Northum at Syon. Freed by his own wish from the strain of Court life, Northumberland devoted himself to scientific studies, to gardening (then almost an unknown art in Engberland's life land), and to the entertainment of those friends who gladly sought him out in his retirement. Nor were the pilgrims to Syon either few or undistinguished; for the fame of the Earl as a scholar, and a patron of scholars, had spread through many lands. Even Bacon, his secret enemy, commended him in the most flattering terms for his "culture, capacity, and learning." The bent of his mind was naturally towards mathematics and physics; but he had a catholic taste and "could talk wisely and well in full many branches of knowledge." To his own order he was proud and distant, caring little for their tortuous intrigues and alternate pomp and servility. But among men of genius he was truly at home; and to these his purse and his house were never closed. Shakespeare 2 and Ben Jonson he knew, and appreciated; and the last days of Spenser had been comforted by his kindness. Among scientists, Thomas Harriot the mathematician (who had been introduced to him by Raleigh)3 received at his hands a yearly pension of £120; as did Robert Hues, Walter Warner, and, at a later day, Nicholas Tarporley. Dr. Alexander Rhead, in one of his medical treatises, describes the Earl as "the favourer of all good learning, and Mæcænas of learned men." Bacon, by his own admission, owed much to the encouragement of Northumberland, and was a frequent guest at Syon; although he was at the time engaged in more than one intrigue against his host. The Syon Household Accounts bear witness to countless benefactions to writers, geographers, physicians, &c., as well as to schools and colleges, 1 Cabala, p. 23. 2 Shakespeare is said to have drawn the noble character of the Earl of Northumberland (the "Loyal Earl") in Henry VII. out of affection for the similar qualities of his descendant. • Harriot had accompanied Raleigh on his first voyage to Virginia. • Wood's Athena Oxonienses (Bliss), p. 299. Hues and Warner were among the pioneers of mathematical study in England. No foreign man of letters visited London without paying at least one visit to the Earl, and special agents scoured the marts of Europe to add new volumes to the great library which was growing so rapidly under his watchful eye.1 His services to learning were so well recognised, that on August 30, 1605, the University of Oxford conferred the honorary degree of M.A. upon "Henry Percy, the most generous Earl of Northumberland, a great encourager of learning and learned men, especially mathematicians, who, as others, have in a high manner celebrated his worth." 2 This was perhaps the part of his life to which the Earl always looked back with the greatest fondness. Raleigh's society he missed greatly, no doubt; although there is a possibility that the frequent licences which he obtained for "searching the recordes at the Tower"s may have led to secret meetings with his friend, then beginning the "History of the World" in that gloomy stronghold. But he still had his books, his laboratory, his gardens, and his "pypes of tobacco" for constant companions; while the building operations in which he was engaged, and the comings and goings of his guests, kept him agreeably employed. His wife's quarrelsome disposition troubled him but little, since she now, save at rare intervals, lived apart from him; and altogether he had turned his back for good upon the sordid troubles of the world. But dire trouble came to him notwithstanding; and even in his quiet library the relentless world sought him out. 1 Northumberland's bills for bookbinding, and for the cataloguing of his library at Syon, were at this time very large. He also expended considerable sums in the purchase of scientific appliances; and there are frequent mentions of tobacco consigned to him, and of "pypes for tobacco."-Syon MSS. 2 Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, Part I. p. 312. 3 Syon MSS. Thomas III THE man whose desperate acts brought about the ruin of Northumberland's life was his cousin, Thomas Percyhe who had visited King James at Holyrood on behalf of the Catholics, and who now filled the "Gunpowder posts of Constable of Alnwick Castle and general agent of the Earl's northern estates. The career of this individual-half fanatic, half ruffian-was so strange, and withal so characteristic of the time, that little apology is needed for recalling it here. Treason." To begin with, Thomas Percy was a great-grandson of the "Magnificent Earl" of Northumberland,1 and a grandson of that Josceline Percy of Beverley who was reported to have been poisoned by the relatives of his son's wife, the Watertons of Walton.2 Percy's father and mother were Edward Percy of Beverley, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Waterton, knight. His elder brother, Alan, inherited the property of this branch of the family, and served for some years as M.P. for Beverley. He himself was born at Beverley about 1560, and, like his kinsman the Earl, bred in the Protestant faith. Coming to London, with the intention of studying for the law, he changed his mind and took to the sword instead. Of active service he apparently saw none, although he participated in the movements for the defence of the country against Spanish invasion. For years the life which he led was of the wildest; and that part of London known as "Alsatia "— the haunt of rufflers and cut-throats-knew him as one 1 See Genealogy, Tables II. and III. See ante, under the sixth Earl. His last known male representative was Alan Percy, Esquire, of Beverley, said to have been de jure Earl of Northumberland after the extinction of the senior male line in 1686. of its "free companions." His dare-devil exploits not infrequently led him into trouble, and, on at least one occasion, into perilous proximity to the hangman's noose. It was then that one of his cousins, Charles or Alan Percy, learned of his predicament, and appealed to Northumberland and Essex in his behalf. The latter wrote to Justice Beaumont in February 1596 :—“I understand by this bearer, my servant Meyricke, of your willing disposition to favour Thomas Percy, a near kinsman of my brother of Northumberland, who is in trouble for some offence imputed to him. I pray you to continue the same, that therefore his life may not be in hazard. He is a gentleman, well descended and of good parts, and very able to do his country good service; you shall do a thing very acceptable to us both, and not disagreeable with equity, which we will upon all occasions deserve of you."1 Percy was accordingly released from the clink by favour of Beaumont; and Northumberland, on his promising to reform, took him into his London household. Here his plausible manners made such an impression that, a month or two later, he was sent north to act as Constable of Alnwick. By birth a Yorkshireman, he was not popular among the Earl's tenants on the Border, whose customs and prejudices he took no pains to understand. His irresponsible life in London, moreover, had rendered him not over nice in dealing with his neighbours, and on more than one occasion he was accused of absolute dishonesty. The people beneath him he treated either with unjustifiable harshness, or equally unjustifiable laxity; and the charges made against him by the enraged Northumbrians fill many closely written pages of the Alnwick MSS. At length complaints became so numerous, that the Earl was compelled to hold an investigation into Percy's conduct. The result was hardly in the culprit's favour; but he wrote several letters to Northumberland, justifying himself with so great a skill and such an admirable assumption of simplicity, that the latter was convinced of his probity and fidelity. Faithful, according to his lights, he 1 Alnwick MSS., vol. v. seems certainly to have been, so far as his cousin was concerned; but his sense of morality was sadly dulled, and nature had fitted him for a moss-trooper or a gentleman-adventurer rather than for the factor of a great estate. After the investigation into his affairs, Northumberland forgave him, and even permitted him to retain his posts; but henceforward he exercised his duties through the medium of a deputy, merely visiting the North at intervals for the collection of rents. In the meantime he had married a Catholic lady, Martha, daughter of Robert Wright of Plowland-in-Holderness; and, not professing any particular religion of his own at the time, had decided to embrace that of his wife. He was received into the Romanist faith about 1596, and at once became one of its strongest partisans. Gifted with considerable eloquence, a comely presence, and exceptional talents for intrigue, he always obtained a hearing in the councils of the Catholics, to the exclusion of wiser and more prudent men; and while the conservative majority shrank from the violence of the measures which he proposed, there was a fanatical remnant which applauded and encouraged him. About this time Northumberland, urged by the happy state of affairs which liberty of conscience had produced in France, began to dream of an English Edict of Toleration. Thomas Percy, as we have seen, was very useful to him in gathering Catholic opinion on this subject. While attending a meeting of the suppressed religion during 1598, he fell into the hands of the Watch, together with a number of other "recusants," and was lodged for the night in Wood Street compter.1 Northumberland's influence procured him his liberty early next day; but one of his fellow-prisoners did not fare so well. This unfortunate, William Richardson by name, a Jesuit of Seville Ecclesiastical College, was convicted of being a "Popish priest," and of “having come to England contrary to the statute." For these crimes he was hanged within twelve hours after his capture.2 |