Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/429

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Percy
417
Percy

contract with him in the hope of saving her life. In September 1536 he had a grant of 1,000l. to come to London in order to make arrangements about his lands. The matter had not been completed when the northern rebellion known as the ‘pilgrimage of grace’ broke out. Northumberland's brothers and mother were open sympathisers with the rebels, but the earl himself remained loyal. The rebel leader, Aske, and his men came to Wressell, where he was ill in bed. The earl, who is spoken of as ‘Crasyside,’ was besought to resign his commands of the marches into the hands of his brothers, or at all events go over to the rebels. He refused both requests; and when William Stapleton, in whose depositions we have an account of the affair, went up to see him, ‘he fell in weeping, ever wishing himself out of the world.’ Aske sent him to York, to protect him from the fury of his followers, who wanted to behead him. Finding himself ‘for ever unfeignedly sick,’ he made a grant to the king of his estates, on condition that they might pass to his nephew. When, however, his brother, Sir Thomas, was attainted, he made the grant unconditional in June 1537. By this time his mind was fast failing. He removed to Newington Green, where Richard Layton [q. v.] visited him on 29 June 1537. He says that he found him ‘languens in extremis, sight and speech failed, his stomach swollen so great as I never see none, and his whole body as yellow as saffron.’ He died on 29 June 1537, and was buried in Hackney church. Weever quotes an inscription, but Bishop Percy in 1767 could find no trace of it. He married, in 1524, Mary Talbot, daughter of George, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, but left no issue. The earldom fell into abeyance on his death, but was revived in favour of his nephew Thomas, seventh earl [q. v.] His widow lived until 1572. She had a grant of abbey lands, and was suspected of being a Roman catholic, a favourer of Mary Queen of Scots, and of hearing mass in her house. She was buried in Sheffield church.

Northumberland's two brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir Ingelram Percy, took an active part in the management of his estates. They were both important leaders in the pilgrimage of grace. Both were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas was attainted and executed in 1537. His sons, Thomas, seventh earl [q. v.], and Henry, eighth earl [q. v.], are separately noticed. Sir Ingelram Percy was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, where his name is to be seen cut in the stone. But he was soon liberated, went abroad, and died about 1540. He left an illegitimate daughter Isabel, who married, in 1544, Henry Tempest of Broughton.

[De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy; Letters and Papers, Henry VIII; State Papers, i. 109, &c., ii. 140, iv. 59, v. 16, &c.; Archæol. xxxiii. 4; Bapst's Deux gentilshommes Poètes, 17, 133–4; Froude's Hist. of England, vol. ix.; Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, passim; Doyle's Official Baronage; Nott's Wyatt; Cavendish's Life of Wolsey; Rot. Parl.; Wriothesley's Chron. and Chron. of Calais, in the Camden Society's publications.]

W. A. J. A.

PERCY, Sir HENRY HUGH MANVERS (1817–1877), general, third son of George Percy, fifth duke of Northumberland (d. 1867), by Louisa Harcourt, third daughter of the Honourable James Archibald Stuart-Wortley Mackenzie, was born at Burwood House, Cobham, Surrey, on 22 Aug. 1817, and educated at Eton. He entered the army as an ensign in the grenadier guards on 1 July 1836, and was present during the insurrection in Canada in 1838. As captain and lieutenant-colonel of his regiment he served during the eastern campaign of 1854–5, including the battles of Alma, where he was wounded, Balaclava, Inkerman, where he was again wounded, and the siege of Sebastopol. At the battle of Inkerman, on 5 Nov. 1854, he found himself, with many men of various regiments who had charged too far, nearly surrounded by the Russians, and without ammunition. By his knowledge of the ground, although wounded, he extricated these men, and, passing under a heavy fire from the Russians then in the sandbag battery, brought them safe to where ammunition was to be obtained. He thereby saved about fifty men and enabled them to renew the combat. For this act of bravery he was, on 5 May 1857, rewarded with the Victoria cross. For a short period he held the local rank of brigadier-general in command of the British-Italian legion in the Crimea. From 29 June 1855 to 10 Feb. 1865 he was an aide-de-camp to the queen. On the occurrence of the Trent misunderstanding with the United States in December 1861, he was sent to New Brunswick in command of the first battalion of the grenadier guards. He had been promoted to be major in 1860, and retired from active service on 3 Oct. 1862. As a conservative he sat in parliament for North Northumberland from 19 July 1865 to 11 Nov. 1868. He was rewarded for his military services by his appointment to the colonelcy of the 89th regiment on 28 May 1874, and was made a general on 1 Oct. 1877. On 24 May 1873 he was gazetted a K.C.B. He was found dead in his bed at his residence, 40 Eaton Square, London, on 3 Dec. 1877, and was buried