whose political opinions he shared, in the close and intimate association of official life, which, more almost than any other career, demands give-and-take, forbearance, and mutual accommodation. He declined in turn the Viceroyalty of Ireland, the Master Generalship of the Ordnance, and the Wardenship of the Stannaries; but his personal authority and parliamentary influence were so great that, while holding no office, he still was regarded as a kind of informal member of the Cabinet. In June 1807, Lord Camden was authorized, on behalf of his colleagues, to assure the Duke that 'in the event of his Grace having any disposition to confer with Ministers upon public business, the Duke of Portland, or the Lord Chancellor, will certainly wait upon him to discuss every measure of importance previous to its adoption.'

The Duke had married, in very early life, a daughter of the minister Lord Bute, but this marriage, which proved both childless and unhappy, was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1779. In the same year he married one of the beautiful daughters of Mr. Peter Burrell, by whom he had three surviving sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Hugh, born in 1785, succeeded as third Duke of Northumberland on his father's death in 1817. In early life he had taken a prominent part under his father's command, in raising and training forces of Northumbrian volunteers, in view of the threatened invasion of England by Bonaparte. From 1806 to 1812 he sat in the House of Commons, generally supporting the Tory administration, though in the debates on West Indian slavery he voted with the Opposition.

In 1825 he represented George IV. as Ambassador Extraordinary at the Coronation of King Charles X. The mission was conducted with extraordinary splendour, and in consideration of the prevailing distress, the Duke insisted on defraying the entire cost out of his own purse. Similarly, on being appointed ten years later Viceroy of Ireland, he proposed a reduction of the salary by 10,000l. a year. So successful was his Irish administration, at a time rendered very critical by the recent removal of Catholic disabilities, that he won from Sir Robert Peel, a minister little inclined to excessive eulogy, the praise of being the best Chief Governor that ever presided over the affairs of Ireland.' The third Duke of Northumberland married Lady Charlotte Clive, daughter of the Earl of Powis, and, dying without issue in 1847, was succeeded by his brother, Algernon, who had been created Lord Prudhoe, in 1816.

The fourth Duke of Northumberland had been bred at sea, and had seen some active service in the French War. It was

on this account that, on the formation of Lord Derby's Administration in 1852, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. But he deserves more particular mention in these pages on account of his devotion to archæology and literature, and his patronage of learning and art. He organized an elaborate survey of the Roman Wall and roads in Northumberland, and contributed liberally to the expenses of the excavations made by Dr. Bruce and others. Alnwick Castle owes to him a fine Egyptian Museum, catalogued by Dr. Birch, and another of British Antiquities, catalogued by Mr. Albert Way; and he encouraged in a princely manner numerous archæological enquiries. While he was in Egypt he made the acquaintance of the great Arabic scholar Mr. Lane, and induced him to undertake his gigantic work, an English-Arabic Dictionary, and munificently defrayed the whole expenses, which on his death were guaranteed by his widow Eleanor. He left a permanent and grateful memorial of his Dukedom in the complete restoration of Alnwick Castle. While preserving intact the external characteristics of the old fortress, he boldly adopted the Cinque-cento style for the decoration of its interior. It was a hazardous experiment, but the material employed is so rich, and the execution of the details is so skilful, that a competent authority has pronounced it 'difficult to regard even so great an incongruity as other than a distinguished success.'

The Duke married Lady Eleanor Grosvenor, eldest daughter of the Marquess of Westminster, but had no issue. He died in 1865, and his remains were conveyed from Northumberland House to the Percy vault in Westminster Abbey, with a public procession of almost regal pomp. The Barony of Percy and the other honours transmissible in the female line devolved on his grand-nephew the Duke of Atholl, and the Dukedom passed to his cousin George Earl of Beverley. The first Duke of Northumberland had obtained from George III. the Barony of Lovaine for his second son, who was subsequently made Earl of Beverley. His eldest son, George, second Earl of Beverley, had attained his eighty-seventh year when he succeeded his cousin in the Dukedom. Before succeeding to his Earldom he had sat in Parliament, and held office in the Royal Household. He married Louisa Stuart-Wortley, sister of Lord Wharncliffe, by whom he had three surviving sons and two daughters. He died in 1867, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon George, now sixth Duke of Northumberland. Of the present Duke it would be improper to say more than that he worthily represents the honours of the House of Percy, and that the Conservative party have been indebted to him for

wise counsel and sound advice from the time he sat in the House of Commons, before the passing of the first Reform Bill, down to Lord Beaconsfield's second Administration, which he joined as Lord Privy Seal in 1878. He is married to the daughter of the late Henry Drummond, a man of brilliant intellect and accomplishments, whose voice was always heard with pleasure in the House of Commons, and whose memory is still fondly cherished by his surviving friends.

Thus we have traced, in rough and scanty outline, the fortunes of the House of Percy, from the dim and distant period when history first emerges from the haze of tradition, down to the point of time at which we ourselves are standing. We have followed them in all their picturesque and strange vicissitudes, in struggle, in misfortune, and in splendid success. We have seen the chiefs of the House ever enriching their descendants by great acquisitions of new territory, and illustrating their escutcheon by alliances with the noblest of the names which have made England famous. We have seen them great in war and great in peace; foremost alike in domestic strife and foreign enterprise; and only turning aside from the career of arms to discharge the most responsible offices of civil government. We have seen them at one time exercising a high-handed authority over a subjected province; at another, championing the rights of the people against Royal usurpation; and figuring in turn as the associates, the defenders, and the rivals of the Crown itself. All this has been sketched in its broad and general features. To draw it in detail would be to write the History of England during eight hundred eventful years. For, in the first place, we read in the fortunes of the Percies; in what they were, and what they had, and what they did; in the story alike of their failures and their successes, their virtues and their crimes; an epitome of the Feudal System. Truly says Mr. de Fonblanque :

In the individual lives of successive generations of Percies, from the Conquest down to this period, we may trace the growth and development of a system to which, opposed as it is to every principle of modern political life, and in spite of the vices inherent in a purely military aristocracy, England in past ages owed much of her greatness and prosperity; a system which not only fostered a manly national spirit, but, by acting as a barrier against the arbitrary power of the Crown, served to secure popular liberties.

In the wars of King Stephen the Norman Percies had represented the earlier stages of feudalism; under King John a Percy was among the foremost champions of its progress, and a prominent figure in its

final

final triumph. The Lords of Alnwick, ready as they ever were to fight the foreign enemies of the King, were jealous guardians of baronial rights against Royal encroachment. In the person of the first Earl of Northumberland feudalism had attained the zenith of its power; his fall marked the earliest stage of its decline.

The devastating Wars of the Roses and the persistent policy of the Tudors to vest all authority in the Crown, sapped and gradually destroyed the power of the great nobles of England, and with it the system which they represented; but the first fatal blow inflicted upon feudalism was dealt by the sword which struck down the Earl of Northumberland on Bramham Moor.'

But the interest of the history of the Percies by no means ends with the fall of Feudalism. The race, which rose to greatness amid the storm and stress of the Middle Ages, held its own through the dissolution of the Old World and the birth of the New; through the throes of the Reformation, the stern struggle of the Great Rebellion, and the popular reaction which restored the Anglican altar and the Stewarts' Throne. Every vicissitude of the national polity augmented its wealth and extended its power. The political influence, which the Percies had acquired in the days of medieval monarchy and personal government, was developed and consolidated by the growth and organization of our parliamentary system. The ownership of Alnwick and Sion and Northumberland House carried with it a predominating authority in Northumberland, and Middlesex, and Westminster; and the most arbitrary king and the most powerful minister were glad to make terms with the ducal master of many legions. The votes of his nominees might decide the fate of an Administration, or determine, in a close balance of parties, the bent of a national policy. And it needs no subtle knowledge of parliamentary nature to divine, that the wielder of such influence might safely reckon on honours, emoluments, and high offices of State as the certain, if not the stipulated, reward of great services rendered at a critical moment to a minister who appreciated them. Thus sixteen chiefs of this favoured race have worn the Order of the Garter; and it is not too much to say, that every great event in foreign or domestic policy, which signalized the eighteenth century, brought its special contribution, unavowed perhaps, but not the less real, to the ever-increasing greatness of the House of Percy.

Nor was it politics alone that contributed to the splendid result. The social, economic, and material development of England, served the same end by an automatic process. Great towns sprang up where villages had been, and every house paid rent to the Duke of Northumberland. The application of machinery

machinery to manufactures, while it converted the small handicraftsman into a great employer of labour, proportionately enriched the lord of the soil. The scientific improvement of agricultural methods converted great tracts of waste and moorland into highly-rented farms. Above all, the rapidly-increasing consumption of coal and iron, alike for domestic, commercial, and military purposes, made the great mines which underlay the patrimony of the Percies a veritable El-Dorado. And, as though to complete the harmonious regularity with which each succeeding age brings its characteristic contribution to the Percies' wealth, the most conspicuous addition which our generation has made to the beauty and convenience of the capital-the great Embankment of the Thames-brought the present Duke of Northumberland a compensatory sum as large as the total fortune of many a peer who is considered wealthy.

But the fact which, after all, gives their historic interest to these splendid annals, and redeems from tedium the long tale of acquisition and aggrandizement, is the conspicuous witness which they bear to the historic continuity of English life, and to the penetrating influence, enduring even to our own day, of the Feudal System. For though, as we have already seen, actual and unmixed Feudalism fell with the fall of the Earl of Northumberland on Bramham Moor, its effects and influence are never absent for long together from the annals of the Percies. Nay, they have not yet been eradicated. We trace the same spirit, under varying forms, from the beginning of their story to the present day. We see it in the first heiress of the Housethe gentle Lady Agnes-bestowing her hand on the brother of the Queen of England, but retaining her maiden-name, and presiding in queenly state over her own 'Court.' We see it in the Crusader-lord, dying under the walls of the Holy City; in the stout baron, who helps to extort the Charter from King John; in the gallant soldiership of Hotspur and his brother Ralph; in the regal living of Henry the Magnificent,' importing into the bleak North all the luxury and refinement of the Renaissance, and set forth, with delightful fulness of detail, in the invaluable Household Book' of Northumberland. We see another aspect of the same feudal spirit in the 'proud submission, the dignified obedience,' of the heir to all this splendour-the unthrifty Earl,'-receiving his early discipline as a page in the household of Cardinal Wolsey. And then again, as the old order of society passes away, and makes room for the new, we discern again and again the recrudescence of the feudal spirit; in the military authority exercised, though under constitutional forms, by the Lords of Alnwick over the wild popu

lations