society, had some literary taste. Walpole applied to her the epithet ‘junketaceous,’ and credited her with an excess of patrician pride and ostentation. He says that she persisted in following the queen to theatres with a longer retinue than her own, and that she was mischievous under an appearance of frankness. Dutens, on the other hand, who knew the duchess intimately, credits her with magnanimity and a strong attachment to her friends. It was for her amusement that Goldsmith's ballad ‘Edwin and Angelina,’ written in 1764, and subsequently printed as ‘The Hermit’ in the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ was originally privately printed in 1765. She contributed to the book of fashionable bouts-rimés projected by Sir John and Lady Miller of Batheaston (cf. Tate, History of Alnwick). Boswell boasted of a correspondence with her. Her entertainments at Northumberland House, at which the best contemporary musicians, like Niccolini and Mrs. Tofts, performed, were far-famed. The duchess died on 5 Dec. 1776. ‘The Teares of Alnwick, a Pastoral Elegy,’ by Henry Lucas (fl. 1795) [q. v.], and ‘A Monody sacred to the memory of Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland,’ by Thomas Maurice [q. v.], commemorated her.
Northumberland had by his wife two sons and a daughter, Elizabeth, who died unmarried. The elder son, Hugh, his successor, is noticed separately. The second son, Algernon (1750–1830), distinguished himself in the Gordon riots. On the death of his father he became a peer under the title of Baron Lovaine of Alnwick, and was in 1790 created Earl of Beverley. He married, in June 1775, Isabella Susannah, second daughter of Peter Burrell of Beckenham, by whom he was father of (among other children) George, fifth duke of Northumberland, Hugh, bishop of Carlisle [q. v.], Henry [q. v.], William Henry [q. v.], and Admiral Josceline Percy [q. v.] The duke had also two natural daughters, who, as well as his legitimate children, were buried in Westminster Abbey, and an illegitimate son, known as James Smithson [q. v.], who founded the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
A portrait of the first duke was painted by Reynolds, and De Fonblanque, in his ‘Annals of the House of Percy,’ gives reproductions of etched portraits of both the duke and duchess, by W. Hole. Bromley mentions paintings of the duke by Hamilton engraved by Finlayson, by Sharples engraved by Hodges (dated 1784), and by D. Pariset, after P. Falconet.
[Lodge's Genealogy of the Peerage; Doyle's Baronage; Gent. Mag. 1786, i. 529, ii. 617; De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy (founded on documents among the Alnwick MSS.), ch. xvi. app. pp. xxxiv–vi; Tate's Hist. of Alnwick, i. 325–60; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Walpole's Mem. George II, ed. Lord Holland, 2nd ed. i. 8, iii. 27, Mem. George III, ed. Le Marchant, i. 88, 205, 308, 418–20 n., Letters, ed. Cunningham, 1891, passim, and Last Journals, ed. Doran, ii. 306; Rockingham Memoirs, i. 185–203; Grenville Papers, ed. Smith, ii. 6, 223, 225, iii. 112, 175, 177, 224, 225, 329, 330, 384–5, iv. 208, 209, 213; Chatham Corresp. ii. 240, iii. 74–76 n., 81, 88; Memoirs of a Traveller (Dutens), i. 262, ii. 96–8, &c.; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. vii. 71; Almon's Polit. Anecdotes, ii. 51–2; Jesse's Life and Reign of George III, i. 425, 444; Dyson's Tottenham High Cross, pp. 96–7; Thornbury's Old and New London, iii. 137; Lord Auckland's Corresp. i. 378 (letter concerning his legacies); Ret. Memb. Parl.; Forster's Life of Goldsmith, i. 402–7, ii. 257; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, 1891. See also an article in Temple Bar, May 1873; Evans's Cat. Engr. Portraits; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Chester's Reg. Westminster Abbey, pp. 441–453 (where date of birth is probably wrongly entered).]
PERCY, HUGH, second Duke of Northumberland of the third creation (1742–1817), eldest son of Hugh Smithson Percy, first duke [q. v.], was born on 28 Aug. 1742. On the death of his mother in 1776 he succeeded to the barony of Percy. Horace Walpole credited him in his youth with a ‘miserable constitution.’ On 1 May 1759 he was gazetted ensign in the 24th foot, but exchanged into the 85th, with the rank of captain, on 6 Aug. of the same year. On 16 April 1762 he became lieutenant-colonel commanding the 111th regiment. He served under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick during the seven years' war, and was present at the battles of Bergen and Minden. His ‘Pocket-Book of Military Notes, 1760–61,’ is among the Alnwick MSS. In 1762 he became captain and lieutenant-colonel in the grenadier guards, and on 26 Oct. 1764 was appointed colonel and aide-de-camp to George III. Meanwhile he had been elected, on 15 March 1763, member for Westminster, which he continued to represent till his succession to the peerage in 1776. His marriage with Bute's daughter gained him admission to the king's private junto (Albemarle, Rockingham, i. 185), and his appointment as colonel of the 5th fusiliers in November 1768 was strongly animadverted upon in Junius's ‘Letter to Sir W. Draper,’ 7 Feb. 1769. He had then, however, loosened his connection with the court, as he did not approve of the king's American policy.
Though opposed to the policy of the war, Percy embarked for Boston in the spring of 1774, and was placed by General Thomas Gage
