Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/421

Percy over early in the battle had Richard not placed a close watch upon him (cf., Bosworth Field, p. 130).

Northumberland was taken prisoner by the victor, but at once received into favour and soon restored to all his offices in the north, and employed in negotiations with Scotland. In the spring of 1489 he was called upon to deal with the resistance of the Yorkshiremen to the tenth of incomes demanded for the Breton war (Gent. Mag. 1851, pt. i. p. 459;, i. 329). On 10 April he was appointed commissioner, with the archbishop of York and others, to investigate and punish the disturbances in York at the election of mayor in the previous February (, ii. 443). Towards the end of the month he was alarmed by the attitude of the people in the vicinity of his manor of Topcliffe, near Thirsk, and on Saturday, 24 April, wrote to Sir Robert Plumpton from Seamer, close to Scarborough, ordering him to secretly bring as many armed men as he could to Thirsk by the following Monday (Plumpton Correspondence, p. 61). On Wednesday, 28 April, having gathered a force estimated at eight hundred men, he came into conflict with the commons, whose ringleader was one John a Chamber, near Thirsk, at a place variously called Cockledge or Blackmoor Edge, and was slain at the first onset (, Collectanea, iv. 246;, Baronage, i. 282; , Venetian Calendar, i. 533). It was at first reported that he had gone out unarmed to appease the rebels (Paston Letters, iii. 359). Some affirmed that over and above the immediate cause of collision the commons had not forgiven him for his conduct to Richard, who had been very popular in Yorkshire (, p. 443). Bernard Andreas [q. v.] wrote a Latin ode of twelve stanzas on his death (Vita, p. 48; cf., Reliques, i. 98, ed. 1767), and Skelton wrote an elegy in English. He was buried in the Percy chantry, on the north side of the lady-chapel of Beverley Minster, where his tomb, from which the effigy has disappeared, may still be seen. His will, dated 17 July 1485, is given in the ‘Testamenta Eboracensia’ (Surtees Soc.), vol. iii.

By his wife, Maud Herbert, daughter of William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke [q. v.] of the second creation, whom he married about 1476, he left four sons—Henry Algernon (1478–1527) [q. v.], his successor in the earldom; Sir William Percy; Alan [q. v.]; and Josceline, grandfather of Thomas Percy (1560–1605) [q. v.] —and three daughters: Eleanor, wife of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham (beheaded in 1521); Anne, married (1511) to William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (1483–1544); and Elizabeth, who died young.

[Rotuli Parliamentorum; Rymer's Fœdera, original ed.; Historiæ Croylandensis Continuatio, ed. Fulman, 1684; Warkworth's Chronicle, the Arrival of Edward IV, Polydore Vergil (publ. by the Camden Society); Fabyan's Chronicle, ed. Ellis, 1811; Hall's Chronicle, ed. Ellis, 1809; Bernard André in Gairdner's Memorials of Henry VII, Campbell's Materials for the Reign of Henry VII (in Rolls Ser.); Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Ramsay's Lancaster and York, 1892; Gairdner's Richard III; Wilhelm Busch's Hist. of England under the Tudors, Engl. transl.; Hutton's Battle of Bosworth Field, 1813; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, 1812; De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy, 1887.]

 PERCY, HENRY, eighth (1532?–1585), born at Newburn Manor about 1532, was second of the two sons of Sir Thomas Percy who was executed in 1527 as a chief actor in the northern rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Brought up with his elder brother Thomas, seventh earl [q. v.], he took part as a youth in border warfare, and on Queen Mary's accession was appointed governor of Tynemouth Castle. He was returned to the House of Commons in 1554 as M.P. for Morpeth, was knighted in 1557, and became deputy warden of the east and middle marches. Many reports of his zeal reached the government, and Queen Elizabeth continued him in his chief offices. He was temporarily transferred from the governorship of Tynemouth to the captaincy of Norham Castle, but was reappointed in February 1561 to Tynemouth. When war broke out with the Scots in 1559, he was given the command of a body of light horse, to be equipped like the ' 'Schwartze Ritter' with corselets and two pistols each, and at the head of these troops he greatly distinguished himself before Leith (April 1560). The French commander D'Oyzelle, when defeated, asked permission, in compliment to Percy's valour, to surrender his sword to Percy rather than to the commander-in-chief, Lord Grey. Unlike other members of his family, he avowed protestant sympathies, and was directed in 1561 to report on the doctrines adopted by the Scottish congregations. Both John Knox and Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, with whom he corresponded, seem to have been convinced of his sympathy with presbyterianism. He had already (24 June 1559) been commissioned, together with Thomas Young, archbishop of York, to administer the oath of supremacy to the clergy of the northern province (, Foedera, xv. 611-612). His position in the north was improved