twelve thousand Scots, under Douglas, the victory of Homildon, at which Douglas and other men of mark were taken prisoners. The king desired to have a share in the ransom of these prisoners, at which Hotspur was very indignant. Hence the rupture between the Percys and the king, which led to revolt, defeat, and the death of Hotspur in the battle of Shrewsbury. Earl Percy having been at the time detained by illness at Berwick, disavowed the insurrection, and made his peace with Henry. He survived but to conspire again against the hated prince whom he had placed on the throne. He was forced to fly from his domains into Scotland, thence into Wales, which he quitted for the continent; where collecting an insufficient force he made a descent upon England, and was slain in a conflict on Bramham Moor, near Weatherby, 1408. His gallant son Hotspur was the hero of that victory over the Scots at Otterbourne in 1388, which has been rendered so widely celebrated by romantic ballads. Hotspur's son, Henry, second earl of Northumberland, was educated in Scotland, whither he had fled with his grandfather. Being reinstated in his honours and estates by King Henry V., he remained faithful to the Red Rose, though of near kindred to the duke of York. He was raised to the dignity of constable of England, and fell fighting for the house of Lancaster at the battle of St. Albans, 1455. The romantic circumstances attending the marriage of this earl, form the subject of a poem entitled "The Hermit of Warkworth." Of his twelve children four sons were eminent leaders of the Lancastrian party, and died on the field of battle.—Sir Thomas, created Baron Egremont, was slain at Northampton in 1460; Sir Ralph in 1464, at Hedgeley Moor, where he fought against great odds, comforting himself in his death with the reflection, "I have saved the bird in my bosom," meaning his fidelity to Queen Margaret and her son. Sir Richard, who with Egremont began the civil war in 1452 by a pitched battle at Staynford Bridge, with two of their cousins, the Nevilles, was killed in 1461 on Towton field, where also fell at the same time his elder brother Henry, the third earl of Northumberland, who had borne a leading part in all the transactions of that troubled time.—Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, his father having been attainted and the earldom given to a Neville, was confined in the Tower till 1469, when King Edward, jealous of the Nevilles, restored Percy to his rank and possessions. The oath of fealty which Percy then took was faithfully kept; yet at the battle of Bosworth, though he appeared on King Richard's side, he and his followers observed a neutrality, which secured to the earl the favour of King Henry VII. The death of this earl took place in 1489, when he was attacked by the populace in his house near Thirsk for his supposed share in the enforcement of an obnoxious tax insisted on by the king.—Henry Algernon Percy, filth earl, was only eleven years old when he succeeded his father. He was high in the favour of King Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and was celebrated for his magnificence, taste, and patronage of learning. He died in 1527. Of his sons, Thomas, the second, was executed at Tyburn in 1537 for his share in Aske's rebellion, or the Pilgrimage of Grace.—Henry Algernon, the eldest son, became sixth earl of Northumberland. He served in the suite of Cardinal Wolsey, made love to Anne Boleyn, and was secretly betrothed to her when there was no expectation of her becoming queen. It fell to his lot to arrest Cardinal Wolsey at Cawood house, near York. His extravagance procured him the nickname of "Henry the unthrifty." Unhappy in his marriage and childless, and with a broken constitution, he did not survive the execution of his brother many days, dying on the last day of June, 1537. With him the peerage of the house of Percy became extinct, and their title was conferred by Edward VI. upon Dudley, earl of Warwick. Queen Mary, however, in 1557, restored the title and possessions to Thomas Percy, the son of him who had suffered at Tyburn for his zeal in the catholic cause. This seventh earl of Northumberland was an able commander, and did good service to both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth in Scotland and elsewhere. Jealousy of Cecil, and indignation at the claims of the crown to a copper mine found on his estate, led him to the rebellion in which he engaged with the earl of Westmoreland. Northumberland had to fly to Scotland, where he was betrayed into the hands of the Regent Murray, and imprisoned in Lochleven castle. He was afterwards given up by Morton to Lord Hunsdon, and beheaded at York on 22d August, 1572. Four years afterwards his brother. Sir Henry, was summoned to parliament as the eighth earl. He had previously distinguished himself in Scotland, and stood loyal to the queen at the time of his brother's defection. Nevertheless, he was suspected of intriguing with the friends of Mary Queen of Scots, and committed to the Tower, where on Monday, 21st June, 1585, he was found dead in his bed shot with three bullets, his door being barred on the inside, and a pistol found in the room. He had eight sons, the eldest of whom, Henry Percy, succeeded him as ninth earl, and distinguished himself by joining, in a ship fitted out at his own charge, the fleet with which Lord Howard opposed the Invincible Armada. As a stanch supporter of the Stewart family this earl was at first greatly favoured by James I. until the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, in which Thomas Percy, a relation of the earl's, was a principal conspirator. Though a protestant the earl thus "smutted with the Gunpowder Plot," was tried by the star chamber, fined £30,000, and cast into the Tower, where he spent fifteen years amusing himself with those astrological studies which acquired for him the name of "Henry the Wizard." He died at the age of seventy in 1632.—His younger son, Henry, created Lord Percy of Alnwick, was a stanch cavalier, faithful to the Stewarts in weal and in woe; while Algernon, the elder son, and the tenth earl of Northumberland, after having held the office of lord high-admiral, and commanded an army for Charles I. against the Scots, took the side of the parliament on the breaking out of the civil war. He withdrew from public life on the execution of the king, and died in 1668, and was followed to the grave two years afterwards by his only son and heir Josceline, the eleventh and last Percy, earl of Northumberland, who died of a fever at Turin in 1670, aged twenty-six.—His only child and heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy, was thrice married and twice a widow before she was sixteen, when she became duchess of Somerset.—R. H.
PERCY, Pierre François, Baron, a French military surgeon of eminence, was born at Montigny on the 28th of October, 1754. His father, who was a regimental surgeon-major, was by no means anxious that his son should adopt the same profession. It was his own wish that made him a surgeon. As a student he gained several prizes at the academy of Besançon, and on reaching the age of twenty-one he received his diploma. He then went to Paris, where he studied under Louis. He entered the public service as an assistant-surgeon, went through a course of study in veterinary surgery under Lafosse, and in 1782 was appointed surgeon-major in a cavalry regiment. In 1784 he gained the first prize for a memoir on cutting instruments from the Academy of Surgery. The same honour fell to his lot in two subsequent years for dissertations on instruments used in the extraction of foreign bodies, and on the actual cautery. He was elected an associate of the Academy, and member or associate of the Institute of France, and of the Academies of Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Madrid. The breaking out of the revolutionary war offered a suitable field for his ambition. In 1792 he was appointed head of the medical department in the army of the Rhine; and he served subsequently under Pichegru and Moreau. To his administrative talent the French army owed the organization of the surgical corps mobile. On the entry of the allies into Paris in 1814, he took charge of the sick and wounded Russians and Prussians, for which service he received the thanks of the Emperor Alexander, the cross of St. Anne, and the order of the red eagle of Prussia. He saw with regret the fall of the power under which he had gained the highest honours open to a professional man. He was a baron, a commander of the legion of honour, inspector-general of the army medical service, and professor in the Faculty of Paris. On the return of Napoleon he relinquished a seat in the chamber of representatives, to which he had been elected and hastened to join the army at Waterloo. On the second return of the king he retired to his country residence near Meaux, relinquished the active practice of his profession, and devoted himself to agriculture. He had been three times wounded on the field of battle; and since the winter campaign in Poland, in 1807, his health had been more or less declining. He died on the 18th of February, 1825. He wrote "Mémoire sur les ciseaux à incision," Paris, 1785; "Manuel du Chirurgien d'Armée," 1792; and "Pyrotechnic Chirurgicale Pratique," Paris, 1794.—F. C. W.
PERCY, Thomas, D.D., a learned and eminent prelate, was born at Bridgnorth, Shropshire, in the year 1728. His father was in humble circumstances; yet the son on the slenderest, if any foundation, claimed family connection with the noble house of Percy. His true patent of nobility, however, is to be found
