Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland

Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632), The Wizard Earl

Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland KG (born April 27, 1564 in Tynemouth , † November 5, 1632 ) was a powerful intellectual and cultural figure of the English aristocracy.

Because of his scientific ambitions, his alchemical experiments, his interest in cartography and his large library, he was nicknamed The Wizard Earl (Count "Sorcerer"). His mild hearing and speech disorder did not prevent him from becoming one of the most influential and influential intellectual and cultural figures of his generation.

Life

Percy was born in Tynemouth Castle to the 8th Earl of Northumberland , who he succeeded in 1585. He was one of the richest nobles in England. Although his title came from northern England, he also owned properties in southern England, at Petworth House and at Syon House, a few miles north of Richmond, London , which he acquired in 1594 through his marriage to Lady Dorothy Devereux , widow of Sir Thomas Perrot and sister of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex , had acquired. The marriage with Dorothy had two daughters Dorothy (1598) and Lucy (1600) and two sons Algernon, 10th Earl of Northumberland (1602) and Henry (1605) after two early child losses (1597) . Their daughter Dorothy married Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester.

Life in Prison (1606–1621)

His cousin Thomas Percy (1560-1605), Chief Officer in the north of England was one of the five main conspirators of the gunpowder plot (Gunpowder Plot) of November 5, 1605. By the discovery of the conspiracy, Henry Percy was suspected by the government under James I. to have been involved in treason. He was therefore sentenced by the Star Chamber in June 1606 to life imprisonment in Tower Prison, London, including the loss of all public office and a fine (£ 30,000). He was only released again in 1621 at the age of 57.

His living conditions in the tower were comfortable. His apartment was in the Martin Tower with a good view. His housing conditions allowed him to accommodate around 20 servants, to raise some of his young sons and to keep his own library. He had almost free access to his friends in Tower Prison, such as B. Thomas Harriot , Sir Walter Raleigh (temporary inmate), the mathematicians Walter Warner, Thomas Allen and Nicholas Hill, the physicist, Robert Norton, Robert Hues, Robert Flood, Nathaniel Torporley and others. v. a.

With Raleigh he discussed scientific ideas and made experiments. Harriot, who had been introduced by Raleigh in 1588/89 and was employed by Henry Percy as tutor and in-house scientist, instructed him a. a. in navigational astronomy. From 1598 (or 1607?) Harriot lived at Percy's Syon House near Richmond. Harriot was already making maps of the moon here months before Galileo succeeded in doing so. It is reported that he described almost 200 sunspots between December 1610 and January 1612/13 in addition to the Moon and Venus.

Raleigh, as a prisoner of state, and as a medical genius, had to prescribe prescriptions to the royal family. Raleigh had already used a converted chicken house as a distillation station when Henry Percy followed him into the tower and they jointly constructed a new distillation facility there, in order to a. Making esoteric table drinks and medicine. Contemporaries Percy et al. a. for this reason given the name "the Wizard Earl".

Two “scientific” works by Henry Percy have become known posthumously. In one, untitled work, Henry Percy frees himself from the Aristotelian position that there is no vacuum in nature. The work points to Harriot's "atomistic" influence. In the second work (“Advice to his Son”) he deals with the principles of education.

The school of the night

Henry Percy is said to be part of a presumed "secret" association (also known as the School of the Night ) of intellectuals, select members of the progressive nobility and educated citizens including mathematicians, astronomers, New World travelers, geographers, philosophers, poets and the like. a. have heard (among others such as Lord Strange , Thomas Harriot, William Warner, Christopher Marlowe , George Chapman , Mathew Roydon, Richard Baines (who testified against Marlowe in the case of Marlowe's atheism), Sir George Carey and others) These are said to have met secretly to discuss new developments in religion, atheism, Machiavellian etc. However, there are no reliable sources that can prove that all of these people knew each other. On the other hand, there are various sources as early as the Elizabethan Age that speculated about connections between various of these people.

Marlowe and Henry Percy

Contemporary sources suggest that Henry Percy was the patron saint of the poet Christopher Marlowe . When Marlowe got into trouble in Vlissingen in 1592 because of a suspected counterfeiting of coins by Richard Baines, according to the so-called “Flushing Letter” from Robert Sidney to Lord Burghley , Marlowe explicitly referred to his connection to Henry Percy ( The scholer [Marlowe] sais himself to be very well known .... to the Earle of Northumberland ). There are also contemporary sources (indictment against "Richard Cholmley") showing a connection between Marlowe and Henry Percy's friend Raleigh ( ... that Marlowe told him that he hath read the atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others. ). In the indictment of the death of Christopher Marlowe, the informant Richard Baines (June 2, 1593 - the following day of Marlowe's "official" death) formulates with the words Marlowe ( he affirmed that Moses was but a Juggler and that one Hariot, being Sir W. Raleighs man can do more than he ... )

literature

• JW Shirley: The Scientific Experiments of Sir Walter Ralegh, The Wizard Earl and The Three Magi in the Tower , 1603-17 ', Ambix, Vol. 4, 1949
• Gordon Batho: The Education of a Stuart Nobleman , British Journal of Educational Studies 1957
• Robert Kargon: Thomas Hariot, the Northumberland Circle and Early Atomism in England , Journal of the History of Ideas 1966
• Mark Nicholls: The 'Wizard Earl' in Star Chamber: The Trial of the Earl of Northumberland , June 1606, The Historical Journal 1987

Web links

• Henry PERCY (9th E. Northumberland) at tudorplace.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gordon Batho, The Education of a Stuart Nobleman, British Journal of Educational Studies 1957
2. ↑ Frances Yates, as an addendum to your investigation of Shakespeare's "Lost Labor Labor"
3. ^ Henry Percy, Advice to his Son, GB Harrison (Ed.) 1930
4. ^ Susanne S. Webb, Raleigh, Hariot, and Atheism in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 1969
5. ^ FS: Boas, Marlowe and his circle 1929, Oxford
6. ↑ CB: Kuriyama. Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life, Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press 2002, ISBN 0-8014-3978-7
7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

predecessor	Office	successor
Henry Percy	Earl of Northumberland 1585-1632	Algernon Percy