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Percy country south of the Tweed, with Galloway. This vast territory, though declared to be annexed to England, was not in Henry's power, and he granted it to the earl that he might conquer it. An attempt to take possession of it was checked by the resistance of two fortresses, and the earl agreed that the sieges should be suspended until 1 Aug., on which date the garrisons, if not relieved, were to surrender. In May he pressed the king for supplies; the Scots were preparing to relieve the fortresses; he must have the money that the king owed to him and his son. Again, on 26 June, he wrote urgently, representing the disgrace that would befall the kingdom if he were not enabled to take the places, and declaring that, though it was reported that he and his son had had 60,000l. of the king since his accession, more than 20,000l. of that amount was then due to him. He signed this letter ‘Your Mathathias,’ thus comparing himself and his sons to the patriotic heroes of the Maccabæan house (Proceedings of the Privy Council, i. 203–4). It has been calculated that the Percys, the earl, his brother Thomas, Earl of Worcester, and his son Henry, called Hotspur, had received from the king, in money, 41,750l., besides the profits of their lands, and anything that they may have had from Richard's treasure (Lancaster and York, i. 57). On the other hand, there seems no reason to doubt that this sum was exhausted in the continual wars that they waged against the national enemies. Early in July the king marched northwards with a force to support them.

The Percys rose in revolt. Henry Percy had special grievances against the king, in which his father had some share. Northumberland was thwarted by the king's inability to supply him with the money that he needed for the war with the Scots, he had been treated somewhat shabbily with respect to the Scottish prisoners, he had good reason to suspect the king of endeavouring to represent him and his family as the cause of the poverty of the realm, and he was probably also jealous of the Earl of Westmorland, the earl's nephew by his first wife and the head of the rival house of the Nevilles of Raby. He made an alliance with Owen Glendower [q. v.], raised a large force, and joined his brother and son in putting out a manifesto declaring that the king had obtained the throne by fraud, demanding that the public ills should be redressed by the employment of wise counsellors, and complaining that the money raised by taxes was not used for the good of the kingdom, and was spent uselessly (Annales Henr. p. 361;, p. 352). Henry Percy was defeated and slain at the battle of Shrewsbury on the 21st, and his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, was beheaded. The earl, who was marching to join his son a few days after this battle, found his way barred by the Earl of Westmorland, and retreated to Newcastle, where the burgesses at first shut the gates against him, and later would only allow him to enter with his personal attendants, refusing to admit his army. From Newcastle he retired to his castle of Warkworth, where he received a summons from the king to meet him at York, with a promise that he should not be harmed before he had made his defence in parliament. He appeared before the king on 11 Aug., was received coldly, and excused himself by declaring that in the late rising and much else his son had acted without his approval (Eulogium, iii. 398). The king took him with him to Pontefract, where he agreed to give up his castles to be commanded by officers appointed by the king; he was deprived of the office of constable, and was sent to Baginton, near Coventry, where he was kept in custody until February 1404, when he was brought before parliament. The lords held that his acts did not amount to treason, but only to a trespass, which might be punished by a fine. At his own request he took an oath of fealty to the king in parliament on the cross of St. Thomas, and the king pardoned him the fine. On the 9th the commons thanked the king for showing him mercy, and he and Westmorland were publicly reconciled (Rot. Parl. iii. 524). He was restored to his dignities, though not to the constableship, and to his possessions, with the exception of grants made by the king, as the lordship of the Isle of Man (Annales Henr. p. 379). The captains of several of his castles refused to admit the king's officers, and in May Henry went northwards to enforce their submission. After repeated summonses the earl appeared before him at Pontefract about midsummer, bringing with him his three grandsons in order to remove all suspicion; he agreed to give up the castles of Berwick and Jedburgh, an equivalent being promised to him, and departed in peace (ib. p. 390;, i. 450, 452). This arrangement was afterwards cancelled by the king, and the earl retained the castles (ib. ii. 56–7).

In profession he was at this time loyal, though he was really discontented and ready for mischief, his uncertain attitude adding in no small degree to the political difficulties of the kingdom. When summoned to the council in January 1405, he wrote a letter to the king excusing himself on the score of