GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



Northumberland was not a Percy at all, though the Percys had 

 previously been Earls of Northumberland for one hundred and sixty 

 years. 



It may be interesting in this connection to quote from an old 

 number of the Quarterly Review concerning the history of this 

 famous English family, by which it will be seen that for several 

 centuries tragedy dogged their footsteps. ' Their ancestor, 

 Jocelaine de Louvaine, a younger son of the ancient Princes of 

 Brabant, and brother of Adelina, second consort of our Henry I., 

 married, in 1122, Agnes de Percy, the heiress of a great northern 

 baron, seated at Topcliffe and Spoffard, County of York, on condi- 

 tion that the male posterity should bear the name of Percy. Their 

 son, Henry, was great-grandfather of Henry, Lord Percy, sum- 

 moned to Parliament in 1299, whose great-grandson Henry, fourth 

 Lord Percy, was created Earl of Northumberland in 1377, at the 

 coronation of Richard II. He was slain at Bramham Moor in 

 1408. His son, Henry, Lord Percy (' Hotspur '), had already 

 fallen at Shrewsbury in 1403. Henry, second Earl, the son of 

 Hotspur, was slain at the Battle of St. Albans, in 1455. His son 

 Henry, third Earl, was slain at the battle of Towton in 1461. 

 Henry, fourth Earl, was murdered by an insurrectionary mob at 

 Thirske, in Yorkshire, in 1480. Henry, fifth Earl, died a natural 

 death in 1527, but his second son, Sir Thomas Percy, was executed 

 in 1537 for his concern in Ask's rebellion. Henry, sixth Earl, the 

 first lover of Queen Anne Boleyn, died in 1537 issueless, and the 

 honours were suspended for twenty years by the attainder of his 

 brother, Sir Thomas Percy, in 1537, during which time the family 

 had the mortification to see the dukedom of Northumberland 

 conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. But this nobleman 

 being attainted in 1553, the Earldom was restored to Thomas 

 Percy, the son of the attainted Sir Thomas, who became the 

 seventh Earl of Northumberland. He was eventually beheaded 

 in August, 1572. His brother, Henry Percy, was allowed, in right 

 of the new entail, to succeed as eighth Earl of Northumberland. 

 In 1585 this Earl, still blind to his family interests, entered into the 

 intrigues in favour of Mary Queen of Scots, and, being committed 

 to the Tower, committed suicide 21st June." 



To return to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, whose 

 vaulting ambition, as is well known, over-leapt itself, and worked 



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