Percy

The House of Percy was the most powerful noble family of medieval northern England. Its ancestor William de Percy crossed to England soon after 1066. When the male line failed in the twelfth century, the heiress Agnes de Percy married Joscelin of Louvain, who kept the Percy surname.

In 1309 Henry de Percy bought Alnwick Castle, which became the family seat. In 1377 another Henry Percy was created Earl of Northumberland; he and his son Harry Hotspur helped Henry IV seize the crown, then rebelled. Hotspur fell at Shrewsbury in 1403 and the earl was killed in 1408.

The Percys' feud with the Nevilles helped open the Wars of the Roses. The eleventh earl died without male heirs in 1670; through his heiress Elizabeth Seymour, Sir Hugh Smithson took the Percy name and became Duke of Northumberland in 1766.