PERCY, Lord Henry Hugh Manvers (1817-1877), of Northumberland House, London; Albury, Guildford, Surrey and Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

Percy, a highly decorated war hero, was a member of one of the north-east of England’s most prestigious and wealthy political families. Born at Burwood House in Cobham, Surrey, he was the youngest son of George Percy, who had represented the rotten borough of Bere Alston from 1799 until his succession as the 2^nd earl of Beverley in 1830.1G.C. Boase, ‘Percy, Lord Henry Hugh Manvers (1817-1877)’, rev. R.T. Stearn, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com; HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 745-6. In 1865 Beverley succeeded his cousin as 5^th duke of Northumberland, inheriting the family’s vast landed estates, which comprised over 191,000 acres. Percy’s eldest brother Algernon, styled Lord Lovaine, represented Northumberland North in the Conservative interest from 1852 to 1865.

Percy’s military career began in 1836 when he joined the Grenadier Guards. His first active service was in Canada during the 1838 insurrection. In 1854 he went to the Crimea, where his conduct in the field won him widespread acclaim.2The following account of Percy’s service in the Crimea is based on A. Percy, A bearskin’s Crimea: Colonel Henry Percy VC and his brother officers (2005). At the battle of Inkerman in November 1854, he successfully extricated a group of fifty men who were nearly surrounded by the Russians and without ammunition, even though he was himself wounded. For this act of bravery, he was later rewarded with the Victoria Cross (the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy), the Légion d’Honneur, and the Order of the Medjidie.3The Times, 5 Dec. 1877. In June 1855 he was appointed an aide-de-camp to the Queen, who upon meeting Percy during his recuperation in England had been impressed by stories of his valour.4Queen Victoria’s Journals, www.queenvictoriasjournals.org, 10 Mar. 1855, p. 161. In the summer of 1855 he briefly held the local rank of brigadier-general in command of the British-Italian legion in Turin before resigning his post following the fall of Sebastopol in October the same year. During the Trent crisis of December 1861 he was sent to New Brunswick in command of the first battalion of the Grenadier Guards, but retired from active service in October 1862, owing to chronic neuralgia, from which he had suffered since the Crimea.5The Times, 5 Dec. 1877. Thereafter he remained on half-pay and commanded a brigade at Aldershot, and was promoted to major-general in February 1865.6Ibid.

At the 1865 general election Percy offered as a Conservative at Northumberland North in place of his brother, Lord Lovaine, who, following the succession of their father to the dukedom, had resigned his seat, citing ‘the pressure of new duties’.7Newcastle Courant, 7 July 1865. Percy’s decision to come forward had not been an easy one, and he was quick to remind the electors that he had relinquished ‘as high a renumerative [sic] command as any officer in my position in the army might reasonably expect to have’.8Newcastle Journal, 20 July 1865. In his address, he pledged his loyalty to the established church, asserted that any extension of the franchise should be along lines other than a general lowering of the qualification, and called for a reduction of civil administration in the army and navy. 9Newcastle Courant, 7 July 1865. At the nomination he drew on his experiences of visiting America to argue that the introduction of universal suffrage and the ballot to England would be disastrous. He reserved his greatest invective, though, for Palmerston, whom he blamed for the shameful conduct of British foreign policy.10Newcastle Journal, 20 July 1865. He was elected unopposed.

A steady attender, Percy backed the Conservative party leadership on all the major issues of the day. He voted against the Liberal government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and followed Disraeli into the division lobby on the main clauses of the Derby ministry’s representation of the people bill. He also opposed the ballot, and when Henry Berkeley, a prominent supporter of the measure, suggested that Earl Percy (as Lord Lovaine was now known) had abused his position as owner of Albury Park to interfere in a recent election at Guildford, Percy attacked Berkeley for attempting to secure support for the ballot on the basis of ‘unfounded statements picked up from the gossip of a county town’.11Hansard, 17 July 1866, vol. 184, cc. 971-96. His unwavering devotion to the established church was evident when he voted against church rate abolition, 7 Mar. 1866, and the tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 13 June 1866. Although absent for the critical vote on Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868, he subsequently backed a motion calling for the abolition of the Maynooth grant if the Anglican church in Ireland was disestablished, 7 May. 1868.

Percy, who ‘did not aspire to take any active part in debates’, devoted his handful of known speeches to military questions.12Newcastle Journal, 4 Dec. 1877. Reflecting his belief that a reduction was necessary in the civil administration of the army, he argued that the post of judge advocate general should be made permanent as the high turnover of civilians who held the position meant that judges were ‘not cognizant of military law and totally ignorant of military discipline’, 8 Mar. 1866. He also spoke out against a reform of the law concerning the promotion of army medical officers, asserting that retrospective changes were grossly unfair, 6 May 1866. His expertise on military issues was evident when he sat on the select committee on the mortality of British troops in China.13PP 1866 (442), xv. 20.

Prior to the 1868 dissolution Percy announced his intention not to seek re-election, citing his preference for returning to the army.14Newcastle Courant, 7 Aug. 1868. In 1870 he was sent by the duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British army, to be an observer with the Prussian army at Sedan, in northern France, and in 1874 he was appointed to the colonelcy of the Princess Victoria’s regiment, becoming a full general in 1877.15Boase, ‘Percy, Lord Henry Hugh Manvers’, rev. Stearn.

Percy died unexpectedly and without issue at his London residence in Eaton Square in December 1877. Although he had been continually suffering from neuralgia, the official cause of death was angina pectoris.16The Times, 5 Dec. 1877. His effects, which were valued at under £140,000, were left to his nephew Edward George Percy Littleton, the eldest son of Edward Richard Littleton, 2^nd Baron Hatherton, who had married Percy’s younger sister, Margaret.17England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1858-1966, March 1881. Percy’s correspondence and diaries are part of the Hatherton Papers, held by the Staffordshire record office.18Staff. RO D260/M/F/5/1-19, 70-79.