, another Henry de Percy, succeeded his father as second Baron Percy of Alnwick, to whom was granted by Edward III. the castle and manor of Warkworth “for service in peace and war,” as appears from the original grant now in the Duke of Northumberland’s possession. This Lord Percy was interred at Alnwick Abbey, the only head of the family buried in Northumberland. The history of the lords of Alnwick from this period becomes so closely interwoven with the history of England, that it would be superfluous in such a sketch as the present to attempt to introduce even a slight outline of the career of each of those renowned barons; and, indeed, if it were desirable, it would not be possible here to find space for the very slightest outline of so comprehensive a subject. Accordingly, we now are content to give but little more than the succession of the Percies after they became lords of Alnwick.