arlike families of Percy and Nevil, were the first to break that
internal tranquillity which the kingdom had hitherto enjoyed, without
the slightest interruption, under the wise and vigorous rule of
Elizabeth. The remoteness of these noblemen from the court and capital,
with the poverty and consequent simplicity, almost barbarism, of the
vassals over whom they bore sway, and whose homage they received like
native and independent princes, appears to have nourished in their minds
ideas of their own importance better suited to the period of the wars of
the Roses than to the happier age of peace and order which had
succeeded.

The offended pride of the earl of Westmorland, a man destitute in fact
of every kind of talent, seems on some occasion to have conducted him to
the discovery that at the court of Elizabeth the representative of the
king-making Warwick was a person of very slender consideration. The
failure of the grand attack upon the secretary, in which he had taken
part, confirmed this mortifying impression; and the committal of his
brother-in-law, the great and powerful duke of Norfolk himself, must
subsequently have carried home to the bottom of his heart unwilling
conviction that the preponderance of the ancient aristocracy of the
country was subverted, and its proudest chieftains fast sinking to the
common level of subjects. His attachment to the religion, with the
other practices and prejudices of former ages, gave additional
exasperation to his discontent against the established order of things:
the incessant invectives of Romish priests against a princess whom the
pope was on the point of anathematizing, represented the cause of her
enemies as that of Heaven itself; and the spirit of the earl was roused
at length to seek full vengeance for all the injuries sustained by his
pride, his interests, or his principles.

Every motive of disaffection which wrought upon the mind of Westmorland,
affected equally the earl of Northumberland; and to the cause of popery
the latter was still further pledged by the example and fate of his
father, that sir Thomas Percy who had perished on the scaffold for his
share in Aske's rebellion. The attainder of sir Thomas had debarred his
son from succeeding to the titles and estates of the last unhappy earl
his uncle, and he had suffered the mortification of seeing them go to
raise the fortunes of the house of Dudley; but on the accession of Mary,
by whom his father was regarded as