This is no uncongenial aspect of that old fortress. It is rather in the Italian drawing-rooms, the picture-galleries, and the Renaissance luxuries of the interior of the castle that the jarring note is struck and all association with feudal times forgotten. Many a Border moss-trooper has unwillingly passed through this grim barbican, and so left the world for ever; and many more of higher estate have found this old stronghold of the Percies a place of lifelong durance, or have in its dungeons met a secret end. For chivalry was not inconsistent with midnight murder or treachery, and the Percies, centred in their fortress like spiders in their webs, had all the virtues and the vices of chivalric times. Ambitious and powerful, they were alike a bulwark against the Scots and a menace to successive kings of England, and none in those olden times could have approached their castle gate with the equable pulsation of the modern tourist. In those times, instead of finding a broad level open space here, a deep ditch would have been seen and a drawbridge must have been lowered before access was possible. Then possibly the stone figures in violent attitudes that line the battlements, and seem to be casting missiles down upon the heads of visitors, may have been alarming; to-day we only wonder if they could ever have tricked even the most bat-eyed warrior into a belief that they were really living men-at-arms. The Percies, whose name attaches more than any other to Alnwick, were, strictly speaking, never its owners. The first of that name came over to England with the Conqueror in the person of William de Percy, a younger son of the feudal lord of the village of Percie in Normandy, which still exists to point out to the curious tourist the spot whence this historic family sprang. This William de Percy was nicknamed “Als Gernons,” or “Whiskers,” whence derives the name of Algernon, even now a favourite one with the Smithson-Percies. “Whiskers” was present at the battle of Hastings, and for his aid was granted manors in Hampshire, Lincolnshire, and York, but none in Northumberland. He died in 1086, when with the Crusaders, near Jerusalem. The Percies never became connected in any way with Alnwick, for the family of this William de Percy became extinct in 1166, when Agnes, an only child of his descendant, married Josceline de Lovaine; and it was not until 1309 that the descendant of this Lovaine, who had assumed the Percy name, came into wrongful possession of the vast estates. Alnwick and sixty other baronies in Northumberland had until then been in possession of the de Vescis, of whom Yvo de Vesci was the original Norman owner. His descendant, William de Vesci, who died in 1297, was the last of his line, and appears to have been of a peculiarly trusting disposition. He put a great (and an unfounded) faith in the honesty of churchmen, leaving all his estates to Anthony Bek,