Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/433

Percy [q. v.] in command of the camp there. On 19 April 1775, after the battle of Lexington, he marched out of Boston in command of a brigade, consisting of the Welsh fusiliers and four other regiments; with their aid he covered the retreat to Charlestown of the army which had been hemmed in at Concord without ammunition. He marched thirty miles in ten hours during the day, and was under an incessant fire for fifteen miles (, iv. 538–9). Owing probably to a disagreement with William Howe, fifth viscount [q. v.], he did not accompany his regiment to Bunker Hill, where it was, in his own words, ‘almost entirely cut to pieces;’ but in March 1776, ‘though he had no heart for the enterprise,’ according to Bancroft, he was given the command of two thousand four hundred men for an attack on Dorchester Heights. The attack was ultimately abandoned, and Boston evacuated. Meanwhile Percy, whose conduct in the retreat from Concord had been highly commended in despatches by General Gage, was appointed on 11 July 1775 major-general in America, and on 29 Sept. advanced to that rank in the army. On 26 March 1776 he became general in America, and attained the rank of lieutenant-general in the army on 29 Aug. 1777. On 16 Nov. 1776 he commanded a division in the attack on Fort Washington, and was the first to enter the enemy's lines. In the following year, however, after many disputes with Howe, he demanded and obtained his recall. On 18 June Walpole writes: ‘Lord Percy is come home disgusted with Howe’ (Corresp. vi. 445, 446 n.)

Percy was very popular with his regiment, which obtained permission to call itself the Northumberland fusiliers. He was opposed to corporal punishment, and gave more care to commissariat arrangements than was customary at the time. The widows of men in his regiment who had been killed at Bunker Hill were sent home at his expense, and given a further sum of money on landing. On 2 Nov. 1784 Percy received the command of the second troop of horse grenadier guards, which was transferred in June 1788 to the 2nd lifeguards (, Hist. Rec. of Life Guards, p. 287). When the regiment went to the Netherlands in 1815, Northumberland gave each man a guinea and a blanket. He had attained the rank of general on 12 Oct. 1793, and in 1798 he took command of the Percy yeomanry regiment; on 30 Dec. 1806 he was gazetted to the colonelcy of the horse-guards, which he held for six years.

Percy was at first an admirer of Pitt, but he complained of neglect by the court in receiving no reward for his services in America, and gradually identified himself with the opposition. He succeeded to the dukedom in 1786, and was nominated to the lord-lieutenancy and vice-admiralty of Northumberland. On 9 April 1788 he received the Garter. Next year he formed one of what was called ‘the armed neutrality’ group, and subsequently joined the Prince of Wales's circle of friends (, Corresp. ii. 301; cf. Courts and Cabinets of George III, i. 399, 410, ii. 79). Both king and queen evinced dislike of his proceedings. George III had written (5 Nov. 1780) of ‘that peevish temper for which he [Percy] has ever been accused’ (Corresp. with North, ii. 341). When Fox anticipated taking office in 1789, he offered Northumberland the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland and afterwards the mastership of the ordnance (, Life of C. J. Fox, iv. 283).

In 1797 further overtures were made to him through Lord Moira in expectation of Pitt's retirement, but he received them coolly, remarking that no ministry would last a session against both Pitt and Fox. In 1803 he declined joining in an attack on Addington, on the ground that it would make room for Pitt, whose principles he detested. His impracticable temper in politics was well satirised about 1802 in a tory squib called ‘Wood and Stone; or a Dialogue between a Wooden Duke and a Stone Lion,’ the latter being the figure over the entrance of Northumberland House. The duke is represented as replying to the remonstrances of the lion: Tho' to my Sovereign's grace I owe My Garter and commission, A sneaking kindness still, you know, I've shown for opposition. On 10 June 1803 the Prince of Wales asked him to nominate ‘my young friend Tom Sheridan’ for one of his boroughs. The duke replied that he was keeping it for his eldest son.

After the resumption of the war in 1803, Northumberland expressed open dissatisfaction with the military arrangements, and resigned the lord-lieutenancy of Northumberland. But, in view of a threatened French invasion, he raised fifteen hundred men among his tenantry and equipped them at his own expense.

When, in 1806, Fox and Grenville formed the ministry of All the Talents, Northumberland was not consulted. To mark his resentment, he sent a circular on 4 Feb. to all the members for his boroughs, desiring them not