Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/425

Percy some compunction in accepting a favour which he attributed to Hay's agency. However, on 18 July, he was induced to leave the Tower after an imprisonment of nearly sixteen years. He was advised to recruit his health at Bath. Thither he travelled in a coach drawn by eight horses. The story is told that he insisted on this equipage in order to mark his sense of superiority to the king's favourite, Buckingham, who had lately travelled about the country in a coach-and-six. But Hay was doubtless responsible for the demonstration. Bath worked a speedy cure, and Northumberland retired to his house at Petworth. He took no further part in public affairs, and died at Petworth on 5 Nov. 1632, being buried in the church there. His portrait was painted by Vandyck.

By his wife, who died on 3 Aug. 1619, and was also buried at Petworth, he was father of Algernon Percy, tenth earl [q. v.], and Henry Percy, lord Percy of Alnwick [q. v.], and of two daughters, Dorothy (1598-1677), wife of Robert Sidney, second earl of Leicester, and Lucy Hay, countess of Carlisle [q. v.]

 PERCY, HENRY, (d. 1659), younger son of Henry Percy, ninth earl of Northumberland [q. v.], was educated at a school at Isleworth, under a certain Mr. Willis, and at Christ Church, Oxford (, House of Percy, ii. 368;, Alumni Oxon. 1st ser. p. 1146). Percy represented Marlborough in the parliament of 1629. On 21 March 1631 he unsuccessfully applied for the post of secretary to the chancellor of the exchequer (Report on Lord Cowper's MSS. i. 428). Strafford designed to appoint him captain of a company in the Irish army, but the influence exerted for Lorenzo Cary frustrated the intention (Strafford Letters, i. 128, 138). As a courtier Percy was more fortunate; he obtained great influence with the queen, and employed it to further the interests of his brother, the Earl of Northumberland, and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Leicester (ib. i. 363;, Peerage; Sydney Papers, ii. 506, 527, 642). In March 1633 Percy acted as Lord Weston's friend in the quarrel between him and the Earl of Holland (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1633–4, x. 12). His favour, however, continued to increase; in November 1639 he was appointed master of the horse to the Prince of Wales, and on 6 June 1640 he was appointed captain and governor of Jersey for life (, Peerage (Brydges), ii. 344, Sydney Papers, ii. 620).

In the Short parliament Percy represented Portsmouth, and in the Long parliament the county of Northumberland. He was one of the originators of what was termed the ‘first army plot’ in March 1641, but according to his own story simply designed to procure a declaration from the army in support of the king's policy, and was innocent of the plan to bring it up to London in order to put force on the parliament. When the plot was discovered he endeavoured to fly to France, was set upon and wounded by the country people in Sussex, and remained for some time in hiding. To facilitate his own escape, he was induced to write a letter to his brother, giving an account of the conspiracy, which furnished the popular leaders with conclusive proof of the reality of the design, and was held by the royalists to be a treacherous betrayal of his duty to the king (, Rebellion, iii. 223, 228;, iv. 255). The sole punishment inflicted upon him for his share in the plot was his expulsion from the House of Commons, which took place on 9 Dec. 1641 (Commons' Journals, ii. 337;, Diary, ed. Wheatley, iv. 75).

Percy retired to France, but at the outbreak of the war made himself useful to Queen Henrietta Maria, who employed him as an agent to King Charles, and obtained his restoration to favour. ‘Truly,’ she wrote, ‘I think him very faithful, and that we may trust him.’ Thanks to her support, he became on 22 May 1643 general of the ordnance in the king's army, and was created on 28 June of the same year Baron Percy of Alnwick (, Letters of Henrietta Maria, p. 138;, Oxford Docquets, pp. 40, 52). A volume of Percy's correspondence as general of the ordnance is preserved in the Bodleian Library (Rawlinson MS. D. 395). He fought at the battle of Cropredy Bridge (29 June 1644), and accompanied the king into Cornwall in his pursuit of Essex; but, having taken part in Wilmot's intrigue to force the king to make peace, he fell into disgrace, and was obliged to resign his command (14 Aug. 1644; Diary of Richard Symonds, p. 54). ‘His removal,’ says Clarendon, ‘added to the ill-humour of the army; for though he was generally unloved as a proud and supercilious person, yet he had always three or four persons of good credit and reputation, who were esteemed by him, with whom he lived very well; and though he did not draw the good fellows to him by drinking, yet he eat well, which in the general scarcity of that time drew many votaries to him, who bore very ill the want of his table, and so