Percy power
Alexander Rose's Kings in the North allows Jonathan Sumption to trace the fluctuating fortunes of a titular dynasty
The Guardian, Saturday 30 November 2002
Kings in the North: The House of Percy in British History
by Alexander Rose
578pp, Weidenfeld,
Marcel Proust, we are told, was never more pleased than when he came upon the name of the Duke of Northumberland. Perennially fascinated by the boom of ancient titles, the novelist was delighted by its echo of high lineage and its sheer sonority. As the equally elegant and superior English writer who tells us this observed, the title had a "sort of thunderous quality".
For most of its history, it has been borne by the Percy family, who became earls of Northumberland in the 14th century and dukes in the 18th. The Percys were companions of the Conqueror, prominent participants in English civil wars from the 12th century to the 16th, captains in the 100 years war, alternately heroes and villains in the history plays of Shakespeare, accessories to the gunpowder plot, political fixers under George III, generals in the American war of independence and admirals in the Napoleonic wars, ministers of Queen Victoria, and Tory wirepullers in the 1920s. Over the past eight centuries, two earls and one duke have been killed in battle, most recently in 1940; one has been lynched by a mob; one beheaded for treason, one shot by government assassins, five incarcerated in the Tower for more or less prolonged periods, and one beatified by the Church of Rome. It is a striking record of public service or disservice, depending on your point of view. The Percys are still the owners of Alnwick Castle and Syon House, and are among the largest landowners in Britain.
Most great landed fortunes in English history have been acquired by a mixture of luck, patience, royal service and skilful marriage broking. The Percys had all of these, but the real foundation of their fortunes was the continual war on the borders of England and Scotland in the 14th and 15th centuries. The best-known incidents of these long and wearisome wars were the occasional set-piece campaigns fought by the armies of the kings, punctuated by great battles from Dunbar (1296) to Flodden (1513). But their real character was seen between these glamorous events, in the grubby ebb and flow of day-to-day violence across the border: hit-and-run raids against towns, castles and churches, mass cattle and horse-rustling expeditions, crop-burning campaigns and crude protection rackets.
The main reason why this continued for so long was that for most of the period the English were also fighting a major war against France. They were therefore never able to devote enough resources to the conquest of Scotland for long enough to achieve their ends. Instead, their policy was to leave the northern counties of England to organise their own defence against the Scots with only minimal assistance from the exchequer at Westminster.
This policy had two main consequences. One was to transform the regions within 100 miles on either side of the border into a world of their own, a bleak wasteland thinly populated by men whose lives were wholly devoted to subsistence farming and organised banditry. The other was to create vast, semi-independent lordships controlled by the royal wardens of the march, local potentates acting for all practical purposes as viceroys with exclusive power to raise revenue and recruit manpower for the defence of the border.
Before the Scottish wars, the Percys were an ambitious but not particularly remarkable Yorkshire family with subsidiary estates in Sussex. Henry Percy III (d 1315) was "sober in peace and cruel in bataill" according to tradition. He was the first member of his line to play a leading role in the politics of the border. He acquired, and intermittently enjoyed, extensive estates in lowland Scotland confiscated from the Scots. Then, in 1309, in a rather shady deal with the guardian of its under-aged owner, Percy bought the barony of Alnwick in Northumberland for cash. He became the greatest landowner in the north after the king and the princes of the royal house, and the owner of one of its most powerful fortresses. His son, Henry Percy IV, added to the family holdings by acquiring Warkworth castle.
However, the major source of the family's power was the ap-pointment of successive Percys as wardens of the east March of Scotland. This office, on which they retained their grip for most of the next two centuries, gave them command over the loyalties of the border tribes, practical control over the royal border fortresses in the valley of the Tweed, all the revenues of royal lands in north-eastern England, the right to recruit a private army generally standing at about 2,000-3,000 men, first claim on the booty and ransoms of war, and a stipend, which together with the revenues at their disposal must have exceeded their expenses in most years.
It was a highly satisfactory deal. But it inevitably led to trouble when the traditionally robust structures of English government broke down in the reign of Richard II in the late 14th century, and again under Henry VI in the middle of the 15th. In the civil wars of the late middle ages, the great Percy power bloc in the north-east was among the most powerful pieces on the board. The foolish first earl and his impetuous son Hotspur played a decisive part in bringing down Richard II in 1399 and came close to destroying Henry IV in 1403.
As soon as the Scottish menace faded in the 16th century, the Percys lost their power. The Tudors no longer needed a viceroy in the north. The sixth earl was ruined by Henry VIII, the seventh executed by Elizabeth, the eighth murdered in the Tower and the ninth abandoned politics for chemistry and astronomy. His successors abandoned the north altogether, and went to live on their Sussex and London estates. The modern fortunes of the family are due to Sir Hugh Smithson, who married the last Percy heiress in the 18th century, adopted her name, and re-established the family as a great northern dynasty.
This is a well-researched, jauntily written, but rather odd book, which carries the Percy story up to the middle of the 16th century. Alexander Rose's problem is that, important as they were, the Percys were not doing interesting things all the time, and there are long periods when we cannot know what they were doing, interesting or not. Biographical materials are sparse, especially for the earlier generations, and Rose is too honest a historian to fill the gaps with myth, verse or speculation. He has therefore written a history not just of the Percy family but of England and Scotland as well.
The technique is to interrupt the narrative from time to time to point out the role that the Percys did or did not play in the events being described. Thus an interesting account of this or that war, embassy or political crisis is quite often followed by a statement that the Percys had nothing to do with it; or that they were present but that nothing is known of their personal contribution. The result is a clutter of facts only marginally relevant to the subject.
Does it matter? Probably not. This is admittedly a fat book, with a thin book inside struggling to get out. But that may be inevitable in a work of family history written for a wider audience. It should certainly not deter people from reading it. What Rose has to say about the political and social history of England is interesting, well-informed, and perceptive. The north is often neglected in general histories. A Percy's eye view of the subject at least has the advantage of telling a familiar story from an unconventional angle.
· Jonathan Sumption's three-volume history of the 100 years war is published by Faber.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002...ardianreview22