and in 1346 he did splendid service to his sovereign by defeating | claimed by James Percy," the trunk-maker. " The last earl's and taking prisoner David II., king of Scotland, at the battle of daughter Elizabeth, a great heiress, was mother by Charles Neville's Cross. Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, of Algernon, 7th duke, who was summoned (in error) as Lord Percy in 1722 and created earl of Northumberland in 1749. On the duke's death in 1750 his earldom of Northumberland passed under a special remainder, with the main inheritance of the Percys, to Sir Hugh Smithson, bart. (1715-1786), who had married his daughter and eventual heiress in 1740, and was created duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy in 1766. From this marriage descends the present ducal house, which bears the name of Percy in lieu of Smithson, and owns vast estates in Northumberland.

To him succeeded another Henry Percy (1322–1368), a feudal baron like his predecessors, who fought at Crécy during his father's lifetime and whose brother Thomas Percy (1333-1369) | was bishop of Norwich from 1356-1369. The next head of the Percys was Henry's son, another Henry, who was made earl of Northumberland at the coronation of Richard II., and whose younger brother Thomas (d. 1403) was created earl of Worcester in 1397. The 1st earl of Northumberland, father of the famous Hotspur, Sir Henry Percy (q.v.), was killed at Bramham Moor in 1408, while in arms against the king, and his title and estates were forfeited. But, by an act no less gracious than politic, Henry V. restored them in 1414 to this earl's grandson, Henry (1394-1455), then a prisoner with the Scots, whose liberation he had no difficulty in procuring from the duke of Albany during the time of James I.'s captivity. From that day the loyalty of the family to the house of Lancaster was steadfast and undeviating. The 2nd earl died fighting for Henry VI. at the first battle of St Albans in 1455; the 3rd, Henry (14211461), was slain on the bloody field of Towton; the 4th, Henry (1446-1489), was killed in quelling an insurrection in the time of Henry VII. So strong was the Lancastrian feeling of the family that even Sir Ralph Percy (1425-1464), a brother of the earl who fell at Towton, though he had actually submitted once to Edward IV., turned again, and when he fell at Hedgley Moor in April 1464 consoled himself with the thought that he had, as he phrased it, "saved the bird in his bosom."

No wonder, then, that in Edward IV.'s days the title and estates of the family were for a time taken away and given to John Neville Lord Montagu, brother of Warwick the king-maker. But the north of England was so accustomed to the rule of the Percys that in a few years Edward saw the necessity of restoring | them, and did so even at the cost of alienating still further the powerful family of the Nevilles, who were then already on the point of rebellion.

A crisis occurred in the fortunes of the family in the reign of Henry VIII. on the death of Henry, the 6th earl (c. 15021537), whose brothers Sir Thomas and Sir Ingelram Percy, much against his will, had taken part in the great insurrection called the Pilgrimage of Grace. A thriftless man, of whom it is recorded that in his youth he was smitten with the charms of Anne Boleyn, but was forced to give her up and marry a woman he did not love, he died childless, after selling many of the family estates and granting the others to the king. The title was forfeited on his death, and was granted by Edward VI. to the ambitious John Dudley, earl of Warwick, who was attainted in the succeeding reign. It was restored in the days of Queen Mary to Thomas Percy (1528-1572), a nephew of the 6th earl, who, being a stanch Roman Catholic, was one of the three earls who took the lead in the celebrated rising of 1572, and was beheaded at York. His brother Henry (c. 1532-1585), who succeeded him, was no less unhappy. Involved in Throgmorton's conspiracy, he was committed to the Tower of London, and was supposed to have shot himself in bed with a pistol found beside him; but there were grave suspicions that it had been discharged by another hand. His son, Henry (1567-1632), the next earl, suffered like his two predecessors for his attachment to the religion of his forefathers. The Crown lawyers sought in vain to implicate him in the Gunpowder Plot, but he was imprisoned for fifteen years in the Tower and compelled to pay a fine of £30,000. Algernon (1602-1668), the son who next succeeded, was a parliamentary general in the Civil War. At length, in 1670, the male line of this illustrious family became extinct, at least in the direct line, about five hundred years after the marriage of Agnes de Perci with Josceline of Louvain.

The representation of the earlier Percys had passed away through the daughters of Earl Thomas, beheaded in 1572, but his earldom of Northumberland (created anew for him in 1557) had passed to his brother Henry, under a special remainder, and appears to have become extinct in 1670, though persistently

Alnwick Castle, their chief seat, where much state is still kept up, has been described by Mr Clark as "probably the finest extant example of a Norman castle of this type, having an open keep and a complete enceinte." It had been hardly occupied and in decay for some two centuries when the present family succeeded to it, but was restored by them to its former splendour between 1750 and 1786, "Princely Petworth," however, the seat of the later Percys, with their ancient Sussex estates and those in Yorkshire (Leconfield) and Cumberland (Cockermouth), all passed away in 1750 with the earldom of Egremont and barony of Cockermouth to Charles Wyndham, nephew of the 7th duke of Somerset, and these estates are now held by Lord Leconfield. The actual representation in blood of the later Percys (i.e. from 1572) passed in 1865, on the death of the 4th duke, to the dukes of Atholl, who in virtue of it are Lords Percy, under the writ of 1722, the oldest of the family titles now remaining. The ancient London residence of the Percys, Northumberland House, Charing Cross, was removed to make way for Northumberland Avenue. Above it stood the Percy crest, a (blue) lion with stiffly extended tail; but the famous badge of the house was the white crescent or half moon-" the HalfMoone shining all soe faire" of " the Northern Rising " balladwith a pair of manacles. Their coat of arms was a blue lion rampart on a yellow ground-" Jaune o un bleu lyon rampart of the Carlaverock roll, stated, but wrongly, to have been derived from the dukes of Louvain and Brabant. With it they quartered the "Luces" coat of the Lucys of Cockermouth after succeeding to their estates, whence the lines in The Battle of Otterbourne:The Lucetts and the Cressaunts both, The Skotts fought them agayne."

See E. B. De Fonblanque, Annals of the House of Percy (1887), Lindsay, 1902), both somewhat adulatory and needing critical and G. Brenan, History of the House of Percy (edited by W. A. revision; Tate, History of Alnwick (1866); Hartshorne's paper on the Percys and their Castles in the Newcastle volume of the Archaeological Institute (1852); E. A. Freeman, "The Percy Castles" (1875) Architecture (1884); G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage (1895), vol. vi. ; in English Towns and Districts; G. T. Clark, Medieval Military Bishop Percy, Northumberland Household Book. See also the article Northumberland, Earls and Dukes of. (J. GA.; J. H. R.)

PERCY, SIR HENRY, called HOTSPUR (1364-1403), eldest son of Henry, 1st earl of Northumberland, was born on the 20th of March 1364. He saw active service when he was fourteen at the siege of Berwick. Six years later he was associated with his father in the wardenship of the eastern march of Scotland, and his zeal in border warfare won the name of Hotspur for him from his opponents. In 1386 he was sent to Calais, and raided French territory, but was shortly afterwards recalled to defend England against a naval attack by France. In popular story and ballad he is known as one of the heroes of Otterburn or Chevy Chase, which is the subject of one of the most stirring recitals of Froissart. In the summer of 1388 the Scots invaded England by way of Carlisle, sending a small body under the earls of Douglas, Mar and Moray to invade Northumberland. The earl of Northumberland remained at Alnwick, but sent his sons Sir Henry and Sir Ralph against the enemy. In hand-to-hand fighting before the walls of Newcastle, Douglas is said to have won Sir Henry's pennon, which he swore to fix upon the walls of Dalkeith. The Scots then retreated to Otterburn, where Percy, who was bent on recovering his pennon, attacked them on a fine August evening in 1388. Douglas was

See NORTHUMBERLAND, EARLS AND DUKES OF; and PERCY: (Family). Also Chronique de la traïson et mort de Richard II., ed. B. Williams (Eng. Hist. Soc., 1846); J. Creton, Histoire du roy Richard II., ed. John Webb, in Archaeologia (xx., 1824); and Adam authorities are cited in detail in J. H. Wylie's England under of Usk's Chronicon, 1377-1404, ed. E. M. Thompson (1876); the Henry IV. (1884-1898), and Sir J. H. Ramsay's Lancaster and York (Oxford, 1892). Holinshed's Chronicle was the chief source of Shakespeare's account of Hotspur in Henry IV.

PERCY, THOMAS (c. 1560-1605), one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, was a son of Edward Percy of Beverley, who was grandson of Henry Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland. Though brought up a Protestant, he early became well-affected to the Roman Catholics and finally an adherent. He entered the service of his cousin, Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, and was appointed by him constable of Alnwick Castle and agent for his northern estates, in which capacity he showed himself tyrannical and extortionate. In 1602 he was sent by Northumberland to James in Scotland to secure toleration for the Roman Catholics and returned announcing favourable promises from the king, the extent of which he probably greatly exaggerated; and when James, after his succession to the English throne, did not immediately abrogate the penal laws, Percy, although he had accepted the court appointment of gentleman pensioner, professed himself highly indignant and indulged himself in thoughts of revenge. Some time in May 1603 Percy angrily declared his intention to Catesby of killing the king, and in April 1604 he met Catesby with John Wright, Thomas Winter and Guy Fawkes, and was then initiated into Catesby's gunpowder plot, which met with his zealous approval and support. To Percy was allotted the special duty after the explosion of seizing the infant prince Charles and riding off with him on his saddle to Warwickshire. All the preparations being complete, Percy went to Alnwick in October and collected £3000 of the earl of Northumberland's rents which he intended using in furtherance of the plot, returning to London on the 1st of November. Meanwhile the plot had been revealed through the letter to Lord Monteagle on the 26th of October, and it was Percy's insistence at the last meeting of the conspirators on the 3rd that decided them not to fly but to hazard the attempt. On the news of Guy Fawkes's arrest, Percy with the rest of the conspirators, except Tresham, fled on horseback, taking refuge ultimately at Holbeche, near Stourbridge, in Staffordshire, where on the 8th of November, during the attack of the sheriff's men upon the house, he was struck down by a bullet, fighting back to back with Catesby, and died two days later. Percy married a sister of the conspirator John Wright and left a son Robert and two daughters, one of whom is said to have married Robert, the son of Catesby.

slain in the battle, though not, as is stated by Walsingham, by Wales. Hotspur was killed, the earls of Douglas and Worcester, Percy's hand: Henry Percy was captured by Sir John Mont-Sir Richard Venables of Kinderton, and Sir Richard Vernon gomery, and his brother Ralph by Sir John Maxwell. Hotspur were captured, and the rebel army dispersed. Worcester, was released on the payment of a heavy ransom, to which Venables and Vernon were executed the next day. Percy's Richard II. contributed £3000, and in the autumn his term as body was buried at Whitchurch, but was disinterred two days warden of Carlisle and the West March was extended to five later to be exhibited in Shrewsbury. The head was cut off, and years. In 1399 together with his father he joined Henry of fixed on one of the gates of York. Lancaster. Henry IV. gave the charge of the West March to Northumberland, while Henry Percy received the castles of Bamburgh, Roxburgh and Berwick, and the wardenship of the East March, with a salary of £3000 in peace time and £12,000 in war. During the first year of Henry's reign Hotspur further was appointed justiciar of North Wales and constable of the castles of Chester, Flint, Conway, Denbigh and Carnarvon. Henry also gave him a grant of the island of Anglesey, with the castle of Beaumaris. William and Rees ap Tudor captured Conway Castle on the 1st of April 1401, and Percy in company with the prince of Wales set out to recover the place, Percy providing the funds. In May he reported to the king the pacification of Merioneth and Carnarvon, and before the end of the month Conway was surrendered to him. Meanwhile he wrote demanding arrears of pay, with the threat of resignation if the money were not forthcoming, but the king intimated that the loss of Conway had been due to his negligence, and only sent part of the money. He had the same difficulty in obtaining money for his northern charge that he had experienced in Wales.1 Anglesey was taken from him, and he was deprived of Roxburgh Castle in favour of his rival, the earl of Westmorland. The Scots again invaded England in the autumn of 1402, headed by the earl of Douglas and Murdoch Stewart, son of the duke of Albany. Northumberland and Hotspur barred their way at Millfield, near Wooler, and the Scots were compelled to fight at Humbledon, or Homildon Hill, on the 14th of September. The English archers were provided with a good target in the masses of the Scottish spearmen, and Hotspur was restrained from charging by his ally, George Dunbar, earl of March. The Scottish army was almost destroyed, while the English loss is said to have been five men. Disputes with the king arose over the disposal of the Scottish prisoners, Percy insisting on his right to hold Douglas as his personal prisoner, and he was summoned to court to explain. It is related that when he arrived Henry asked for Douglas, and Hotspur demanded in return that his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, should be allowed to ransom himself from Owen Glendower, with whom he was a prisoner. High words followed, in the course of which Henry called Percy a traitor, struck him on the face, and drew his sword on him Percy is said to have answered this defiance with the words, "Not here, but on the field." This was late in 1402, and in 1403 Hotspur issued a proclamation in Cheshire stating that Richard II. was alive, and summoning the inhabitants to his standard. He made common cause with his prisoner Douglas, and marched south to join forces with Glendower, who was now reconciled with Mortimer. He was reinforced by his uncle Thomas, earl of Worcester, who, although steward to the household of the prince of Wales, joined his family in rebellion. The mythical Richard II. was heard of no more, and Percy made himself the champion of the young earl of March. When he arrived at the Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury, early on the 21st of July, and demanded provisions, he found the king's forces had arrived before him. He retired in the direction of Whitchurch, and awaited the enemy about 3 m. from Shrewsbury. After a long parley, in which a truce of two days was even said to have been agreed on, the Scottish earl of March, fighting on the royal side, forced on the battle in the afternoon, the royal right being commanded by the prince of 1 The dissatisfaction of the Percys seems to have been chiefly due to the money question. Sir J. H. Ramsay (Lancaster and York) estimates that in the four years from 1399 to 1403 they had received from the king the sum of £41,750, which represented a very large capital in the 14th century, and they had also received considerable grants of land. King Henry IV. was about to march north himself to look into the real relations between the Percys and the Scots, when on the 6th of July 1403 Henry Percy was in open rebellion.

PERCY, THOMAS (1729-1811), bishop of Dromore, editor of the Percy Reliques, was born at Bridgnorth on the 13th of April 1729. His father, Arthur Lowe Percy, a grocer, was of sufficient means to send his son to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1746. He graduated in 1750 and proceeded M.A. in 1753. In the latter year he was appointed to the vicarage of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, and three years later was instituted to the rectory of Wilby in the same county, benefices which he retained until 1782. In 1759 he married Anne, daughter of Barton Gutterridge. At Easton Maudit most of the literary work for which he is now remembered-including the Reliques-was completed. When his name became famous he was made domestic chaplain to the duke and duchess of Northumberland, and was tempted into the belief that he belonged to the illustrious house of Percy. Through his patron's influence he became dean of Carlisle in 1778 and bishop of Dromore in Ireland in 1782. His wife died before him in 1806; the good bishon, blind but otherwise in

sound health, lived until the 30th of September 1811. Both | to the thesis of Balzac's work, Les Petites misères de la vie conwere buried in the transept which Percy added to Dromore jugale. More and more pessimistic as to the political future Cathedral.

in Castile. But all attempts to remove the accused from the civil prison in Saragossa to that of the Inquisition raised popular tumults, which in the end led to Perez's escape across the Pyrenees, but unfortunately also furnished Philip with a pretext for sending an army into Aragon and suppressing the ancient fueros" altogether (1591). From the court of Catherine de Bourbon, at Pau, where he was well received, Perez passed to that of Henry IV. of France, and both there and in England his talents and diplomatic experience, as well as his well-grounded enmity to Philip, secured him much popularity. While in England he became the "intimate coach-companion and bedcompanion" of Francis Bacon, and was also much in the society of the earl of Essex. The peace of Vervins in 1598 greatly reduced his apparent importance abroad, and Perez now tried to obtain the pardon of Philip III., that he might return to his native country. His efforts, however, proved vain, and he died in comparative obscurity in Paris on the 3rd of November 1611.

Perez's earliest publication was a small quarto, dedicated to the earl of Essex, written and apparently printed in England about 1594, entitled Pedazos de historia, and professedly published at Leon. A Dutch translation appeared in 1594, and in 1598 he published his Relaciones, including the Memorial del hecho de su causa, drawn up in 1590, and many of his letters. Much has been done, by Mignet (Antonio Perez et Philippe II, 1845; 4th ed., 1874) and by Froude ("An Unsolved Historical Riddle,' Nineteenth Cent., 1883) among others, towards the elucidation of various difficult points in Perez's somewhat perplexing story. For the murder of Escovedo, see Andrew Lang's discussion of it in his Historical Mysteries (1904); and the Españoles é ingleses (1903) of Major Martin Hume, who had access to various newly discovered MSS.

bequeathed, kept it (apart from some temporary alienations mous expressions Perez had used in connexion with his troubles in the 14th century) as part of their patrimony throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Lake Pleshchéevo was the scene of Peter the Great's first attempts (1691) at creating a fleet. PEREZ, ANTONIO (c. 1540-1611), for some years the favourite minister of Philip II. of Spain and afterwards for many more the object of his unrelenting hostility, was by birth an Aragonese. His reputed father, Gonzalo Perez, an ecclesiastic, has some place in history as having been secretary both to Charles V. and to Philip II., and in literature as author of a Spanish translation of the Odyssey (La Ulyxea de Homero, Antwerp, 1556). Antonio Perez, who was legitimated by an imperial diploma issued at Valladolid in 1542, was, however, believed by many to be in reality the son of Philip's minister, Ruy Gomez de Silva, prince of Eboli, to whom, on the completion of a liberal education at home and abroad, he appears at least to have owed his first introduction to a diplomatic career. In 1567 he became one of the secretaries of state, receiving also about the same time the lucrative appointment of protonotary of Sicily, and in 1573 the death of Ruy Gomez himself made room for Perez's promotion to be head of the "despacho universal," or private bureau, from which Philip attempted to govern by assiduous correspondence the affairs of his vast dominions. Another of the king's secretaries at this time, though in a less confidential relation, was a friend and contemporary of Perez, named Juan de Escovedo, who, however, after the fall of Tunis in 1574, was sent off to supersede Juan de Soto as secretary and adviser of Don John of Austria, thus leaving Perez without a rival. Some time after Don John's appointment to the governorship of the Netherlands Perez accidentally became cognisant of his inconveniently ambitious " empresa de Inglaterra," in which he was to rescue Mary Queen of Scots, marry her, and so ascend the throne of England. The next step might even be against Spain itself. This secret scheme the faithful secretary at once carried to Philip, who characteristically resolved to meet it by quietly removing his brother's aider and abettor. With the king's full cognisance, accordingly, Perez, after several unsuccessful attempts to poison Escovedo, succeeded in procuring his assassination in a street of Madrid on the 31st of March 1578. The immediate effect was to raise Perez higher than ever in the royal confidence and favour, but, wary though the secretary had been, he had not succeeded in obliterating all trace of his connexion with the crime, and very soon a prosecution was set on foot by the representatives of the murdered man. For a time Philip was both willing and able to protect his accomplice, but ultimately he appears to have listened to those who, whether truly or falsely, were continually suggesting that Perez had had motives of his own, arising out of his relations with the princess of Eboli, for compassing the assassination of Don John's secretary; be this as it may, from trying to screen Perez the king came to be the secret instigator of those who sought his ruin. The process, as such matters often have been in Spain, was a slow one, and it was not until 1589 that Perez, after more than one arrest and imprisonment on a variety of charges, seemed on the eve of being convicted and condemned as the murderer of Escovedo. At this juncture he succeeded in making his escape from prison in Castile into Aragon, where, under the ancient I fueros" of the kingdom he could claim a public trial in open court, and so bring into requisition the documentary evidence he possessed of the king's complicity in the deed. This did not suit Philip, who, although he instituted a process in the supreme tribunal of Aragon, speedily abandoned it and caused Perez to be attacked from another side, the charge of heresy being now preferred, arising out of certain reckless and even blasphe1 On the other hand it is suggested that this story of his being the son of Gomez was only circulated by Ruy Gomez's wife, Ana de Mendoza, as a refutation of the possibility of a supposed amour between her and Perez. It is contended by Mignet that this intrigue between her and Perez was known to Escovedo, and that this accounts for the part played by Perez in Escovedo's murder, because Ana had also been Philip's mistress, and Escovedo might have made mischief between Philip and Perez. Major Hume appears to combine the latter theory with Philip's political objection to Escovedo.

PÉREZ GALDÓS, BENITO (1845- ), was born at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, on the 10th of May 1845. In 1863 he was sent to Madrid to study law, drifted into literature, and was speedily recognized as one of the most promising recruits on the Liberal side. Shortly after the Revolution of 1868 he abandoned journalism, and employed fiction as the vehicle for propagating advanced opinions His first novel, La Fontana de oro, was printed in 1871, and later in the same year appeared El Audaz. The reception given to these early essays encouraged the writer to adopt novel-writing as a profession. He had already determined upon the scheme of his Episodios nacionales, a series which might compare with the Comédie humaine. Old charters, old letters, old newspapers were collected by him with the minuteness of a German archivist; no novelist was ever more thoroughly equipped as regards the details of his period. Trafalgar, the first volume of the Episodios nacionales, appeared in 1879; the remaining books of this first series are entitled La Cort de Carlos IV., El 19 de marzo y el 2 de mayo, Bailén, Napoleón en Chamartin, Zaragoza, Gerona, Cadiz, Juan Martin el Empecinado and La Batalla de Arpiles. As the titles suffice to show, the author's aim was to write the national epic of the 19th century in prose; and he so completely succeeded that, long before the first series ended in 1881, he took rank among the foremost novelists of his time. A second series of Episodios nacionales, beginning with El Equipaje del rey José and ending with a tenth volume, Un Faccioso más y algunas frailes menos, was brought to a close in 1883, and was, like its predecessor, a monument of industry and exact knowledge, of realism and romantic conception; and he carried on the Episodios nacionales into a fourth series, raising the total of volumes to forty. In fecundity and in the power of creating characters, Pérez Galdós vies with Balzac. Parallel with his immense achievement in historical fiction, Pérez Galdós published a collection of romances dealing with contemporary life, its social problems and religious difficulties. Of these the best known, and perhaps the best, are Doña Perfecta (1876); Gloria (1877); La Familia de León Roch (1878); Marianela (1878); Fortunata y Jacinta (1887); and Angel Guerra (1891). Nor does this exhaust his prodigious activity. Besides adapting several of his novels for stage purposes, he wrote original dramas such as La Loca de la casa (1893), San Quintín (1894), Electra (1900) and Mariucha (1904); but his diffuse, exuberant genius