Northumberland Yesterday and To-dayTerry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
History
Northumberland Yesterday and To-day
Terry, Jean F. (Jean Finlay)
Northumberland (England) -- Guidebooks; Northumberland (England) -- History
King Henry V. restored Hotspur’s son, the second Earl, to his
family honours, and the Percies were staunch Lancastrians during
the Wars of the Roses which followed, the third Earl and three of
his brothers losing their lives in the cause. The fifth Earl was a
gorgeous person whose magnificence equalled, almost, that of
royalty. Henry Percy, the sixth Earl of Northumberland, loved Ann
Boleyn, and was her accepted suitor before King Henry VIII.
unfortunately discovered the lady’s charm, and interfered in a
highhanded “bluff King Has” fashion, and young Percy lost his
prospective bride. He had no son, although married later to the
daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and his nephew, Thomas Percy,
became the seventh Earl.
Thereafter, a succession of plots and counterplots—the Rising of
the North, the plots to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and the
Gunpowder Plot—each claimed a Percy among their adherents. On this
account the eighth and ninth Earls spent many years in the Tower,
but the tenth Earl, Algernon, fought for King Charles in the Civil
War, the male line of the Percy-Louvain house ending with
Josceline, the eleventh Earl. The heiress to the vast Percy estates
married the Duke of Somerset; and her grand-daughter married a
Yorkshire knight, Sir Hugh Smithson, who in 1766 was created the
first Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy, and it is their
descendants who now represent the famous old house.
At various points in the town are memorials of the constant wars
between Percies and Scots in which so many Percies spent the
greater part of their lives. At the side of the broad shady road
called Rotten Row, leading from the West Lodge to Bailiffgate, a
tablet of stone marks the spot where William the Lion of Scotland
was captured as we have already seen, in 1174, by Odinel de
Umfraville and his friends; and there are many others of similar
interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account