im by a kind of
precedent to claim for himself the same exalted dignity.

The circumstances attending Dudley's elevation to the ducal rank are
worthy of particular notice, as connected with a melancholy part of the
story of that old and illustrious family of the Percies, celebrated
through so many ages of English history.

The last of this house who had borne the title of earl of Northumberland
was that ardent and favored suitor of Anne Boleyn, who was compelled by
his father to renounce his pretensions to her hand in deference to the
wishes of a royal competitor.

The disappointment and the injury impressed themselves in indelible
characters on the heart of Percy: in common with the object of his
attachment, he retained against Wolsey, whom he believed to have been
actively instrumental in fostering the king's passion, a deep
resentment, which is said to have rendered peculiarly acceptable to him
the duty afterwards imposed upon him, of arresting that celebrated
minister in order to his being brought to his trial. For the lady to
whom a barbarous exertion of parental authority had compelled him to
give his hand, while his whole heart was devoted to another, he also
conceived an aversion rather to be lamented than wondered at.

Unfortunately, she brought him no living offspring; and after a few
years he separated himself from her to indulge his melancholy alone and
without molestation. In this manner he spun out a suffering existence,
oppressed with sickness of mind and body, disengaged from public life,
and neglectful of his own embarrassed affairs, till the fatal
catastrophe of his brother, brought to the scaffold in 1537 for his
share in the popish rebellion under Aske. By this event, and the
attainder of sir Thomas Percy's children which followed, the earl saw
himself deprived of the only consolation which remained to him,--that of
transmitting to the posterity of a brother whom he loved, the titles and
estates derived to him through a long and splendid ancestry. As a last
resource, he bequeathed all his land to the king, in the hope, which was
not finally frustrated, that a return of royal favor might one day
restore them to the representatives of the Percies.

This done, he yielded his weary spirit on the last day of the same month
which had seen the fatal catastrophe of his misguided brother.

From this time the title had remained dormant, till the earl of Warwick,
untouched by commiseration or respect for