The Percy Family and Plots: Fathers, Sons, Uncles, and Brothers

Henry Percy, the Eighth Earl of Northumberland, Second Baron Percy, was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London on June 21, 1585.

His father Sir Thomas Percy had participated in Bigod's Rebellion led by Sir Francis Bigod in the after of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when Henry VIII was slow in keeping his promises. After the Bigod Rebellion was suppressed, Sir Thomas Percy was attainted and executed at Tyburn on 2 June 1537.

And one of the Eighth Earl's uncles, Sir Ingelram Percy, had also participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and had died in the Tower of London in 1538.

His brother, Thomas Percy, the Seventh Earl of Northumberland, First Baron Percy, had been executed on August  22, 1572 for his involvement in the Northern Rebellion. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on May 13, 1895 because before he was beheaded he had refused an offer to save his life by renouncing Catholicism.

The Seventh Earl had inherited the title from the Sixth Earl of Northumberland, also named Henry Percy. He is famous because he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn while serving in Thomas Cardinal Wolsey's household. When Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, the Sixth Earl was encouraged to deny they had ever been betrothed (which would have been an impediment to the King marrying her; when Henry VIII wanted to get rid of Anne Boleyn, the Sixth Earl was encouraged to affirm that they had been betrothed because that would have made the King's marriage to her invalid.

Because the Sixth Earl and his wife, the former Mary Talbot, had no surviving male heirs, first Thomas, the Seventh Earl and then Henry, the Eighth Earl, had inherited the title when the Sixth Earl died on June 29, 1537.

The Dictionary of National Biography attempts to explain what brought the Eighth Earl of Northumberland to the Tower:

During the northern rebellion, in which his elder brother was a chief actor (November-December 1569), Henry Percy remained loyal to the government, joined the royal forces, and vigorously attacked the rebels. Queen Elizabeth promised him favour and employment in return for his valuable services. When his brother was a prisoner in Scotland, Percy wrote urging him to confess his offences and appeal to the queen's mercy. In 1571 he was elected M.P. for Northumberland, and on his brother's execution at York in 1572 he assumed, by Queen Elizabeth's permission, the title of eighth earl of Northumberland, in accordance with the patents of creation. 'Simple Thomas,' it was said among his tenantry, had died to make way for 'cruel Henry.'

But the traditions attaching to his family had meanwhile overcome his loyalty. As soon as he had helped to crush his brother, he was seized by an impulse to follow his brother's example, and strike a blow in behalf of Queen Mary Stuart, who was in confinement at Tutbury. He opened communication with the Scottish queen's agent, the bishop of Ross, at Easter 1571, and offered to become Queen Mary's 'servant.' He would aid her to escape, or at any rate connive at her escape. The wary Sir Ralph Sadler suspected his intentions, and on 15 Nov. 1571 Percy was arrested while in London and sent to the Tower. On 23 Feb. 1571-2 he wrote, begging the queen to release him. After eighteen months' detention he was brought to trial on a charge of treason. Thereupon he flung himself on the queen's mercy, was fined five thousand marks, and was directed to confine himself to his house at Petworth. On 12 July 1573 he was permitted to come to London, and was soon afterwards set at liberty.

But he continued his plotting for the sake of Mary of Scotland:

On 8 Feb. 1575-6 he first took his seat in the House of Lords, and was one of the royal commissioners appointed to prorogue parliament in November. Just a year later he was nominated a commissioner to promote the breeding of war-horses in Sussex. But he had not abandoned his treacherous courses. In September 1582 he entertained the French agent, M. de Bex, and looked with a friendly eye on Throckmorton's plot to release Queen Mary. With Lord Henry Howard and Throckmorton he was arrested on suspicion of complicity late in the same year, and for a second time was sent to the Tower. He was, however, only detained a few weeks, and no legal proceedings were taken against him. . . . He was still sanguine of compassing the release of Queen Mary. In September 1583 he invited her agent, Charles Paget [q. v.], and Paget's brother, Lord Paget, to Petworth, and there he discussed the matter fully. The Duc de Guise was to aid the enterprise with French troops, and Northumberland offered advice respecting their landing. William Shelley, who was present at the interview, was arrested and racked next year, and related what took place. Northumberland's aim, he said, was not only to secure Queen Mary's liberty, but to extort from Elizabeth full toleration for the Roman catholics (sic).

So he went back to the Tower, where he died of the gunshot wound, ruled a suicide, although contested, as Sir Christopher Hatton, one of Elizabeth I's favorites, was accused of murdering him.

The Eighth Earl's son, the Ninth Earl, also named Henry Percy, inherited his father's title and became known as The Wizard Earl. Don't worry, the pattern of plots and rebellions and suspicion and/or proof of Percy guilt was not broken. He too spent time in the Tower of London, found guilty of misprision of treason--one of his cousins, Sir Thomas Percy, was a Gunpowder Plotter--and the Ninth Earl should have informed on him and disclosed the danger:

On 27 June 1606 he was tried in the court of Star-chamber for contempt and misprision of treason. It was stated that he had sought to become chief of the papists in England; that knowing Thomas Percy to be a recusant he had admitted him to be a gentleman pensioner without administering to him the oath of supremacy; that after the discovery of the plot he had written to friends in the north about securing his own moneys, but gave no orders for Percy's apprehension. He pleaded guilty to some of the facts set forth in the indictment, but indignantly repudiated the inferences placed upon them by his prosecutors. He was sentenced to pay a fine of 30,000l, to be removed from all offices and places, to be rendered incapable of holding any of them hereafter, and to be kept a prisoner in the Tower for life.

The Ninth Earl spent 16 years in the Tower of London; he was released in 1621 and died on November 5, 1632. His son, the Tenth Earl of Northumberland is not named either Henry nor Thomas: he was Algernon Sidney!

Happy Father's Day! (USA)

Image Credit (Public Domain): Oil painting on canvas, Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland (c.1532-1585) by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (posthumous)

Fourteen Years in Northumberland

The Royal English College of Valladolid has this brief notice on today's martyr:

BLESSED William SOUTHERNE was born in Ketton, near Darlington, in the County of Durham; he was seminarian in Douai, and after later the College of St. Alban in VALLADOLID, where he was ordained a priest. For fourteen years he worked for the re-conversion of the English, mainly in Northumberland. Condemned for being a priest, he was stripped, hung (sic), drawn and quartered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on the 30th of April 1618. Pope John Paul II beatified him, on the 22nd of November 1987.

The Catholic Encyclopedia adds this detail: 

He was arrested while saying Mass, and committed by a neighboring justice to Stafford gaol. He was immediately sentenced to death for being a priest and refusing to take the oath of allegiance; he remained in prison for six days after condemnation, no hangman being forthcoming.

Blessed William Southerne served the underground Catholic community for fourteen (14) years! That means 14 years of hiding, walking or riding from safe house to safe house, saying Mass, hearing Confessions, baptizing newborns, always on the run, and finally captured.

The fact that he was mostly in Northumberland makes sense, since it was, during Elizabeth I's reign and well into James I's, a strongly recusant area. According to this history, published by the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, the Catholic community did not suffer as much as could be expected after the Gunpowder Plot was discovered and the penal/recusant laws strengthened  :

However, in the rural heartland of the north it would seem that the laws were rarely enforced. None of the 33 Northumbrian Catholics, many of them well‐known, summonsed between 1614 and 1617 to the court of the Ecclesiastical High Commission sitting at Durham ever bothered to present themselves. Indeed, we can go further and say that a biblical astuteness (which included the right marriage alliances) along with remoteness from central government and a closeness to those who counted in local government, allowed the Catholic gentry to live in a style to which they long had been accustomed, not only possessing vast estates, but also having the means to improve them. 

Of the then leading 18 Northumberland families 12 were Catholic, including the Radcliffes at Dilston and their relatives the Widdringtons of Cartington. Both incurred considerable expense improving their properties during these years, Francis Radcliffe audaciously providing even a separate (and therefore public) chapel in 1615/6. It is said that half of the Northumbrian recusants during James' reign lived in this southern part of Tynedale. 

But James' reign also witnessed a falling away of many wealthy Catholics, some of them certainly to prevent the loss of their property. Nevertheless, many remained Catholic at heart, despite their return to politics at national and local level. Sometimes they took steps to see that their children were brought up in the Faith. The pro‐Catholic Howard’s though mainly courtiers, acquired estates in Northumberland where the number of recusants increased from 150 to 358 during the years 1600‐ 1620. Similar increases were observed in Durham.

However, despite this resurgence, Catholics remained a tiny minority, less than 2% of the total population of the two counties. Demographically they tended to group into pockets away from the towns, where the gentry could provide not only protection but also, in the absence of bishops, spiritual leadership. From Cleveland to Northumberland Catholic gentlemen helped to organise Mass centres. The priests themselves, tired of constant harassment as they moved from place to place, also gravitated to the rural retreats of the gentry to act as their chaplains. By way of exception the more populated region of Tyneside also possessed Mass centres about this time. Dorothy Lawson's new house of 1632 at St Anthony's was built to accommodate more than one priest. Some years later Gateshead House, the new home of the Riddells on the site of the medieval chapel of St Edmund in Gateshead High Street also housed priests. The same can be said of the area around and including Durham city. 

Though King James must take some responsibility for the on‐going persecution of Catholics, he continued to stop short of the death penalty, if only to further his plans for marriage alliances with the two great Catholic countries of Spain and France. When in 1618 the priest William Southerne who had been working in Newcastle from a room (which doubled up as a chapel) on the upper floor of a house on the quayside was tried and summarily executed, it was done on the orders of the anti‐ Catholic Lord Sheffield, president of the council of the North whom the king swiftly dismissed from this high office.

According to his DNB entry, Lord Edmund Sheffield did indeed James I's displeasure, who was in the midst of negotiations with Spain:

On 21 April 1593 Sheffield was elected a knight of the Garter (Doyle). About 1594 he was a candidate for the wardenship of the west marches, and in 1595 he applied to Cecil for the post of lord president of the north. Suspicions of his religion caused by the fact that he had married a catholic were said to be the cause of his ill-success (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90 p. 145, 1595–7 p. 140, 1580–1625 p. 365). Yet he seems to have been suspected very unjustly, and a letter from the north in 1599 praises his zeal in apprehending priests. ‘He will undertake any service against the papists, for God hath called him to a very zealous profession of religion’ (Cartwright, Chapters of Yorkshire History, p. 174; cf. Laughton, i. 66). On 13 Jan. 1598–9 Sheffield was appointed governor of Brill (Collins, Sidney Papers, ii. 71–80; Egerton Papers, p. 270).

Under James I he obtained the object of his ambition, and became lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire (1 Aug. 1603) and president of the council of the north (19 Sept. 1603). These two posts he held till 1619, when he resigned his presidency to Lord Scrope. This resignation was probably not a voluntary one, for Sheffield having executed a catholic priest without the king's leave, James promised the Spanish ambassador that he should be removed (Doyle, ii. 541; Gardiner, History of England, iii. 137; Court and Times of James I, ii. 136). An accusation of arbitrary conduct was also brought against him, but without result (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, pp. 24, 531, 577).

Sheffield's first wife was Ursula Tyrwhitt, daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, whom the History of Parliament describes as a "lifelong Catholic":

Under Elizabeth, although adjudged a ‘hinderer of the true religion’, Tyrwhitt was retained on the bench at least until 1579. Whether it was he or his uncle who led 237 followers against the northern rebels of 1569 is not known. It was only towards the end of his life that he and his children were harried for their recusancy. He himself had a spell in the Fleet, where in September 1580 he was allowed his wife’s company and access to the gardens for his health, and when he died on 16 Nov. 1581 two of his sons were released from prison to attend the funeral. Yet the will which he made five days before his death shows that recusancy had not impoverished him.

Ursula received a bequest from her father, knowing that he had suffered for the faith while her husband was prosecuting Catholics!

 

Blessed William Southerne, pray for us!

The Duke of Northumberland's Speech before Execution

For his leadership of the attempt to have his daughter-in-law, Jane Grey Dudley, reign as Queen of England and Ireland, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland was executed on August 22, 1553. He spoke before his beheading and expressed great remorse:

Good people, all you that be here present to see me die. Though my death be odious and horrible to the flesh, yet I pray you judge the best in god's works, for he doth all for the best. And as for me, I am a wretched sinner, & have deserved to die, and most justly am condemned to die by a law. And yet this act Wherefore I die, was not altogether of me (as it is thought) but I was procured and induced thereunto by others. I was I say induced thereunto by others, howbeit, God forbid that I should name any man unto you, I will name no man unto you, & therefore I beseech you look not for it.
 
I for my part forgive all men, and pray God also to forgive them. And if I have offended any of you here, I pray you and all the World to forgive me: and most chiefly I desire forgiveness of the Queen's highness, whom I have most grievously offended. Amen said the people. And I pray you all to witness with me, that I depart in perfect love and charity with all the world, &  that you will assist me with your prayers at the hour of death.  

And one thing more good people I have to say unto you, which I am chiefly moved to do for discharge of my conscience; that is to warn you and exhort you to beware of these seditious preachers, and teachers of new doctrine, which pretend to preach God's word, but in very deed they preach their own fancies, who were never able to explicate themselves, they know not today what they would have tomorrow, there is no stay in their teaching; doctrine, they open the book, but they cannot shut it again. Take heed how you enter into strange opinions or new doctrine, which hath done no small hurt in this realm, and hath justly procured the ire and wrath of god upon us, as well may appear who so list to call to remembrance the manyfold plagues that this realm hath been touched with all since we dissevered ourselves from the catholic church of Christ, and from the doctrine which hath been received by the holy apostles, martyrs, and all saints, and used through all realms christened since Christ.  

And I verily believe, that all the plagues that have chanced to this realm of late years since afore the death of king Henry the eight, hath justly fallen upon us, for that we have deuvded ourself from the rest of Christendom whereof we be but as a spark in comparison: Have we not had war, famine, pestilence, the death of our king, rebellion, sedition among ourselves, conspiracies? Have we not had sundry erroneous opinions sprung up among us in this realm, since we have forsaken the unity of the catholic Church? and what other plagues be there that we have not felt?

Mary I's government made good use of this speech as propaganda to support her efforts to restore Catholicism, according to Eamon Duffy in Fires of Faith, printing and reprinting pamphlets. John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland was beheaded on August 22, 1553--and Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland was executed on the same date in 1572, as I've pointed out before.