Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/447

Percy honours of war and joined Sussex. In the meantime Sir John Forster and Sir Henry Percy pursued Westmorland, who had retired to Durham and ‘did give to the said earle a great skirmish.’ Northumberland withdrew to Topcliffe, and on 11 Dec. Sussex marched thither from York. As Sussex advanced to the north the two earls reunited their forces and retreated towards the borders. At Hexham on 16 Dec. they disbanded their followers, who dispersed ‘every man to save himself as he could’. The rising thus came, after a month, to a very impotent conclusion, and the government treated with the utmost rigour all the actors in it who fell into their hands.

Northumberland and his wife, with Westmorland and his chief followers, arrived in Lidderdale and took refuge with Hector Graham of Harlaw, a robber-chieftain who infested the district. Thence Westmorland escaped to the Low Countries. But the Earl of Moray, the regent of Scotland, obtained from Graham of Harlaw, for a pecuniary consideration, the surrender of Northumberland, and in January 1570 he was carried to Edinburgh with seven of his adherents. At first he was not kept in custody, though a guard of the regent's men was set to watch his movements; but he was subsequently committed to the care of Sir William Douglas at Lochleven Castle. His wife remained on the borders, first at Ferniehurst, but subsequently at Hume Castle. She declined an offer of permission to join her husband at Edinburgh, on the ground that she might thus imperil her liberty and could be of greater assistance to her husband at a distance. She corresponded with sympathisers in the Low Countries, and made every effort to raise money in order to ransom her husband. In August 1570 she arrived at Antwerp. Philip II sent her six thousand marks and the pope four thousand crowns, and she and her friends devised a plan by which Northumberland might be sent into Flanders. But her energetic endeavours to purchase his liberty failed.

The English government negotiated with the Scottish government for his surrender with greater effect. Neither the regent Moray nor his successor, the Earl of Lennox, showed, it is true, any readiness to comply with the English government's demand, and Northumberland's brother recommended him to confess his offence and throw himself upon Queen Elizabeth's mercy. But in August 1572 the Earl of Mar, who had become regent in the previous year, finally decided to hand him over to Queen Elizabeth's officers on payment of 2,000l. Northumberland arrived at Berwick on 15 Aug. and was committed to the care of Lord Hunsdon. On 17 Aug. Hunsdon delivered him at Alnwick to Sir John Forster, who brought him to York. He was beheaded there on 22 Aug. on a scaffold erected in ‘the Pavement,’ or chief market-place. With his last breath he declared his faith in the catholic church, adding ‘I am a Percy in life and death.’ His head was placed on a pole above Micklegate Bar, but his body was buried in Crux church in the presence of two men and three maidservants and ‘a stranger in disguise, who, causing suspicion, immediately fled.’ There is an entry recording his execution in the parish register of St. Margaret's, Walmgate, York. A ballad on his delivery to the English is in Percy's ‘Reliques.’ In Cotton MS. Calig. B, iv. 243, are pathetic verses by a partisan, ‘one Singleton, a gentleman of Lancashire, now prisoner at York for religion.’ They are printed by Wright (i. 423) and in ‘Notes and Queries’ (7th ser. vii. 264). Queen Mary had given him a relic—a thorn of Christ's crown, which was set in a golden cross. This he wore on the day of his death, and bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth. It is now in Stonyhurst College. A copy by Phillips of an old portrait, representing him in the robes of the Garter, is at Alnwick. Another, dated 1566, is at Petworth, and is engraved in Sharpe's ‘Memorials.’ A third portrait, painted on panel, belonged to Sir Charles Slingsby of Scriven.

His widow, Anne, third daughter of Henry Somerset, second earl of Worcester, resided for a time at Liège on a small pension from the king of Spain. She seems to have written and circulated there a ‘Discours des troubles du Comte de Northumberland.’ Of a very managing disposition, she endeavoured to arrange a match between Don John of Austria and Queen Mary Stuart. In 1573 English agents described her as ‘one of the principal practitioners at Mechlin;’ subsequently she removed to Brussels, and entertained many English catholic exiles. In 1576 the Spanish government agreed, at Queen Elizabeth's request, to expel her from Spanish territory. Her exile was not, however, permanent. She died of smallpox in a convent at Namur in 1591.

Four daughters survived her: Elizabeth, wife of Richard Woodruffe of Woolley, Yorkshire, whose descendant is Mr. Edward Peacock, F.S.A., of Bottesford Manor, Lincolnshire; Mary, prioress of a convent of English Benedictine dames at Brussels, afterwards removed to Winchester; Lucy, wife of Sir Edward Stanley, K.B., of Eynsham, Oxfordshire, whose second daughter, Venetia,