Alnwick Castle^ Noj^tlmmberland. 183 Henry III. visited Alnwick 23rd September, 1256, and Edward I. was the guest of John de Vesci there 30th April and ist May, and 1 6th and 17th August, 1291, and i6th August and 13th and 1 8th December, 1292 ; and again 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th September, 1296; and 26th and 29th June, 1298. The Barons de Vesci became extinct in 1297, by the death of William, seventh Baron, when the castle and barony were acquired, it is said, to the fraudulent exclusion of the natural son, by Antony Bee, the warlike Bishop of Durham, by whom, in 1309, 3 Edward II., they were sold to Henry de Percy, the representative of a warlike family, whose advent forms an important era in the history of the Border. Percy, as the leader of the Northern barons, made Aln- wick his residence, and although in possession only for five years, seems to have rebuilt much of the fabric, the rest being completed by his son of the same name. The Percy Castle, laid out nearly upon the Norman lines, pre- sented very nearly the appearance of the present structure. The authorship of the Edwardian part of the inner gatehouse is estab- lished by the escutcheon of CUfford on its walls, the second Henry de Percy having married a lady of that house. To the first half of this fourteenth century may be attributed, as has already been pointed out in detail, nearly all the leading features of the castle, as it stood at the incoming of the first Duke of the present family. The Percies, though they maintained the reputation of Alnwick as the great Border fortress during nearly four centuries, do not appear to have materially altered the fabric of the two earliest lords. They received here Edward II. in 131 1 and 1322, and Edward III. in 1335 ; but the later earls were much at Petworth and in Yorkshire; and upon the death of the eighth earl, in 1537, and the attainder of his brother, the family ceased to reside at Alnwick, and the castle was neglected. The Percy line ended in Elizabeth, daughter of Jocelyn, the eleventh earl, who, 30th May, 1682, married Charles, I3uke of Somerset. Of their children, two had issue, Algernon and Catherine, who married Sir Wm. Wyndham, and eventually conveyed to that family the Percy estates at Petworth, Egremont, and Leconfield. Algernon Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and by creation Earl of Northumberland, left one child, Elizabeth Seymour, who inherited Alnwick, and married Sir Hugh Smithson, created Duke of Northumberland, and ancestor of the present family. A survey of Alnwick in 1567 shows the decay then to have been very considerable, and as the Seymour lords preferred their paternal residence, Alnwick became almost a ruin. From this it was re- deemed by the first duke, who, under the advice of Adam, restored, and in part rebuilt, the keep ; and although he fitted up the interior with plaster and frippery, made the exterior sound and good, and, on the whole, in keeping with the character of the place, and with what remained of the ancient buildings. Matters so remained until the accession of Duke Algernon, better known as Lord Prudhoe, a naval officer and a good man of business,
