James Smithson 7 



Lord Percy was too good a soldier to fall into the error of 

 despising his enemy. He had never shared in that contemp- 

 tuous estimate which Englishmen, ignorant of the country and 

 its population, had formed of the military capacity of the 

 American colonists, and which had led the King, under the 

 prompting of such advisers as Lord North and Lord George 

 Germain, to declare that all resistance would collapse on the 

 first menacing advance of half a dozen English regiments. 



"Whoever," he writes to his father, " looks upon them as 

 merely an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken ; 

 they have men amongst them who know what they are about, 

 having been employed as rangers against the Canadians and 

 Indians . . . nor are their men devoid of the spirit of en- 

 thusiasm, as we experienced yesterday, for many of them con- 

 cealed themselves in houses and advanced within ten yards 

 to fire at me and the other officers, though they were morally 

 certain of being put to death themselves in an instant." 



The father died in 1786, and was buried in Westminster 

 Abbey, where he is described as "the most high puissant and 

 most noble prince Hugh Percy, Duke and Earl of Northum- 

 berland, Earl Percy, Baron Warkworth and Lovaine, Lord 

 Lieutenant and Gustos Rotulorum of the Counties of Middle- 

 sex and Northumberland and of all America, one of the lords 

 of His Majesty's most Honourable and Privy Council and 

 Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, etc., etc., etc." ; 

 but we are here concerned with these honors only as an 

 evidence of the character of the man who did not inherit, but 

 who conquered them by the force of his will. 



Let us, after noting the essential qualities of his race in the 

 father and brother, return to the immediate subject of our 

 memoir, the date of whose birth is fixed by the Pembroke 

 College record as 1765. His mother, Elizabeth Hungerford 



