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When Hotspur treads the stage with passionate grace, the spectator
hardly dreams of the fact that the princely original lived, paid taxes,
and was an active man of his parish, in Aldersgate Street. There,
however, stood the first Northumberland House. By the ill-fortune
of Percy it fell to the conquering side in the serious conflict in which
Hotspur was engaged; and Henry the Fourth made a present of it
to his queen, Jane. Thence it got the name of the Queen’s Wardrobe.
Subsequently it was converted into a printing office; and, in the
course of time, the first Northumberland House disappeared altogether.
In Fenchurch Street, not now a place wherein to look for nobles,
the great Earls of Northumberland were grandly housed in the
time of Henry the Sixth; but vulgar citizenship elbowed the earls
too closely, and they ultimately withdrew from the City. The deserted
mansion and grounds were taken possession of by the roysterers.
Dice were for ever rattling in the stately saloons. Winners shouted
for joy, and blasphemy was considered a virtue by the losers. As
for the once exquisite gardens, they were converted into bowlinggreens, titanic billiards, at which sport the gayer City sparks breathed
themselves for hours in the summer time. There was no place of
entertainment so fashionably frequented as this second Northumber
land House; but dice and bowls were at length to be enjoyed in
more vulgar places, and “ the old seat of the Percys was deserted by
fashion.” On the site of mansion and gardens, houses and cottages
were erected, and the place knew its old glory no more. So ended
the second Northumberland House.
While the above mansions or palaces were the pride of all
Londoners and the envy of many, there stood on the strand of the
Thames, at the bend of the river, near Charing Cross, a hospital and
chapel, whose founder, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, had
dedicated it to St. Mary, and made it an appanage to the Priory of
Boncesvalle, in Navarre. Hence the hospital on our river strand
was known by the name of “ St. Mary Rouncivall.” The estate went
the way of such property at the dissolution of the monasteries; and
the first lay proprietor of the" forfeited property was a Sir Thomas
Cawarden. It was soon after acquired by Henry Howard, Earl of
Northampton, son of the first Earl of Surrey. Howard, early in
the reign of James the First, erected on the site of St. Mary’s
Hospital a brick mansion which, under various names, has developed
�190
NOKTIIUMBEELAND HOUSE AND THE PEECYS.
into that third and present Northumberland House which is about to
fall under pressure of circumstances, the great need of London* and
the argument of half a million of money.
Thus the last nobleman who has clung to the Strand, which, on
its south side, was once a line of palaces, is about to leave it for ever.
The bishops were the first to reside on that river-bank outside the
City walls. Nine episcopal palaces were once mirrored in the then
clear waters of the Thames. The lay nobles followed, when they
felt themselves as safe in that fresh and healthy air as the prelates.
The chapel of the Savoy is still a royal chapel, and the memories of
time-honoured Lancaster and of John, the honest King 'of France,
still dignify the place. But the last nobleman who resided so far
from the now recognised quarters of fashion is about to leave what has
been the seat of the Howards and Percys for nearly three centuries,
and the Strand will be able no longer to boast of a duke. It will
still, however, possess an English earl; but he is only a modest
lodger in Norfolk Street.
When the Duke of Northumberland goes from the Strand, there
goes with him a shield with very nearly nine hundred quarterings;
and among them are the arms of Henry the Seventh, of the sovereign
houses of France, Castile, Leon, and Scotland, and of the ducal
houses of Normandy and Brittany I Nunquam minus solus quam
cum solus, might be a fitting motto for a nobleman who, when he
stands before a glass, may see therein, not only the Duke, but also the
Earl of Northumberland, Earl Percy, Earl of Beverley, Baron Lovaine
of Alnwick, Sir Algernon Percy, Bart., two doctors (LL.D, and D.C.L.)
a colonel, several presidents, and the patron of two-and-twenty livings.
As a man who deals with the merits of a book is little or nothing
concerned with the binding thereof, with the water-marks, or with
the printing, but is altogether concerned with the life that is within,
thatjs, with the author, his thoughts, and his expression of them, so,
in treating of Northumberland House, we care much less for notices
of the building than of its inhabitants—less for the outward aspect
than for what has been said or done beneath its roof. If we look
with interest at a mere wall which screens from sight the stage
of some glorious or some terrible act, it is not for the sake of the
wall or its builders: our interest is in the drama and its actors.
Who cares, in speaking of Shakespeare and Hamlet, to know the
name of the stage carpenter at the Globe or the Blackfriars ? Suffice
it to say, that Lord Howard, who was an amateur architect of some
merit, is supposed to have had a hand in designing the old house in
the Strand, and that Gerard Christmas and Bernard Jansen are
said to have been his “ builders.” Between that brick house and the
present there is as much sameness as in the legendary knife which,
after having had a new handle, subsequently received in addition a
�NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS.^lOT
new blade. The old house occupied three sides of a square. The
fourth side, towards the river, was completed in the middle of the
Seventeenth century. The portal retains something of the old work,
but so little as to he scarcely recognisable, except to professional eyes.
From the date of its erection till 1614 it bore the name of
Northampton House. In that year it passed by will from Henry
Howard, Lord Northampton, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of
Suffolk, from whom it was called Suffolk House. In 1642, Elizabeth,
daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, married Algernon
Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, and the new master gave his
name to the old mansion. The above-named Lord Northampton was
the man who has been described as foolish when young, infamous
when old, an encourager, at threescore years and ten, of his niece,
the infamous Countess of Essex; and who, had he lived a few months
longer, would probably have been hanged for his share, with that niece
and others, in the mysterious murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Thus,
the founder of the house was noble only in name; his successor and
nephew has not left a much more brilliant reputation. He was con
nected, with his wife, in frauds upon the King, and was fined heavily.
The heiress of Northumberland, who married his son, came of a
noble but ill-fated race, especially after the thirteenth Baron Percy
was created Earl of Northumberland in 1377. Indeed, the latter title
had been borne by eleven persons before it was given to a Percy, and
by far the greater proportion of the whole of them came to grief. Of
one of them it is stated that he (Alberic) was appointed Earl in
1080, but that, proving unfit for the dignity, he was displaced, and a
Norman bishop named in his stead! The idea of turning out from
high estate those who were unworthy or incapable is one that might
suggest many reflections, if it were not scandalum magnatum to
make them.
In the chapel at Alnwick Castle there is displayed a genealogical
tree. At the root of the Percy branches is “ Charlemagne ”; and
there is a sermon in the whole, much more likely to scourge pride
than to stimulate it, if the thing be rightly considered. However this
may be, the Percys find their root in Karloman, the Emperor, through
Joscelin of Louvain, in this way: Agnes de Percy was, in the
twelfth century, the sole heiress of her house. Immensely rich, she
had many suitors. Among these was Joscelin, brother of Godfrey,
sovereign Duke of Brabant, and of Adelicia, Queen Consort of Henry
the First of England. Joscelin held that estate at Petworth which
has not since gone out of the hands of his descendants. This princely
suitor of the heiress Agnes was only accepted by her as husband on
condition of his assuming the Percy name. Joscelin consented; but
he added the arms of Brabant and Louvain to the Percy shield, in
order that, if succession to those titles and possessions should ever be
�192
NORTHUMBERLAND HOTSE AND THE PERCYS.
stopped for want of an heir, his claim might be kept in remembrance.
Now, this Joscelin was lineally descended from “ Charlemagne,^ and,
therefore, that greater name lies at the root of the Percy pedigree,
which glitters in gold on the walls of the ducal chapel in the castle
at Alnwick.
Very rarely indeed did the Percys, who were the earlier Earls of
Northumberland, die in their beds. The first of them, Henry, was
slain (1407) in the fight on Bramham Moor. The second, another
Henry (whose father, Hotspur, was killed in the hot affair near
Shrewsbury), lies within St. Alban’s Abbey Church, having poured
out his lifeblood in another Battle of the Boses, fought near that
town named after the saint. The blood of the third Earl helped to
colour the roses, which are said to have grown redder from the gore
of the slain on Towton’s hard-fought field. The forfeited title was
transferred, in 1465, to Lord John Nevill Montagu, great Warwick’s
brother; but Montagu soon lay among the dead in the battle near
Barnet. The title was restored to another Henry Percy, and that
unhappy Earl was murdered, in 1489, at his house, Cocklodge, near
Thirsk. In that fifteenth century there was not a single Earl of
Northumberland who died a peaceful and natural death.
In the succeeding century the first line of Earls, consisting of six
Henry Percys, came to an end in that childless noble whom Anne
Boleyn called “ the Thriftless Lord.” He died childless in 1537. He
had, indeed, two brothers, the elder of whom might have succeeded to
the title and estates; but both brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir Tngram,
had taken up arms in the “ Pilgrimage of Grace.” Attainder and
forfeiture were the consequences; and in 1551 Northumberland was
the title of the dukedom conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick,
who lost the dignity when his head was struck off at the block, two
years later.
Then the old title, Earl of Northumberland, was restored in 1557,
to Thomas, son of that attainted Thomas who had joined the
“ Pilgrimage of Grace.” Ill-luck still followed these Percys. Thomas
was beheaded—the last of his house who fell by the hands of the
executioner—in 1572. His brother and heir died in the Tower in
1585.
None of these Percys had yet come into the Strand. The brick
house there, which was to be their own through marriage with an
heiress, was built in the lifetime of the Earl, whose father, as just
mentioned, died in the Tower in 1585. The son, too, was long a
prisoner in that gloomy palace and prison. While Lord Northampton
was laying the foundations of the future London house of the Percys
in 1605, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was being carried into
durance. There was a Percy, kinsman to the Earl, who was mixed
up in the Gunpowder Plot. Eor no other reason than relationship
�WOBTHUMBEKBEND HOUSE AND THE PEBCYS? 193
with the conspiring Percy the Earl was shut up in the Tower for
life, as his sentence ran, and he was condemned to pay a fine of thirty
thousand pounds. The Earl ultimately got off with fifteen years’ im
prisonment and a fine of twenty thousand pounds. He was popularly
known as the Wizard Earl, because he was a studious recluse,
company ing only with grave scholars (of whom there were three,
known as “ Percy’s Magi ”), and finding relaxation in writing rhymed
■satires against the Scots.
There was a stone walk in the Tower which, having been paved by
the Earl, was known during many years as “ My Lord of Northumber
land’s Walk.” At one end was an iron shield of his arms; and holes
in which he put a peg at every turn he made in his dreary exercise.
One would suppose that the Wizard Earl would have been very
grateful to the man who restored him to liberty. Lord Hayes
(Viscount Doncaster) was the man. He had married Northumber
land’s daughter, Lucy. The marriage had excited the Earl’s anger,
as a low match, and the proud captive could not u stomach ” a benefit
for which he was indebted to a son-in-law on whom he looked down.
This proud Earl died in 1632. Just ten years after, his son, Algernon
Percy, went a-wooing at Suffolk House, in the Strand. It was then
inhabited by Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Theophilus, Earl
of Suffolk, who had died two years previously, in 1640. Algernon
Percy and Elizabeth Howard made a merry and magnificent wedding
of it, and from the time they were joined together the house of the
bride has been known by the bridegroom’s territorial title of Northum
berland.
The street close to the house of the Percys, which we now know
as Northumberland Street, was then a road leading down to the
Thames, and called Hartshorn Lane. Its earlier name was Christopher
Alley. At the bottom of the lane the luckless Sir Edmundsbury
Godfrey had a stately house, from which he walked many a time and
oft to his great wood wharf on the river. But the glory of Hartshorn
Lane was and is Ben Jonson. No one can say where rare Ben was
born, save that the posthumous child first saw the light in Westmin
ster. “Though,” says Fuller, “I cannot, with all my industrious
inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats.
When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, where
his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband.” Mr. Fowler
was a master bricklayer, and did well with his clever stepson. We
can in imagination see that sturdy boy crossing the Strand to go to his
school within the old church of St. Martin (then still) in the Fields.
Kt is as easy to picture him hastening of a morning early to Westmin
ster, where Camden was second master, and had a keen sense of the
stuff that was in the scholar from Hartshorn Lane. Of all the
figures that flit about the locality, none attracts our sympathies so
von. xxxviii.
o
�194 NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS.
warmly as that of the boy who developed into the second dramatic
poet of England.
Of the countesses and duchesses of this family, the most singular
was the widow of Algernon, the tenth Earl. In her widowhood she
removed from the house in the Strand (where she had given a home
not only to her husband, but to a brother) to one which occupied the
site on which White’s Club now stands. It was called Suffolk
House, and the proud lady thereof maintained a semi-regal state
beneath the roof and when she went abroad. On such an occasion
as paying a visit, her footmen walked bareheaded on either side of
her coach, which was followed by a second, in which her women were
seated, like so many ladies in waiting! Her state solemnity went so
far that she never allowed her son Joscelin’s wife (daughter of an
Earl) to be seated in her presence—at least till she had obtained per
mission to do so.
Joscelin s wife was, according to Pepys, “ a beautiful lady indeed.”
They had but one child, the famous heiress, Elizabeth Percy, who at
four years of age was left to the guardianship of her proud and wicked
old grandmother. Joscelin was dead, and his widow married Ralph,
afterwards Duke of Montague. The old Dowager Countess was a
matchmaker, and she contracted her granddaughter, at the age of twelve,
to Cavendish, Earl of Ogle. Before this couple were of age to live
together Ogle died. In a year or two after, the old matchmaker
engaged her victim to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat; but the
young lady had no mind to him. In the Hatton collection of manu
scripts there are three letters addressed by a lady of the Brunswick
family to Lord and Lady Hatton. They are undated, but they con
tain a curious reference to part of the present subject, and are
thus noticed in the first report of the Royal Com-mission
on Historical Manuscripts : “ Mr. Thinn has proved his marriage
with Lady Ogle, but she will not live with him, for fear of
being ‘rotten before she is ripe.’ Lord Suffolk, since he lost
his wife and daughter, lives with his sister, Northumberland.
They have here strange ambassadors—one from the King of Fez, the
other from Muscovett. All the town has seen the last; he goes to
the play, and stinks so that the ladies are not able to take their
muffs from their noses all the play-time. The lampoons that are
made of most of the town ladies are so nasty, that no woman would
read them, else she would have got them for her.”
“ Tom of Ten Thousand,” as Thynne was called, was murdered
(shot dead in his carriage) in Pall Mall (1682) by Konigsmark and
accomplices, two or three of whom suffered death on the scaffold.
Immediately afterwards the maiden wife of two husbands really
married Charles, the proud Duke of Somerset. In the same year
Banks dedicated to her (Illustrious Princess, he calls her) his ‘ Anna
�NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE PERCYS. 195
Bullen,’ a tragedy. He says: “ You have submitted to take a noble
partner, as angels have delighted to converse with menand “ there
is so much of divinity and wisdom in your choice, that none but the
Almighty ever did the like ” (giving Eve to Adam) “ with the world
and Eden for a dower.” Then, after more blasphemy, and very free
allusions to her condition as a bride, and fulsomeness beyond concep
tion, he scouts the idea of supposing that she ever should die. “ You
look,” he says, “ as if you had nothing mortal in you. Your guardian,
angel scarcely is more a deity than youand so on, in increase of
bombast, crowned by the mock humility of “ my muse still has no
other ornament than truth.”
The Duke and Duchess of Somerset lived in the house in the
Strand, which continued to be called Northumberland House, as
there had long been a Somerset House a little more to the east.
Anthony Henley once annoyed the above duke and showed his own
ill-manners by addressing a letter “ to the Duke of Somerset, over
against the trunk-shop at Charing Cross.” The duchess was hardly
more respectful when speaking of her suburban mansion, Sion House,
Brentford. “ It’s a hobbledehoy place,” she said; ££ neither town nor
country.” Of this union came a son, Algernon Seymour, who in
1748 succeeded his father as Duke of Somerset, and in 1749 was
created Earl of Northumberland, for a particular reason. He had no
sons. His daughter Elizabeth had encouraged the homage of a
handsome young fellow of that day, named Smithson. She was told
that Hugh Smithson had spoken in terms of admiration of her beauty,
and she laughingly asked why he did not say as much to herself.
Smithson was the son of “ an apothecary,” according to the envious,
but, in truth, the father had been a physician, had earned a baronetcy,
and was of the good old nobility, the landowners, with an estate, still
possessed by the family, at Stanwick, in Yorkshire. Hugh Smithson
married this Elizabeth Percy, and the earldom of Northumberland,
conferred on her father, was to go to her husband, and afterwards to
the eldest male heir of this marriage, failing which the dignity was
to remain with Elizabeth and her heirs male by any other marriage.
It is at this point that the present line of Smithson-Percys begins.
Of the couple who may be called its founders so many severe things
have been said, that we may infer that their exalted fortunes and best
qualities gave umbrage to persons of small minds or strong prejudices.
Walpole’s remark, that in the earl’s lord-lieutenancy in Ireland “ their
vice-majesties scattered pearls and diamonds about the streets,” is good
testimony to their royal liberality. Their taste may not have been
unexceptionable, but there was no touch of meanness in it. In 1758
they gave a supper at Northumberland House to Lady Yarmouth,
George the Second’s old mistress. The chief ornamental piece on the
supper table represented a grand chasse at Herrenhausen, at which
o 2
�196 NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND WE PERCYSl
there was a carriage drawn by six horses, in which was- seated an
august person wearing a blue ribbon, with a lady at his side. This
was not unaptly called “the apotheosis of concubinage.” Of the
celebrated countess notices vary. Her delicacy, elegance, and refine
ment are vouched for by some; her coarseness and vulgarity are
asserted by others. When Queen Charlotte came to England, Lady
Northumberland was made one of the ladies of the queen’s bed
chamber. Lady Townshend justified it to people who felt or feigned
surprise, by remarking, “ Surely nothing could be more proper. The
queen does not understand English, and can anything be more neces
sary than that she should learn the vulgar tongue ?” One of the
countess’s familiar terms for conviviality was “junkitaceous,” but
ladies of equal rank had also little slang words of their own, called
things by the very plainest names, and spelt physician with an “ f.”
There is ample testimony on record that the great countess never
hesitated at a jest on the score of its coarseness. The earl was dis
tinguished rather for his pomposity than vulgarity, though a vulgar
sentiment marked some of both his sayings and doings. For example,
when Lord March visited him at Alnwick Castle, the Earl of North
umberland received him at the gates with this queer sort of welcome:
“ I believe, my lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and a
Percy met here in friendship.” The censor who said, “ Think of this
from a Smithson to a true Douglas,” had ample ground for the excla
mation. George the Third raised the earl and countess to the rank
of duke and duchess in 1766. All the earls of older creation were
ruffled and angry at the advancement; but the honour had its draw
back. The King would not allow the title to descend to an heir by
any other wife but the one then alive, who was the true representative
of the Percy line.
The old Northumberland House festivals were right royal things
in their way. There was, on the other hand, many a snug, or uncere
monious, or eccentric party given there. Perhaps the most splendid
was that given in honour of the King of Denmark in 1768. His
majesty was fairly bewildered with the splendour. There was in the
court what was called “ a pantheon,” illuminated by 4000 lamps.
The King, as he sat down to supper, at the table to which he had
expressly invited twenty guests out of the hundreds assembled, said
to the duke, “ How did you contrive to light it all in time ?” “ I had
two hundred lamplighters,” replied the duke. “ That was a stretch,”
wrote candid Mrs. Delany; “ a dozen could have done the business
which was true.
The duchess, who in early life was, in delicacy of form, like one of
the Graces, became, in her more mature years, fatter than if the whole
three had been rolled into one in her person. With obesity came
“ an exposition to sleep,” as Bottom has it. At “ drawing-rooms ” she
�NOTTHUMBERLOTD EroWbrANDEn^ PEROVS? 197
no sooner sank on a sofa than she was deep in slumber; but while
she was awake she would make jokes that were laughed at and cen
sured the next day all over London. Her Grace would sit at a win
dow in Covent Garden, and be hail fellow well met with every one of
a mob of tipsy and not too cleanly-spoken electors. On these occa
sions it was said she “ signalised herself with intrepidity.” She could
bend, too, with cleverness to the humours of more hostile mobs; and
when the Wilkes rioters besieged the ducal mansion, she and the duke
appeared at a window, did salutation to their masters, and performed
homage to the demagogue by drinking his health in ale.
Horace Walpole affected to ridicule the ability of the Duchess as a
verse writer. At Lady Miller’s at Batheaston some rhyming words
were given out to the company, and any one who could, was re
quired to add lines to them so as to make sense with the rhymes
furnished for the end of each line. This sort of dancing in fetters
was called bouts rimes. “On my faith,” cried Walpole, in 1775,
“ there are loouts rimes on a buttered muffin by her Grace the
Duchess of Northumberland.” It may be questioned whether any
body could have surmounted the difficulty more cleverly than her
Grace. For example:
The pen. which I now take and
Has long lain useless in my
Know, every maid, from her own
To her who shines in glossy
That could they now prepare an
From best receipt of book in
Ever so fine, for all their
I should prefer a butter’d
A muffin, Jove himself might
If eaten with Miller, at
brandish,
standish.
patten
satin,
oglio
folio,
puffing,
muffin;
feast on,
Batheaston.
To return to the house itself. There is no doubt that no mansion
of such pretensions and containing such treasures has been so
thoroughly kept from the vulgar eye. There is one exception, how
ever, to this remark. The Duke (Algernon) who was alive at the
, period of the first Exhibition threw open the house in the Strand to
the public without reserve. The public, without being ungrateful,
thought it rather a gloomy residence. Shut in and darkened as it
now is by surrounding buildings—canopied as it now is by clouds of
London smoke—it is less cheerful and airy than the Tower, where the
Wizard Earl studied in his prison room, or counted the turns he made
when pacing his prison yard. The Duke last referred to was in his
youth at Algiers under Exmouth, and in his later years a Lord of
the Admiralty. As Lord Prudhoe, he was a traveller in far-away
countries, and he had the faculty of seeing what he saw, for which
many travellers, though they have eyes, are not qualified. At the
�198 NOETHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE’ KEHCyS.
pleasant Smithsonian house at Stanwick, when he was a bachelor, his
household was rather remarkable for the plainness of the female
servants. Satirical people used to say the youngest of them was a
grandmother. Others, more charitable or scandalous, asserted that
Lord Prudhoe was looked upon as a father by many in the country
round, who would have been puzzled where else to look for one. It
was his elder brother Hugh (whom Lord Prudhoe succeeded) who,
represented England as Ambassador Extraordinary at the coronation
of Charles the Tenth at Eheims. Paris was lost in admiration at the
splendour of this embassy, and never since has the hotel in the Eue
de Bac possessed such a gathering of royal and noble personages as
at the fetes given there by the Duke of Northumberland. His sister,
Lady Glenlyon, then resided in a portion of the fine house in the
Eue de Bourbon, owned and in part occupied by the rough but cheery
old warrior, the Comte de Lobau.
When that lady was Lady
Emily Percy, she was married to the eccentric Lord James Murray,
afterwards Lord Glenlyon. The bridegroom was rather of an
oblivious turn of mind, and it is said that when the wedding morn
arrived, his servant had some difficulty in persuading him that it was
the day on which he had to get up and be married.
There remains only to be remarked, that as the Percy line has
been often represented only by an heiress, there have not been wanting
individuals who boasted of male heirship.
Two years after the death of Joscelin Percy in 1670, who died the
last male heir of the line, leaving an only child, a daughter, who
married the Duke of Somerset, there appeared, supported by the Earl
of Anglesea, a most impudent claimant (as next male heir) in the
person of James Percy, an Irish trunkmaker. This individual pro
fessed to be a descendant of Sir Ingram Percy, who was in the Pil
grimage of Grace, and was brother of the sixth earl. The claim was
proved to be unfounded; but it may have rested on an illegitimate
foundation. As the pretender continued to call himself Earl of North
umberland, Elizabeth, daughter of Joscelin, “ took the law ” of him.
Ultimately he was condemned to be taken into the four law courts in
Westminster Hall, with a paper pinned to his breast, bearing these
words: “ The foolish and impudent pretender to the earldom of
Northumberland.”
In the succeeding century, the well-known Dr. Percy, Bishop of
Dromore, believed himself to be the true male representative of the
ancient line of Percy. He built no claims on such belief; but the
belief was not only confirmed by genealogists, it was admitted by the
second heiress Elizabeth, who married Hugh Smithson. Dr. Percy so
far asserted his blood as to let it boil over in wrath against Pennant
when the latter described Alnwick Castle in these disparaging words:
At Alnwick no remains of chivalry are perceptible; no respectable
�NOETHUMBERLAND HOUSE AND THE'PEED xS 199
|trainFof attendants; the furniture and gardens inconsistent; and
nothing, except the numbers of unindustrious poor at the castle gate,
excited any one idea of its former circumstances.”
“ Duke and Duchess of Charing Cross,” or “ their majesties of Mid
dlesex,” were the mock titles which Horace Walpole flung at the
ducal couple of his day who resided at Northumberland House,
London, or at Sion House, Brentford. Walpole accepted and satirised
the hospitality of the London house, and he almost hated the ducal
host and hostess at Sion, because they seemed to overshadow his
mimic feudal state at Strawberry I After all, neither early nor late
circumstance connected with Northumberland House is confined to
memories of the inmates. Ben Jonson comes out upon us from Hartshorn Lane with more majesty than any of the earls; and greatness
has sprung from neighbouring shops, and has flourished as gloriously
as any of which Percy can boast. Half a century ago, there was a
long low house, a single storey high, the ground floor of which was a
saddler’s shop. It was on the west side of the old Golden Cross, and
neariy opposite Northumberland House. The worthy saddler founded
a noble line. Of four sons, three were distinguished as Sir David, Sir
Frederick, and Sir George. Two of the workmen became Lord
Mayors of London; and an attorney’s clerk, who used to go in at
night and chat with the men, married the granddaughter of a king
and became Lord Chancellor.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Northumberland House and the Percys
Creator
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Doran, John
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 189-199 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Article from Temple Bar magazine, May 1873; attribution from Virginia Clark catalogue.
Publisher
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[Bentley]
Date
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[1873]
Identifier
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G5572
Subject
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Aristocracy
History
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Northumberland House and the Percys), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
London
Northumberland House
Percy Family