Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/136

ii2 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 53. them till the winter was further advanced, Elizabeth was peremptory, and insisted that they should come to her without delay. The two noblemen whose names were to acquire a brief distinction were by position and family the he- reditary leaders of the North it may be said the here- ditary chiefs of English revolution. Northumberland was the descendant of the great Earl who had given the throne to the House of Lancaster. His father, Sir Thomas Percy, had been attainted and executed after the Pilgrimage of Grace, but the confiscated estates were restored to the old house by Queen Mary, and the young Earl had come back to his inheritance amidst the passion- ate enthusiasm of a people to whom the Percies had been more than their sovereign. The Earl of Westmoreland was the head of the great House of Neville, from a younger branch of which had sprung Warwick, the King-maker. He was the great- grandson of Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. He had married a sister of the Duke of Norfolk. No shield in England showed prouder quartering^, and no family had played a grander part in the feudal era of England. Had the personal character of either of these great lords been equal to their lineage, they too might have changed a dynasty, and it was with no unreasonable mis- givings that Sussex prepared to obey his mistress's com- mands. There was not a single nobleman in the North on whom he felt that he could rely. The Earl of Cumber- land was * a crazed man/ and his tenants were under the