all his friends would end their lives before her brother's great 'God' should reign in this element. "The lady told him again that, rather than any other than King James should reign in this place, she would eat their hearts in salt, though she were brought to the gallows instantly!"1 2 The strifes and separations of the pair soon became matter of common gossip, although at first the scandal was successfully concealed by the joint efforts of Northumberland and Essex. But when Essex left England on his illstarred Irish expedition in 1599, Lady Northumberland's last restraint was removed, and thenceforward her frequent separations from the Earl were the talk of London. "Yesternight," wrote Roland White to Sir Robert Sidney on October 16 in that year, "somewhat late, the Countess of Northumberland came to Essex House. A muttering there is that there is unkindness grown between her and the Earl, her husband, upon which they are parted." We have seen how they quarrelled in 1601, and observed that the lady's promise to devour the hearts of her husband and his friends, should James VI. fail to win the throne, was duly reported to that doubtlessly gratified monarch. The incident occasioned a separation of six weeks.3 Again, on January 5, 1602, the Earl's secretary, Dudley Carleton, informs his correspondent, Chamberlain, that "my Lord Northumberland is reconciled with his lady, for which he was a while in disgrace in higher place."4 This reconciliation was probably brought about by the approaching birth of an infant-afterwards Algernon, tenth Earl. The factious couple had already suffered the loss of four children-two sons and two daughters; and there was a mutual desire that an heir to the honours of Northumberland should come into the world at a time when his parents were at peace with each other. Syon House,5 1 Secret Correspondence with King James I.: Lord Henry Howard to Bruce. Dec. 4, 1601. 2 Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 133. 3 Howard's Letters. 4 State Papers. Some account of Syon, still one of the seats of the Percy family, will be found on pages 93–6. a Crown property, was leased, and to these quiet surroundings, far from the noise of factions, Northumberland conveyed his wife, with many protestations of future tenderness. There too he remained even after the baby, the hopedfor boy, had seen the light. The Court gossips missed their usual pabulum, and those "in higher place" began to wonder if these mates, so often estranged, were at last in truth united. When lo! one morning came the bruit that the old feud had broken forth afresh. To Chamberlain wrote Dudley Carleton in November :-" I heard the Earl of Northumberland lives again apart from his lady, now she hath brought him an heir, which he said was the solder of their reconcilement. She lives at Sion with the child, being otherwise of a very melancholy spirit." The Essex Northumberland's brothers. Much of Lady Northumberland's "melancholy spirit" may have been due to her own and her husband's inability to keep the good resolutions which they had Revolt, and made before the birth of little Lord Percy; but who can doubt that the Countess also mourned deeply over the fate of her beloved brother, the rash, the brilliant Essex? His failure in Ireland; his return in disgrace to London; his attempt at insurrectionthat foolhardy attempt by which the lives and liberties of so many brave and faithful gentlemen were jeopardised; and finally his pitiful death at the age of thirty-four upon Tower Hill these are matters of national history. Now to the lonely, disappointed woman at Syon they came as the first, perhaps as the only great sorrow of her life. She was not of a sympathetic nature, this Countess of Northumberland. Her father she scarcely remembered; to her mother she was indifferent; while there were periods, and frequent periods, during which she looked upon her husband with abhorrence. But Robert, Earl of Essex, had ever been her hero and her hope, so that with his downfall and death the being she held dearest in the world passed away. 1 Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, November 1602, Harleian MSS.; 53532 February 1601. Her husband, too, albeit he recked little of his brother-inlaw's doom, had stern reason to remember that mad, boyish folly for which Essex paid with his life. Although the two Earls had never been friends, the chance of war had led Northumberland's brothers, Sir Charles and Sir Richard Percy, to fight under Essex in Ireland. These young soldiers were, indeed, veterans of the Irish wars when the handsome favourite came thither with mighty dreams of conquest and pacification. At the disastrous battle of the Blackwater, when the army of the Lord Marshal, Bagenal, was crushingly defeated by Red Hugh O'Neil,1 and when the Marshal himself perished with 1500 men, Colonel Charles Percy led the rear-guard in the retreat, and by personal bravery and skilful manoeuvring succeeded in saving the English host from annihilation. A year later he joined Essex and won his knighthood by leading the assault upon Cahir Castle, and during the action at Dundalk he fought like a worthy son of him who had once been the bravest and most resourceful captain on the Scottish Border. As for the other brother, Sir Richard Percy, he was in command at Kinsale when Acquila and his Spaniards invaded Munster. With a force of 150 men he defended the fortress obstinately, and in the end retreated with little or no loss. Later, under Mountjoy, it fell to his share to recapture Kinsale. Sir Charles Percy accompanied Essex to London, and made one of the small army of officers from the Irish army that practically garrisoned Essex House. The courage and many other fine qualities of the disgraced Earl had won Percy's heart, and it was not long before he succeeded in winning over yet another brother, Sir Josceline Percy, to a like enthusiasm. The result was that when Essex strove to raise London against the Queen, these foolish young men were among the first to draw their swords in the desperate venture. Arrested and thrown into the Tower, they must 1 See Carew MSS., &c. * This was the reputation once borne by Sir Thomas Percy, afterwards the eighth Earl. have gone to the scaffold like their leader, were it not for Northumberland's influence as one of the chiefs of the faction opposed to that of Essex. The Earl worked zealously in their favour, as did Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham; and, after a brief interval of confinement, they were pardoned on payment of £500.1 If the Earl's domestic relations were constantly strained and unhappy, so too (for that very reason perhaps) were Quarrels with many of his dealings with the outer world during Southampton the trying period just described. Naturally quickand Vere. tempered and impetuous, "after the manner of his race,' ," the shrewish tongue of Lady Northumberland had not tended to make him less irascible; and, while his pride kept him silent upon family matters, these bitter quarrels permanently soured his disposition and rendered him unreasonably susceptible to affront. Of his many lesser disputes, most of them settled at the sword's point, it will not be necessary to speak here, further than to say that Northumberland came out of these affrays with the reputation of a brave and honourable man, but an indifferent hand at the rapier. Two important affairs of the kind must, however, be described, although neither ended (so far as is known) in the duello. The first of these took place between Northumberland and the Earl of Southampton. Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, the friend and patron of Shakespeare, was one of those young nobles who followed most assiduously 1 Fadera, tom. xvi. 2 Ever since the days of William Als-gernons a fiery temper had been one of the chief attributes of the House of Percy. The first Earl of Northumberland (according to Walsingham) answered John of Gaunt "with furious words, after the manner of his race." The similar character of Hotspur has become famous ; and we have seen how the seventh Earl vented his rage upon Lowther at Carlisle, and how the ninth Earl assailed his future stepfather, Master Francis Fitton. The hereditary temper may also be traced in the Earl's cousin, Thomas Percy of "Gunpowder Plot" notoriety, and in other offshoots of the family. * His studies seem to have seriously affected his eyesight, which fact would have naturally counted against him in fencing. Nevertheless he was ever ready for a the fortunes of Essex. He was indeed a near relative of the favourite, who had placed him in command of the cavalry during the disastrous attempt to reconquer Ireland. Presuming upon his kinship, Southampton sided somewhat too openly with the Countess of Northumberland as against her husband; and even allowed himself-so said the gossips -"to speak disparagingly of the Earl." These things coming to Northumberland's ears, he sent one of his friends "in hot haste" to demand an explanation. But Southampton would vouchsafe neither explanation nor apology, and a hostile meeting was accordingly agreed upon. The Queen, however, heard rumours of what had taken place, and, on the very morning chosen for the duel, both principals were arrested by her orders, and haled before the Council. Here Southampton at length condescended to explain that his remarks had been grossly exaggerated, and some sort of reconciliation was patched up between the belligerent Earls. To prevent a renewal of the trouble, they were placed under heavy bonds to keep the peace. Northumberland, when his rage had cooled down, came to look upon the wrangle as due to scandal and mischief-making and he told Sir Francis Bacon that the Queen's pacific settlement was "the end of an idle tale."1 This matter happily concluded, it was not long before the Earl's over-sensitive nature betrayed him once more into strife. The object of his enmity on this occasion was Sir Francis Vere, commander of the British auxiliary forces in the Netherlands, and one of the most renowned captains of his time. In June 1600, Northumberland, accompanied by the Earl of Rutland and Lords Monteagle and Grey, crossed over to Flanders to join in the fighting about Ostend. Before the latter town they were joined by their boon companions Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom they had made tryst, and all six found their way into Ostend before the siege. They brought with them considerable retinues, and were as splendidly attired as though they had been bound for the Queen's Court rather than for 1 Letters of Lord Bacon. |