JANUARY 45 



the only woman he ever loved. He lingered out a few 

 miserable years. Racked by disease, robbed of all his 

 property by a dishonourable trick of the King, and 

 deserted by his wife, he died in June 1537, aged only 

 five-and- thirty. Richard Lay ton, describing his death- 

 bed to Secretary Cromwell, wrote: 'this iij wekes he 

 hade no money but by borowyng, as his servauntes 

 declarede to me.' 



Nevertheless, even this ill-starred earl had his brief 

 hour of splendour and power. As Warden of the East 

 and Middle Marches, he managed to consign to violent 

 death quite a considerable number of his fellow-creatures. 

 Thus, at his first Wardenry Court, held at Alnwick in 

 January 1528, he was able to report to Cardinal Wolsey 

 that he had beheaded nine men and hanged five for 

 march-treason. A little later he wrote that ' all the Scots 

 of Tivydale that came to my hands, I put them to death 

 saving three,' and asked instructions as to these last. 



The Percy standard was no doubt displayed in a 

 notable raid which this earl made into Scotland in 

 December 1532, at the head of 2500 men, in reporting 

 which he declares that ' thankes be to God we did not 

 leave one pele, gentleman's howse or grange unburnt 

 or undestroyed, and so reculed to England. . . . Such 

 a roode [raid] hath not been seene in winter this two 

 hundrede years.' 



(4) Lastly, there is the famous Cavers standard, still 

 in the possession of E. Palmer Douglas, Esq. of Cavers 

 that flag of sage green silk to which tradition assigns 

 a higher antiquity than any of the others. Bishop 

 Percy of Dromore, visiting Cavers in 1744, notes that 



