Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/417

Percy lar cause in 1377 was shameful. For his desertion of Richard II there were valid reasons; but his conduct towards his fallen master was base, and merely dictated by his wish to place the new king under overwhelming obligations, and reap a rich harvest from his gratitude. That he had cause for discontent in 1403 seems certain. But he failed to make allowance for the king's financial difficulties; he was impatient, and perhaps incapable of appreciating the position of affairs. When he was bereft of his sons and others, as his brother Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester [q. v.], that were near to him, when he found that the king had learnt to distrust him, saw his rivals advancing in favour and power, and knew that his greatness was slipping from him, his heart became bitter; and, though he retained his capacity for guile, he lost his judgment, and acted with a lack of wisdom and a recklessness that reached their highest point in his last mad expedition. He gave the hospital of St. Leonard at Alnwick to the abbey there, is said incorrectly, as it seems, to have founded a hospital at Scarborough, to which he was perhaps a benefactor, did good service to St. Alban's Abbey, and gave largely to its cell, the priory of Tynemouth (Notitia Monastica, pp. 398, 416, 687;, App. p. 436). By his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Ralph, fourth baron Neville of Raby [q. v.], he had three sons—Sir Henry, called Hotspur [q. v.]; Sir Thomas, married Elizabeth, elder daughter and coheiress of David, earl of Atholl, and died in Spain in March 1387, leaving a son Henry; and Sir Ralph, who was taken prisoner at Otterburn in 1388, acted efficiently as warden of west march in 1393, and probably died soon afterwards—and a daughter. In 1384 he married his second wife, Maud, daughter of Thomas de Lucy of Cockermouth, and eventually sole heir of her brother Anthony, last baron Lucy, and widow of Gilbert de Umfraville, earl of Angus, by whom he had no issue, and who died on 24 Dec. 1398. A portrait of the earl is to be found in Harleian MS. 1318, and is given in Doyle's ‘Official Baronage.’

[Chron. Angliæ, 1328–88, Liber Custumarum ap. Mun. Gildhallæ Lond., Walsingham's Hist. Angl., Ann. Ric. II et Henr. IV ap. J. de Trokelowe, &c., Royal Letters, Henr. IV, Eulogium Hist. (all Rolls Ser.); Rymer's Fœdera (Record edit. and ed. 1704–35); Rot. Parl. Proc. of Privy Council, ed. Hunter, Rot. Scotiæ (all Record publ.); Traïson et Mort de Ric. II (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Knighton's Chron. ed. Twysden (Decem Scriptt.); Adam of Usk's Chron. ed. Thompson; Otterbourne's Chron. ed. Hearne; Hardyng's Chron. ed Ellis; Stowe's Annales; Chron. anon. ed. Giles; Bower's Scotichron. ed. Goodall; Wyntoun's Chron. ed. 1795; Froissart's Chron. ed. Buchon; J. des Ursins ap. Mémoires, Michaud; Chron. du religieux de St. Denys, ed. Bellaquet; Monstrelet's Chron. ed. Johnes; Wylie's Hist. of England under Henr. IV; Ramsay's Lanc. and York; Stubbs's Const. Hist.; Burton's Hist. of Scotland; Dugdale's Baronage, Doyle's Off. Baronage; Beltz's Hist. of Garter; Tanner's Notitia Monast., ed. 1744; De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy.] 

PERCY, HENRY, second (1394–1455), son and heir of Sir Henry Percy [q. v.], called Hotspur, was born on 3 Feb. 1394. His father fell at Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, and Henry was presented to Henry IV by his grandfather, Henry de Percy, first earl of Northumberland [q. v.], at York in the following August. When the earl fled to Scotland in 1405, young Percy also took shelter there, arriving shortly before his grandfather (Scotichronicon, p. 1166), and after the earl's death was detained by the Scots as though a prisoner of war, but was treated with honour by them (ib. p. 1184). Henry V pitying him, and being solicited on his behalf by Joan, countess of Westmorland, the king's aunt, whose daughter Eleanor Percy married at Berwick in that year, restored him in blood, and on 11 Nov. 1414 assented to a petition from him, presented in parliament, for the restoration of his dignities and estates (Rolls of Parliament, iv. 36–7;, ii. 300; , Peerage, iii. 273; this marriage is celebrated in Bishop Percy's ballad ‘The Hermit of Warkworth’). The king desired that he should be exchanged for Murdoch Stewart, eldest son of the Duke of Albany. Some delay took place, and the Earl of Cambridge, who made a conspiracy against the king, plotted to bring Percy into England with an army of Scots (Fœdera, ix. 260). It is evident that Percy had nothing to do with this scheme, and his exchange, which was arranged for on 1 July 1415, took place soon after (Proceedings of the Privy Council, ii. 162–4, 188–90). His hereditary possessions were restored, and on 16 March 1416 he did homage in parliament for his earldom, receiving a new patent of creation (Rot. Parl. iv. 71–2). In April 1417 he was appointed warden of the east marches towards Scotland, and captain of Berwick. He commanded a contingent of the army mustered in July for the king's second invasion of France, but, if he actually sailed, must have shortly afterwards returned, for the Scots under Archibald, fourth earl of Douglas [q. v.], and the Duke of Albany, having invaded England in October, and made attempts on Berwick and Roxburgh, he, with