he was the father of the
most famous Percy of all, the gallant Henry Percy the fifth, better
known as "Harry Hotspur." Hotspur never became Earl of Northumberland,
being slain at Shrewsbury in the lifetime of his father, whose estates
were forfeited under attainder on account of the rebellion of himself
and his son against King Henry IV.

King Henry V. restored Hotspur's son, the second Earl, to his family
honours, and the Percies were staunch Lancastrians during the Wars of
the Roses which followed, the third Earl and three of his brothers
losing their lives in the cause. The fifth Earl was a gorgeous person
whose magnificence equalled, almost, that of royalty. Henry Percy, the
sixth Earl of Northumberland, loved Ann Boleyn, and was her accepted
suitor before King Henry VIII. unfortunately discovered the lady's
charm, and interfered in a highhanded "bluff King Hal" fashion, and
young Percy lost his prospective bride. He had no son, although married
later to the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and his nephew, Thomas
Percy, became the seventh Earl.

Thereafter, a succession of plots and counterplots--the Rising of the
North, the plots to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and the Gunpowder
Plot--each claimed a Percy among their adherents. On this account the
eighth and ninth Earls spent many years in the Tower, but the tenth
Earl, Algernon, fought for King Charles in the Civil War, the male line
of the Percy-Louvain house ending with Josceline, the eleventh Earl. The
heiress to the vast Percy estates married the Duke of Somerset; and her
grand-daughter married a Yorkshire knight, Sir Hugh Smithson, who in
1766 was created the first Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy, and it
is their descendants who now represent the famous old house.

At various points in the town are memorials of the constant wars between
Percies and Scots in which so many Percies spent the greater part of
their lives. At the side of the broad shady road called Rotten Row,
leading from the West Lodge to Bailiffgate, a tablet of stone marks the
spot where William the Lion of Scotland was captured as we have already
seen, in 1174, by Odinel de Umfraville and his friends; and there are
many others of similar interest.

Within the park, approached by the gate at the foot of Canongate, is the
fine gateway which is all that is left of Alnwick Abbey. No more
peaceful spot could have been found than this, on the level greensward,
surrounded by fine trees