Henry de Percy, eldest son of the first baron, succeeded his father as second Baron Percy of Alnwick; he died in 1352, leaving, by his wife Idonea de Clifford (whose magnificent monument, with its rich and splendid architectural canopy, unsurpassed in England, and also without a rival in its remarkable condition of preservation, is the pride of Beverley Minster), four sons, of whom the eldest, Henry, succeeded as third Baron Percy of Alnwick. This baron died in 1368; his eldest son, by Mary of Lancaster, Henry de Percy, sixth of his name and fourth baron, was created Earl of Northumberland by Richard II., and High Constable of England. This great noble fell a victim to the tyranny of Henry IV., at Bramham Moor, in 1409. He was thrice married: first to Elizabeth, heiress to the Earl of Angus, by whom he acquired the barony of Prudhoe; secondly to Margaret de Neville; and thirdly to Maud de Lucy, sister and heiress of Lord Lucy, widow of Gilbert de Umfraville, and mother of her second husband’s first wife: and by these alliances the barony of Prudhoe, with the estates of the Lucys and the castle and honour of Cockermouth, became annexed to the Percy earldom. Sir Henry de Percy, known by his surname of Hotspur as well in song as in history,—
“Who was sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride,”
the earl’s eldest son, was killed near Shrewsbury in 1403. At Trotton, in Sussex, a fine monumental brass commemorates Elizabeth de Mortimer, wife of Hotspur, and afterwards of Lord Camoys.
The Keep.
After several years the fortified honours and estates of the Percies were restored to Henry, the son of Hotspur, who thus became the second Earl of Northumberland. This great earl was killed, fighting under the red-rose banner, at St. Albans, in 1455; and was succeeded by his fourth surviving son, by his marriage with Eleanor de Neville, another Henry, who, with one of his brothers, fell at the disastrous rout of Towton, in 1461. Two other brothers of this earl died in arms in the Lancastrian cause; one of them, Sir Ralph de Percy, a few days before the final catastrophe at Hexham in 1464, was killed fighting bravely on Hedgeley Moor, where a cross was erected as a memorial of his valour and his fall: of this cross the shaft, adorned with the heraldic insignia of Percy and Lucy, is still standing. Under the third earl, who, by his marriage with Eleanor de Poynings, acquired the baronies of Poynings, Fitzpayne, and Bryan, the estates attached to the earldom reached their greatest territorial extent, and constituted a vast principality.
In 1469 the attainder of the third earl having been reversed, his only son, Henry, became the fourth earl; he was killed in a popular tumult in 1489, when his eldest son, by his marriage with Maud de Herbert, Henry Algernon, succeeded as fifth earl. Remarkable rather for an almost regal state and magnificence than for the warlike qualities that before his time had been hereditary in his house, he was the first Earl of Northumberland who did not fall in battle or otherwise suffer a violent death. He died in 1527, having married Catherine Spense, or Spencer. The Household Book of this earl, which has been published by Bishop Percy, is one of the most remarkable and characteristic documents that illustrate the personal history of the greatest English nobles in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His son, the sixth earl, a second Henry Algernon de Percy, the lover of Anne Boleyn in her earlier and really happier days, married Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, but in 1537 died without issue, when the grand Percy earldom became extinct.
Twenty years later, “in consideration of his noble descent, constancy, virtue, and valour in deeds of arms, and other shining qualifications,” of which last recommendations to royal favour the fact that he was a zealous Roman Catholic certainly was not the least influential, Thomas de Percy, eldest son of the second son of the fifth earl (Sir Thomas Percy), was created by Queen Mary, Baron Percy, and also restored to the earldom of Northumberland; but the tenure by which the restored earl was to hold his dignities and lands restricted the succession absolutely to the heirs male of his own body, and to those of his brother. This the seventh earl was executed, as a traitor, at York, in 1572, leaving no surviving son. Accordingly, his brother, Henry de Percy, became the eighth earl: he died in 1585, having been shot (it was said, but most doubtfully, by his own hand) while a prisoner in the Tower. The eldest son of this earl, by Catherine de Neville, Henry, succeeded as ninth earl: he was a learned, eccentric personage, commonly known as “the Wizard,” and died, after an imprisonment of fifteen years in the Tower, in 1632. He married Dorothy Devereux, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, one of the noblest of his race. This great earl died in 1668, having married, first, Anne Cecil, and, secondly, Elizabeth Howard. His successor, his only son (by his second marriage), Josceline de Percy, the eleventh and last earl of Northumberland of the direct lineage of the Percies, died in 1670, leaving, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Southampton, an only child, a daughter, Elizabeth de Percy, four years old at the time of her father’s death.