PERCY, Henry (c.1604-59), of Whitehall, and of Syon House, Mdx.

Descended on both sides from ancient nobility, Percy had all the customarily-associated arrogance, but apparently little sign of redeeming charm or polish. As at least one contemporary noted, he lacked the romantic valour of his illustrious namesake, Harry ‘Hotspur’, the widely-respected rebel warrior in the wars of the roses, although he was reported to have a similarly quarrelsome temper.24Strafforde Letters. ed Knowler, i. 363; HMC De Lisle and Dudley vi. 335. Edward Hyde* asserted that he was ‘generally unloved’ and had few real friends.25Clarendon, Hist. iii. 391-3. Without the cultural or intellectual interests of his Sidney cousins and their Herbert kin, Percy shared the chronic ill-health of his elder brother the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), and failed to learn from the unfortunate example of their long-imprisoned father, Henry Percy, the 3rd earl, the wisdom of avoiding political intrigue. Yet for all that, and despite recurrent mistrust, in the 1630s and 1650s he occupied a not insignificant position in the entourage of Queen Henrietta Maria, and, in between, briefly another in the royalist army, while in 1641 the progressive revelation of his leading role in the ‘army plot’ riveted the attention of Parliament.

Early career

Percy had first entered the House of Commons in 1628 as a burgess for Marlborough, probably on the interest of the 2nd earl of Hertford (William Seymour†). He received only two committee appointments and made no speeches. However, it is evident from correspondence that he was among those in Parliament hostile to George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.26HP Commons 1604-1629.

Some months after the dissolution in March 1629, Percy set off for a foreign tour. According to his father, writing that October, this was to be as ‘a younger brother and not in pomp’, but at some point he seems to have been joined by Charles I’s cousin James Stuart, 4th duke of Lennox (and later 1st duke of Richmond).27SP16/150, f. 148. The latter was later to talk of Percy as ‘my old acquaintance, at school, in our travels, and here at home having been friends together’.28LJ iv. 553b. Early in 1631 Percy was in Paris, although contact from there with his brother-in-law, James Hay, 1st earl of Carlisle, at this juncture one of the most powerful men at court, was almost certainly an early manifestation of his quest to procure office back at home.29SP16/182, f. 62. By September 1632 he was at his father’s seat of Syon House in Middlesex, from where he acknowledged favours from William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury.30HMC Hatfield, xxii. 270. The following spring he was embroiled in an ugly clash between the lord treasurer, Richard Weston† (soon to be created 1st earl of Portland), and Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, over correspondence with France; Percy, employed as a go-between by Weston, and Henry Jermyn*, similarly employed by Holland, shared the displeasure shown to the protagonists by the government, and the incident perhaps had wider repercussions.31SP16/236, ff. 64, 71-4; ‘Richard Weston’, Oxford DNB. That autumn Percy was evidently within a hair’s-breadth of securing military employment in Ireland from the newly-arrived lord deputy, Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, later 1st earl of Strafford), when this was thwarted by intervention from the king.32CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 23; Strafforde Letters. ed Knowler, i. 128, 144, 176, 228.

Notwithstanding this, Percy – for nearly 12 years from November 1632 the hopeful heir to his elder brother’s earldom – continued to seek preferment, albeit undermining his own prospects through his propensity to fall out with potential patrons.33Strafforde Letters ed Knowler, i. 176. In 1634 Wentworth learned from George Garrard*, Northumberland’s chaplain, that Percy headed a list of ‘pretenders to’ a vacant place in the royal bedchamber, and from Northumberland’s friend the 2nd Viscount Conway (Edward Conway†) that he was ‘a diligent courtier’, beholden especially to the earl of Lennox, and that he had succeeded in cultivating Queen Henrietta Maria to the extent that he had procured for Northumberland the Order of the Garter. But Percy had quarrelled with both Randall Macdonnell, Viscount Dunluce (from 1636 2nd earl of Antrim) and his sister and brother-in-law Carlisle, relations with the lord treasurer may have cooled, and (according to Conway) his patent acquisitiveness had ‘little hope’ of being satisfied, he having ‘missed going ambassador into France’.34Strafforde Letters ed Knowler, i. 242, 363; CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 194. A combination of frequent attendance, the high standing of Northumberland, the factional politics which could make him a useful ally, and sheer determination on his part sustained him for most of the remainder of the 1630s as a partisan of the queen and her pro-French foreign policy, and on the basis of his access to Henrietta Maria he promised much to his brother-in-law the 2nd earl of Leicester (Robert Sidney†), ambassador in Paris.35CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 505; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 69-70, 85, 88, 92, 94, 99, 121-2, 130, 133-4, 156; Strafforde Letters. ed Knowler, ii. 48; M. Smuts, ‘The puritan followers of Henrietta Maria’, EHR xciii. 27, 30. The return was apparently slender, he was perceived to seek his own advantage, and his position was vulnerable.36HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 159. In 1638 both he and Northumberland were seriously ill: Garrard reported on 10 May that ‘Percy hath been … desperately sick of a burning fever, stark mad with it, but mends somewhat, though but slowly: I thought last week we should have lost both the Brothers together’.37Strafforde Letters. ed Knowler, ii. 168.

Charles I’s conflict with his Scottish subjects may have presented to Percy a welcome opportunity to display his loyalty and his supposed military skills, although on the basis of family estates and experience in the region Northumberland for one opposed all-out war.38‘Algernon Percy, 10th earl of Northumberland’, Oxford DNB. In May 1639 Percy was with the king and his army at Newcastle, colonel of a regiment of foot.39HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 164; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 926. By 29 August he was reported – at last – to have secured a valuable royal reward in the form of the mastership of the horse to the prince of Wales, although he probably had to wait for it: in October, still perhaps in delicate health and in need of its waters, he went to Bath, and it was apparently only shortly before 5 December that he was actually sworn in to the post.40HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 180, 194-5, 209. Over the next few weeks, Percy and Northumberland (named in January as general of forces in the north), took advantage of royal favour and their continuing friendship with Lord Deputy Wentworth to sort out the countess of Carlisle’s marriage settlement in a deal involving thousands of pounds worth of Irish customs, and ‘intervened’ with the king and queen over the earl of Leicester’s financial difficulties.41CSP Ire. 1633-1647, p. 229; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 229, 231, 234, 239, 266.

Short Parliament and northern campaign

It was from a stance broadly supportive of royal aspirations that Percy approached the Parliament to which he was elected in the spring of 1640. On 15 March he was returned for the junior seat at Portsmouth, almost certainly on his brother’s interest as lord admiral and a freeman of the borough.42C219/42ii/143; Portsmouth RO, PE 7, unfol.; CE 1/5, p. 11. In the brief session he received only two committee appointments – to discuss apparel (21 Apr., on which as a peer’s son he was liable to endorse the social gradations demanded by the sumptuary laws) and to confer with the House of Lords about a fast day (22 Apr., when his aristocratic connections were probably useful) – and made no recorded speeches.43CJ ii. 8a, 9a.

However, Percy was capable of dutiful attendance, reporting to Leicester on 23 April that ‘we have sat in Parliament this day from 8 of the clock until 4, so that you may judge in what condition I am at this time’. In this context, he was ‘extremely sorry’ that he could supply the earl ‘with no better an account of our proceedings than that we seem to be very averse from those things that are necessary for the honour of the king and good of our country, and particularly we have this day declined the’ [continued in cipher, decoded by Leicester] ‘supply of the king and have resolved the [resolution of] grievances shall take place [i.e. priority], wherefore the king resolved to dissolve us tomorrow’.44HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 252. Aware that the privy council was still deliberating as he wrote, Percy misjudged the immediate outcome, but there was no further evidence of him in the chamber before the end actually came on 5 May. As he explained with characteristic arrogance in another letter on 8 May, when he had written ‘positively of the dissolution’ a fortnight earlier, ‘it was somewhat prophetically to you, that were at such a distance, and the thing not done, but I was never more confident of anything than the seeing clearly that [it] could not last’.45HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 263.

While there was a certain satisfaction in accurate prediction, the ‘want of money’ and ‘extreme necessities of the present time’ arising from Parliament’s failure to vote subsidies, was also ‘a miserable condition’ which prevented the king from rewarding his servants, and Northumberland and Percy from brokering payment for Leicester’s embassy, although Percy promised that he would recommend the earl for the cost-free award of the Garter instead.46HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 257, 261, 265, 281, 285, 299, 308. On 4 June Percy obtained for himself the reversion of the governorship of Guernsey, a rather distant prospect, but in August the king’s ‘sudden going away’ north on campaign provided another military opening.47HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 280. Disingenuously, Percy explained to Leicester that he had ‘undertaken what is extreme troublesome for the present’, namely, the raising with his cousin and Leicester’s heir Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle, 100 horse for the king’s life guard.48HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 319. While keen to present himself to Secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke* as an essential intermediary between the privy council and the queen, and as a loyal servant of the former in its efforts to supply a suitable replacement general for the campaign when Northumberland fell ill again (31 Aug.), Percy all too evidently sought self-advancement rather than the good of the expedition.49CSP Dom. 1640, p. 653. His rivalry with Lisle over payment to their respective troops of ‘cuirassiers’ irritated the secretariat through September, and once Percy belatedly got to York rumours circulated that he and Lisle had fought a duel over the precedence accorded to their regiments; the encounter may not have happened, but damage had been done.50CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 37, 77, 80-1, 191; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 328-9, 335.

Long Parliament

After a notably short time in the field, by 9 November Percy was back at Whitehall.51HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 339. In his absence he had been returned again to Parliament for Portsmouth (this time to the senior seat) as well as to a county seat for Northumberland, the family’s original heartland. Predictably, Percy opted to sit as a knight of the shire (11 Nov.).52CJ ii. 26b. Ten days later he offered ‘as much as his security will be taken for’ towards the Loan to the king, but while he was apparently as engaged as ever in court affairs, he made no other visible contribution to Parliament’s proceedings for the first four months of the session.53Procs. LP i. 228, 235. It was his relationship both to the court and to Northumberland (here as lord admiral) which prompted his first discreet service in the House, when on 5 March he was instructed to ‘move’ the king to grant his subjects liberty to take action against pirates, an issue brought to the fore at least in part by a petition to Northumberland.54CJ ii. 96b; Procs. LP ii. 635, 636. Alert to tensions which had erupted in the intervening hours (see below), when Percy reported back the next day on his meeting with the king he requested ‘the benefit of his papers’ in order ‘to avoid any mistake [i.e. misapprehension] of his Majesty [‘s intent] or being mistaken by this House’. He then conveyed not only Charles’s modification to the wording of the bill but also, at Northumberland’s request, an explanation of the latter’s conduct of naval affairs in the context of important considerations of trade and defence.55CJ ii. 97b; Procs. LP ii. 646-7, 653-5.

On 19 March Percy received his first and, as it turned out, sole committee nomination, to consider the bill against usury – a sign, perhaps, that his own finances were strained.56CJ ii. 108a; Procs. LP ii. 805. A fortnight later he was put on the spot when John Pym* named him as a person to be present at the trial of his old friend the earl of Strafford for conspiring to bring over an army from Ireland to thwart Parliament.57CJ ii. 115a-b; Procs. LP iii. 315. Conceivably Pym calculated that Percy would, wittingly or otherwise, betray damaging divisions at court – or even, as may be seen, subversive plans to rival the earl’s. Percy certainly intervened in debate on 10 April when the lord treasurer, Francis Cottington†, 1st Baron Cottington – also a friend of Strafford, but not of Percy – was examined over his recording of conciliar discussion which potentially damned the earl. The meaning of Percy’s motion – as captured by Framlingham Gawdy* – is ambiguous; Cottingham responded that ‘he would answer that if the gentleman would explain himself’.58Procs. LP iii. 498. When on 21 April the vote was taken for Strafford’s attainder, Percy headed the list of those whose ‘goodwill’ towards him was known but who were absent from Parliament.59Procs. LP iv. 51.

The army plot and its repercussions

Meanwhile, Percy had launched his own challenge to those driving policy at Westminster. On 5 and 6 March, as well as piracy and the defence of the kingdom, the House had discussed the situation in the north and propositions from the Scottish commissioners, and in the end had voted to divert some of the money previously earmarked for the English army to the Scottish army of occupation.60Procs. LP ii. 631-55; C. Russell, ‘The first army plot of 1641’, TRHS xxxviii. 88. As was recounted later in his published testimony – which like other documents in the case differs little from the available manuscripts – that result ‘scandalised’ army officers in the Commons like Percy, and Henry Wilmot* and John Asburnham*, who were sitting near him; Wilmot gave voice to the ‘many discourses of dislike’ in observing that the officers might take a leaf out of the Scottish book and insist on satisfaction. Convinced that they were ‘disobliged by the Parliament and not by the king’, within a few days Percy, Wilmot and Ashburnham began to frequent Percy’s chamber with Hugh Pollard*, Sir John Berkeley* and Daniel O’Neill, to discuss how they might exert pressure to secure both the payment of their arrears and the revenue which Charles I had been so far denied. Furthermore, they resolved ‘to make some expressions of serving the king in all things he would command us that were honourable for him and us, being likewise agreeing to the fundamental laws of the kingdom’. On his own telling, Percy was not only the one chosen to relay their plans to the king, but also the one responsible for drafting the manifesto paper on the table at their first meeting. This paper, on which they all took an oath ‘to be constant and secret’, sought the preservation of episcopacy and the presence of bishops in the Lords, postponement of the disbanding of the Irish army until after the Scots had been disbanded, and the settlement of the king’s ‘revenue to that proportion it was formerly’.61H. Percy, Master Henry Piercies Letter to the Earl of Northumberland (1641), 1-2 (E.160.18); Procs. LP v. 118, 133-55; Russell, ‘The first army plot’, 85-6, 89-90.

Before long this covert activity merged with other undercurrents of discontent. Disaffection in the army, visible as early as mid-February to veteran officers still in the north, and attributed by them to their less experienced colleagues, culminated in a petition addressed to Northumberland as lord general. Brought to London on 21 March by Captain James Chudleigh, the petition was shown to William Davenant, Henry Jermyn and Sir John Suckling*, who offered to present it to the king, but Chudleigh directed it first to the general and, according to Edward Hyde*, it was Percy who gave sight of it to Charles.62Russell, ‘The first army plot’, 88-9; Clarendon, Hist. i. 322-4. Meanwhile, Davenant, Jermyn, Suckling and probably also George Goring* were percolating their own intersecting conspiracy around the liberation of the earl of Strafford from the Tower and the bringing of the army south to frighten Parliament into compliance with royal wishes. Probably on 29 March, the king arranged a meeting between this group and Percy’s group, but instead of consolidating his supporters, the rendezvous appears to have exposed differences among them. While interpretation of the subsequent testimonies of the participants is problematic, it seems fair to say that Percy and his associates were alarmed both at a plan they professed to find ‘a way more high and sharp, not having limits either of honour or law’, and by the personalities involved, especially Suckling. Even as the petition was sent back with Chudleigh to the army to elicit the reassurance of further signatories, and the king appeared to back the line of the Percy group, there was further ‘great debate’ about who might be appointed to vacancies in the army command created by Northumberland’s physical incapacity, and further plotting centred on Suckling.63Master Henry Piercies Letter, 3; Procs. LP v. 118-9; Russell, ‘The first army plot’, 90-2; Clarendon, Hist. i. 325.

It has been argued plausibly that the king both encouraged the continuance of all these machinations and permitted or even facilitated their disclosure, as part of a strategy to scare Parliament and save Strafford. As subsequent examinations reveal, details of the plot began to leak almost immediately, with first Goring and then Percy seemingly the chief culprits.64Russell, ‘The first army plot’, esp. 90, 92, 98-100. On 6 April the Commons voted that the army should not ‘march or advance without special order of his Majesty with the advice and consent of both Houses’ unless it was to counter an invasion, and that those who contravened this would be ‘taken for enemies to the king and state’.65Procs. LP iii. 410, 417. Around the same time, continental veteran Sir John Conyers passed on rumours circulating in the army that Holland (who had indeed been proposed by Percy at the 29 March meeting), Goring and Percy were to be appointed to commands – a prospect he viewed with alarm, since there was ‘not one of all three that knows aught’.66SP16/479, f. 222.

However, matters did not come to a head until 3 May, when an oath to resist a coup emerged fully-fledged in the Commons and Suckling, who had pursued the plan of seizing control of the Tower, was summoned to account for suspicious behaviour.67CJ ii. 132a–b; Procs. LP iv. 169, 175, 179, 181–2; Russell, The first army plot’, 95-6, 104. That day Ashburnham, Wilmot and Pollard took the Protestation, but Percy and the rest did not.68Procs. LP iv. 172-3. On 5 May Suckling failed to answer a recall; a pension of £1,000 previously granted to Percy in a clear mark of the king’s favour was transferred to trustees, probably in an attempt to forestall its confiscation; and the clerk of the Commons read out a letter from Yorkshire (dated 16 Apr.) revealing that ‘Parliament had strangely lost the hearts of the army’ and that ‘some strange design in agitation’ had been prevented by prompt action.69CJ ii. 134a; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 570; Procs LP iv. 190, 210–12, 215, 218-9; Russell, The first army plot’, 98. While the Lords immediately responded by establishing a committee – to which Northumberland was not nominated – to hear the depositions of those under suspicion, they were preoccupied with final deliberations on the fate of Strafford, and on the surface appeared to pass the initiative to the Commons.70LJ iv. 235a-b; Procs. LP iv. 234. Sir Robert Harley’s* motion there for the stopping of the ports to prevent fugitives departing the kingdom was seconded by Sir Thomas Barrington* ‘and it was upon suspicion of the fleeing of Mr Henry Jermyn and Mr Henry Percy’. As Pym elaborated, ‘divers persons suspected to be guilty of some mischievous design are fled, namely’ Jermyn and Percy, ‘and likewise Sir John Suckling and Davenant the poet’.71CJ ii. 136b; Procs. LP iv. 228-9, 231, 233. All four were named – this time Percy first – in the order for the embargo agreed by both Houses which issued from the Lords later in the day; it was directed first to Northumberland as lord admiral, but also, among others, to George Goring as governor of Portsmouth.72LJ iv. 236b-237a.

It seems to have been clear to some that Jermyn and Suckling had already escaped, but the timing of Percy’s departure is a mystery, as is the point at which Northumberland received from his brother a confession, either verbally or in the form of the letter later published. There was certainly opportunity for the siblings to reach an understanding, for example in the exchange of information for liberty, even if the rumours reported by Hyde that Percy fled London only to return again briefly to Northumberland’s protection were incorrect.73Clarendon, Rebellion ed. Macray, i. 351; Russell, ‘The first army plot’, 86, 91n. The form of a proclamation that Percy and the others render themselves at Westminster was passed by the Lords on the 7th and signed from York House by Northumberland – restored to health – on the 8th.74LJ iv. 238b; Procs. LP iv. 229n; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 571. For several more days there was speculation about Percy’s whereabouts, and some sympathy expressed for Northumberland.75Procs. LP iv. 362, 365; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 574, 577. Then on 15 May John Hampden* produced in the Commons examinations taken at Chichester and sent to him by Sir William Morley* and William Cawley*. According to these, Percy had first arrived at Petworth, Northumberland’s Sussex seat, on the evening of Wednesday 5 May, but had then ‘shifted up and down’ between there and Pagham and Shoreham (each roughly 20 miles away on the coast) seeking transport, until at midnight on 13 May he had embarked on a boat bound for France.76CJ ii. 147a, 148a; Procs. LP iv. 390, 393, 395, 399, 402-4;

Percy resurfaced in Calais at an indeterminate date, detained there according to the countess of Leicester by an injury in his leg (consonant with some other reports) and to Northumberland by ‘sickness’ (which could have developed separately).77HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 403; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 10. Back in England a patent to him on 6 June for the governorship of Jersey proclaimed the king’s continuing favour.78Procs. LP iv. 228n. On 8 June Nathaniel Fiennes I* reported to MPs from the close committee Goring’s response to interrogatories about the plot, which emphasised the responsibility of Percy for administering the oath of secrecy to the conspirators and for drawing up the propositions of his particular group, and which also revealed Goring’s very early leaking of the plot to several peers, including Fiennes’ own father, William Saye, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele (a member of the 5 May committee of investigation).79Procs. LP v. 26, 32-3, 37, 39, 44, 47, 55-6.

A sense that there was far more to this than meets the eye is compounded by accounts of proceedings the next day. Even as the Commons commended Goring for his ‘discovery’ of the plot and moved to clear his name, Denzil Holles* announced that Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, had told him that he had received a letter from Northumberland. It intimated that the latter had in turn received a letter from his brother Percy ‘in which he acknowledges the taking of the oath of secrecy by himself and others, and promised that he would shortly send him a relation of the whole plot and design’. Essex and Northumberland were then also accorded thanks for ‘their great care of public safety and for their respect to’ the House.80Procs. LP v. 62, 67, 69. When, as commanded by the Commons and as reported by Holles on 12 June, he and Hampden visited Northumberland to elicit further details, the earl admitted receipt of a letter in which Percy had acknowledged the oath and the objectives of his own group, but declined to release a copy on the grounds that it also contained ‘private business’, and reiterated that he was awaiting further explanations from his brother in France.81CJ ii. 174a-b; Procs. LP v. 107-13. On 13 June Northumberland sent a servant to Percy with ‘necessaries’ the latter had requested, and by the 14th had supplied Holles and Hampden with a transcript ‘of so much of Mr Percy’s letter … as concerned the business lately discovered’. The reading of that transcript was swiftly followed by the examinations of Wilmot, Ashburnham and Pollard, and their committal as prisoners on suspicion of high treason.82Procs. LP v. 128-55. On the 15th religion and the disbanding of the army largely occupied the Commons, but on the 16th Goring was again examined, and the extracts from Percy’s letter – ‘being the same which was read on Monday last’, according to diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes* – were again heard.83Procs. LP v. 183-97; Master Henry Piercies Letter; Russell, ‘The first army plot’, 86. It was this account of the plot which was soon published – very little different from that in the family archives and seemingly without the promised additional gloss. It was reported as having been very illuminating and calculated to secure pardon and return from exile.84CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 15, 18.

This was not to be. On 22 July the Commons proposed the disbandment of Percy’s troops.85CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 55; CJ ii. 220a; Procs. LP vi. 52-3, 55-7; LJ iv. 324b. Despite the conviction of some that it would not ‘light so heavy upon them as was supposed’, having considered the articles against Percy and his co-conspirators, the Commons’ conclusion on 24 July was potentially damning.86HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 405. Percy

did compass, plot, and conspire with others to draw the army together and employ the same against Parliament; and, by force and dread thereof, to compel Parliament to agree to certain propositions, by them contrived; and to hinder, and to interrupt the proceedings of the said Parliament.

Furthermore, he had tried to persuade other MPs and army officers ‘that they were disobliged by Parliament, thereby to incense and disaffect them against Parliament’ as well as drawing up the propositions.87CJ ii. 223a; Procs. LP vi. 90-6. According to Pym, Percy was responsible for ‘the original contriving of the oath’, although Harbottle Grimston* doubted that he took it himself.88Procs. LP vi. 95-6. As deliberations on the case rumbled on through the remainder of the year, there were many who thought that the outcome would not be too hard on the accused.89CJ ii. 224b-225a, 231a, 233a, 238a, 244a, 252a; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 407-9, 241a, 253a, 271a, 318a, 332b, 333a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 61, 63, 76.

However, the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, with its demonstration of what force against Protestantism and Parliament might do, and the Grand Remonstrance formed a backdrop to debate after the recess as to what crime the conspirators should be charged with. By 9 December D’Ewes was under the impression that ‘we have agreed to accuse Mr Percy of high treason’, a fact that seemed to dismay him not least because Percy was ‘yet the heir male apparent of one of the greatest families of Christendom’, but led him to conclude that logic dictated that the others should be similarly accused, ‘for how we should distinguish their offences I understand not’.90D’Ewes (C), 258-9. Only the eventually-decided misprision of treason charges against Wilmot, Pollard, Ashburnham and Berkeley were recorded in the Journal that day, however, while Wilmot, Pollard, Ashburnham and Percy (mentioned last) were expelled from the House, and writs for new elections set in train.91CJ ii. 337a. Percy’s impeachment of high treason took place on the 17th, in company with Jermyn and Suckling.92CJ ii. 343a, 346b.

Still abroad, all three were beyond reach, but their names and those of their co-conspirators continued to echo in Parliament. In January 1642 George Peard*, who had been a notable exponent of the treason accusation, accused Percy’s old patron the duke of Richmond of sending his steward Adrian Scope* to persuade him ‘not to be too earnest’ in it, promising royal favour, and then, when unsuccessful, of communicating his disapprobation of Peard ‘in the lobby of the Lords’ House’.93LJ iv.550a, 553a-b, 555b-556a; CJ ii. 403a; D’Ewes (C), 238; PJ i. 195, 199, 202, 205, 225-6, . When the Commons considered articles against Archbishop William Laud, Daniel O’Neill and others on 26 March, they put down a marker to set a date for a formal arraignment of Percy and the rest.94CJ ii. 499b. While other pressing business intervened to prevent this, their misdemeanours reverberated, as in the remonstrance of the state of the kingdom issued by Parliament on 19 May.95A Remonstrance or Declaration of the State of the Kingdom (1642).

Military commander and courtier

As the country descended into civil war, Percy was apparently involved in royalist preparations, possibly from the Low Countries; news of the ‘most devilish and desperate design’ of Percy, Jermyn and other ‘fugitive traitors’ was published.96CJ ii. 697b; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 362; Two Letters from Rotterdam (1642); Three Letters of Dangerous Consequences (1642). He arrived in Oxford when the king established his headquarters there at the end of October: on 4 November Charles instructed him to issue ammunition from the magazine there and two days later to write a letter in his name.97Bodl. Rawl. D.395, f. 3; The Pythouse Papers ed. W. A. Ansell (1879), 45-6. Intercepted correspondence of 12 and 13 November, considered in Parliament on 26 November, showed him still in contact with Richmond, while he was one of those whose presence at the king’s side continued to be asserted by Parliament as a grievance.98CJ ii. 865b; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons (1642), 8 (E.244.23).

In February 1643 Percy was made colonel of a cavalry regiment (Whitecoats, recruited from northern troops), in May he was commissioned as general of artillery, and in June he was raised to the peerage as Baron Percy of Alnwick; he also participated in councils of war at Oxford, and in July he was thought to be on the point of executing what would have been an important coup – the capture of (a possibly compliant) Northumberland.99M. Toynbee and P. Young, Strangers in Oxford (1973), 26; Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, i. 20n; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 40, 52-3; The iudgement of the court of warre (Oxford, 1643, 669.f.7.26); Luke Letter Bks. 125. Yet this last did not come to fruition, and while he seemed to have achieved some of the prominence and recognition he had craved, in reality his position was insecure. Neither his handling of the artillery nor his military command more generally appear to have been particularly competent: the work of the former was discharged much more effectively by his deputy, Sir John Heydon.100Bodl. Rawl. D.395; Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, i. 21; Pprs. of Capt. Henry Stevens ed. M. Toynbee (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xlii), 58. He seems never to have gained the full trust of the king; even the queen, whose circle he was perceived to inhabit, admitted reservations; Prince Rupert, a friend of Richmond, was courted by Percy but the relationship was neither smooth nor always beneficial to the latter; and, although Hyde probably exaggerated, Percy had regular disagreements with those presumed to be his close associates.101H. Parker, Accommodation Cordially Desired and Really Intended (1643), 28 (E.101.23); Letters of Henrietta Maria, 97, 119, 140, 198, 205, 211, 213; Pythouse Pprs. 47-57, 59; HMC Portland, i. 124; Mems. Of Prince Rupert, ii. 182, 288. To add to the negative impressions registered by sober royalists like Hyde were damaging rumours, such as that ‘during the time that Mr Percy was at Oxford, he heard mass daily at his lodgings with others that came to see him’.102Luke Jnl. 52.

Percy was a Member of the Parliament which assembled at Oxford in January 1644. Almost immediately he, Jermyn and others had to fight off a proposition, advanced by Sir John Culpeper* as a contribution towards reconciliation with the Westminster Parliament, that those who had been declared traitors by the king at the latter’s behest before the hostilities began should be rendered to the Houses.103The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. 41 (23-30 Jan. 1644), 314-5; The Spie, communicating Intelligence from Oxford, no. 1 (23-30 Jan. 1644), 3 (E.30.20). On 29 February Arthur Trevor informed Prince Rupert that the Oxford Commons were ‘very hot upon my Lord Percy’, and would have voted for his sequestration had not dusk fallen and halted proceedings. The problem was his handling of money for his military responsibilities: Trevor found ‘most men unsatisfied that so great a trust’ should be confided ‘in his or any one hand’.104Add. 18981, f. 73; Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, 31, 412, 415, 518; Bodl. Rawl. D.395, f. 198. The next day Trevor wrote again that ‘Lord Percy is still in the briars … and I believe will not get off without scratches’.105Mems. Prince Rupert, ii. 377. But for a time he escaped retribution, and on 30 March received a pardon with the other Members of the Parliament, while on 1 May he had his £1,000 annuity confirmed.106Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 225, 392.

Criticism of ‘negligence’ in the running of the artillery continued, however, and in August 1644 Percy was replaced as general of ordnance by Sir Ralph Hopton*, who possibly also took over his regiment.107CSP Dom. 1644, p. 161; Mems. Prince Rupert, iii. 12; Toynbee and Young, Strangers in Oxford, 26. A few months later factional intrigue with Thomas Savile, 1st earl of Sussex, and Charles Howard*, Viscount Andover, brought his Oxford career to an end. The trio were briefly imprisoned in January 1645, allegedly for ‘jeering’ at prince Rupert for his defeat at Abingdon, although officially for ‘treachery’, and probably involving counter-intrigue.108Perfect Passages of Each Dayes Proceedings in Parliament, no. 13 (8-22 Jan. 1645), 100 (E.25.17); The True Informer, no. 62 (11-18 Jan. 1645), 471 (E.25.9); A Perfect Diurnall no. 77 (13-20 Jan. 1645), 607 (E.258.15); The Parliament Scout, no. 83 (16-23 Jan. 1645), 663 (E.25.18); no. 84 (23-30 Jan. 1645), 670 (E.26.12). Percy then fled to join the queen in France, where he received a better reception than some anticipated, but the extent of the king’s annoyance with those who had helped wreck his ‘mongrel Parliament’ and perpetrated other ‘villainies’ was plain to see when Parliament published royal correspondence captured at the battle of Naseby in June.109CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 372, 376-7, 390, 482-3; The Kings cabinet opened (1645), 7, 13, 46 (E.292.27); The Lord George Digby's cabinet and Dr Goff's negotiations (1646) 9 (E.329.15).

Percy spent the rest of his life on the continent. Always a controversial figure, his standing and influence regularly waxed and waned at the courts of Henrietta Maria and her son Charles; his ‘scuffles’ with old and new friends and enemies was periodically reported.110Bodl. Clarendon, 31, f. 106; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 473, 376; Nicholas Pprs. i. 117, 135, 151-2; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 181, 500; 1649-50, p. 85; 1650, pp. 265, 437. A short spell in possession of the governorship of Guernsey in 1649-50 was reportedly not received with enthusiasm by local-born royalists.111CCSP ii. 30, 46. In 1653 Percy was made chamberlain and privy councillor to the king in exile.112CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 340; CCSP ii. 265. Following his death in France in March 1659, his body was returned to England for burial, escorted by some of his brother’s gentlemen.113CP; SP18/211, f. 84. The English ambassador to Paris reported on 22 April (old style) that before his death Percy had named two trustees, including Henry Jermyn, but according to his former secretary Robert Mason, Percy had burned his papers, including any will, and his estate devolved on his brother Northumberland.114CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 335; CCSP iv. 180.