EARLS OF NORTHUMBERLAND, BARONS PERCY, &c.,

AND TERRITORIAL

LORDS OF ALNWICK, WARKWORTH, AND PRUDHOE CASTLES,

IN THE COUNTY OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

BY W. E. SURTEES, ESQ., D. C. L.

"The two great princes of the North were the Earls of Northumberland at Alnwick, and Westmerland at Raby Castle."

CHOROGRAPHIA OR SURVEY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE.

HE name of Percy, often tragic, but always honourable, is more interwoven than any other with our early minstrelsy and romance. The family which it denoted never perhaps exercised over the destinies of England the mighty power which, during the wars of the roses, was wielded by a junior branch of their northern rivals, the *Nevills: but peculiar circumstances rendered it far more the favourite of the bards. The proximity of the Percies to the border involved them in a continual hostility; which, being

• See Traditional Div., vol. 2, p.p. 63-65; and also Bulwer's novel of "The Last of the Barons," where the characters of the heads of this branch are drawn with fidelity, as well as eloquence.

often carried on with petty forces, and consisting of making, or repelling, a foray, was rather in the nature of a private feud than a national war: and hence their heroes were the more capable of being individualized with dramatic effect. This family was also fortunate in the vicinity, on the opposite border, of a house so powerful as to rival its own sovereign princes. The Douglas it was glorious to overcome-by the Douglas it was not disgraceful to be vanquished. Thus the Percies became the theme of the minstrels of two nations; and national prejudice would lead those of each to extol the prowess of this family, whether they

"woke the string

The triumph of the foe to tell"

or that of their own countrymen,―to cover their country's shame, or to enhance its glory.

In taking a survey of the house of Percy, we shall hastily pass over the pristine patriarchs of the race, as Manfred the Dane, and

"Brave Galfred," who "to Normandy

With vent'rous Rollo came;

And, from his Norman castles won,

Assumed the Percy name," *

and descend in their pedigree to Agnes de Perci, the heiress of this lofty line which had been enriched, by the conquest of England and the favour of its Kings, with vast possessions in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. She became the bride of Josceline de Louvaine, brother of Adeliza, second Queen to the first Henry of England, and younger son of Godfrey Count of Lovaine and Bruxells, and reigning Duke of Brabant. Yet the proud condition was imposed on the Flemish Prince, on his accepting the Norman alliance, that he should relinquish either his own name or coat of arms in favour of that of his bride. He decided the option by assuming the name of Percy; and the

The Hermit of Warkworth.

+ Of the Yorkshire possessions of this family, Topcliff in the North riding, and Spofford in the West riding, became their chief residences.-Dugdale's Baronage, vol. 1. p. 270. In the deanery of Craven, in the West riding of Yorkshire, the Percies held, from the era of the conquest, an extensive domain, called the Percy fee; where however they had no residence. In the time of Henry VIII., it passed from them to the Cliffords, in consequence of a marriage.-See Whitaker's Craven.

"They sung how Agnes, beauteous heir,

The Queen's own brother wed

Lord Josceline, sprung from Charlemagne,

In princely Brabant bred." Hermit of Warkworth.

There is a printed pedigree tracing the descent of Agnes de Perci up to Manfred; and that of Josceline de Louvaine up, through Gerberga, daughter and heiress of Charles Duke of Lorrain, to Charlemagne, and, in the male line, to the ancient Dukes of Hainault.

ancient royal arms of Brabant are at this day borne the first of the eight hundred and ninety-two quarterings of the Percy shield.*

The wealth which Josceline thus acquired by marriage received an accession by the grant of the honour of Petworth, in Sussex, which was bestowed on him by the Queen his sister. This was a part of the Earldom of Arundel; the estates of which had reverted to the crown in consequence of the rebellion of a former Earl, and were settled on the Queen in dower. She, after the death of the King her husband, married William de Albini, who thus obtained the Earldom matrimonial of Arundel and of him Josceline held Petworth by the Knight's service of being his castellan, and, during siege, defending his castle of Arundel for forty days.†

:

The grandson and eventual heir of this marriage, William de Perci, third territorial Lord of Petworth (whose mother was Isabel de Bruce of Skelton, daughter of the elder branch of that family which afterwards gave kings to Scotland), had two wives. His second wife was Ellen de Baliol who brought to her husband, Dalton, in the bishoprick of Durham, since called Dalton-Percy: ‡ and this was not improbably the first English possession acquired by the house of Percy north of the Tees.§

The male issue was by this second marriage: and the son and heir, Henry de Perci, wedded Eleanor daughter of John Plantagenet Earl of Warren and Surrey, descended from a base-born son of Godfrey Plantagenet Count of Anjou, the second husband of Maud of England, Empress of Germany.

On the early death of two elder sons, his youngest son Henry de Perey succeeded to the family inheritance of wealth and honours. From youth to age he was a warrior. He was one of the victors in the

"Not more famous in arms than distinguished for its alliances, the house of Percy stands pre-eminent for the number and rank of the families which are represented by the present Duke of Northumberland, whose banner consequently exhibits an assemblage of nearly nine hundred armorial ensigns-Among which are those of King Henry the Seventh, of several younger branches of the blood-Royal, of the Sovereign houses of France, Castile, Leon, and Scotland, and of the ducal houses of Normandy and Brittany, forming a galaxy of heraldic honours altogether unparalleled." Quarterly Review, No. exliii. May, 1843. p. 170.

+ Dallaway's Sussex, vol. ii. p. 268. Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England. "In 1370 Henry Lord Percy sold this manor to Sir John Nevill of Raby," Lord Nevill. Surtees' Dur. vol. iii. p. 98.

$ "Ere Percy, liv'd there many an English knight—

Before brave Douglas,-many a Scottish wight,

Who undistinguish'd lie without a name,

Now having lost the heralds of their fame."

“ Cheviot, a poetical fragment,” belonging to the beginning of the last century, edited by John Adamson, Esq. of Newcastle, 1817.

battle of Dunbar; and was highly distinguished throughout the Scottish wars* during the reign of King Edward the First and he is alleged to have been rewarded by the victorious English monarch with the Scotch Earldom of Carrick, which Robert the Bruce (afterwards King of Scotland) was declared to have forfeited by slaying the Red Comyn in the Church at Dumfries. In 1299, seven years previously to this, he had received a writ of summons to the house of Lords, by which the baroncy in fee of Percy was created. It was he who acquired Alnwick in the county of Northumberland, which has,

He was, in the 25 Ed. I., sent into Scotland in command of some forces by his Uncle the Earl of Warren, who was general of all the armies north of the Trent.Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i. p. 272.

+ Ibid. vol. i. p. 273.

Alnwick, at the time of the conquest, belonged to William Tyson, a Saxon baron, who was slain in the battle of Hastings. His daughter and his possessions were conferred by the conquerer on his follower Ivo de Vesco; whose daughter and heiress carried it to her husband Eustace Fitz-John. Descended from them was William de Vescey, the last of a line of feudal barons; who, on the death of his only legitimate son in the Welch wars, granted to King Edward I., some lands in Ireland, that his natural son William de Kildare might be allowed to succeed him in this Northumberland property: and, before his death, appointed Anthony Beck, the most princely of the bishops of Durham, trustee for his son, then a minor. The bishop offended, as has been alleged, at the

to the present day, been transmitted to his descendants. He also obtained the Lordship of Corbridge in Northumberland, by purchase: and in the 5 Edward II., received the governorship of the then royal castle of Bamborough. He died in 1315, leaving by his wife the Lady Eleanor Fitz-Alan, a son, Henry, second Baron Percy of Alnwick.

language which this son had been reported to have used respecting him, appropriated the property to his own use, and eventually sold it to Henry Lord Percy, by a deed dated 1309, signed by some of the principal persons of the time, and confirmed by King Edward II., the next year: and Lord Percy, in order to perfect his title, took the precaution, to obtain a re-lease from Sir Gilbert de Aiton, a collateral relative but right heir to William de Visci. Anthony Beck appears to have appropriated this barony to himself for many years before he sold it; so that Lord Percy must have profited by, rather than promoted, the alleged fraud, which has affixed so deep a stain on the otherwise lofty character of the prelate.-Beauties of England and Wales, Vol. XII. part 1, by the Rev. J. Hodgson. Gough's Camden's Britannia, Dugdale's Baronage. It has been asserted that the deed of feofment from de Vescy to the bishop still exists: and it has been argued that, because in this no express trusts appear, there could have been no implied ones.-Description of Alnwick Castle, published by W. Davison, at Alnwick, Ed. of 1823. Here the descendants of Lord Percy for centuries kept a court in princely state; so that the poet, though a laureate, scarcely exaggerates when, in allusion to the State in which the fourth Earl of Northumberland had lived, he speaks of the

"barons and those knyghtes bold,

And other gentilmen with hym enterteynd

In fee, as menyall men of his housold,

Whom he as lord worsheply manteynd."

Skelton's Elegy on the Death of the 4th Earl of Northumberland.

Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i. p. 273.