Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester

Coat of arms of Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester

Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Worcester KG (* 1343 - 23 July 1403 in Shrewsbury ) was an English nobleman, military and diplomat. He was executed after an unsuccessful rebellion against the king.

origin

Thomas Percy came from the northern English family Percy . He was a younger son of Henry Percy, 3rd Baron Percy and of Mary of Lancaster , daughter of Henry Plantagenet, 3rd Earl of Lancaster and Maud de Chaworth . This made him a younger brother of Henry Percy , who was raised to Earl of Northumberland in 1377 , and an uncle of Harry Hotspur . About his mother Mary of Lancaster he was considered a relative of John of Gaunt , who married Blanche , a niece of his mother, as well as Kings Richard II and Henry IV. As a younger son he received only three small estates from his father in 1364 and 1368 Yorkshire , Lincolnshire and Leicestershire for lifelong use so that he began a military career.

Military career

Under the Black Prince in southwest France

Presumably he began his military career in the early 1360s when he fought in Gascony during the Hundred Years War , where he is not mentioned for the first time until 1367. In 1367 he probably took part in the campaign of Edward of Woodstock , the Black Prince , to Castile and in the battle of Nájera . From 1369 he was part of the entourage of the Black Prince in Bordeaux , and in the summer of that year he served as Seneschal of La Rochelle . In the same year he took part under the command of Sir John Chandos in the campaign of Sir Robert Knolles in the Dordogne and in the Quercy . Under Chando's command, he besieged the castle of La Roche-sur-Yon in Poitou , which John of Gaunt finally transferred to him. After Chandos was fatally wounded in December 1369, Percy succeeded him as Seneschal of Poitou. In 1370 and 1371 he took part in other campaigns in southern France, including the conquest and sacking of Limoges in September 1370. As a reward, the Black Prince granted him an annual pension of £ 100 and he received occupied lands in Aquitaine . Percy then continued to serve under John of Gaunt in France until he was captured in a night attack on August 23, 1372 in Soubise by the Welshman Houwel Flinc , who served under Owen of Wales on the French side. Percy was brought to Paris and handed over to the French king by Houwel on January 10, 1373. Percy was allowed to travel to England until Easter 1373 to collect his ransom. After he returned, he remained in captivity until the final payment of the ransom before he was released by the Duke of Berry on October 2 .

In the king's entourage

Percy was now in high esteem as a knight and was, probably due to the recommendations of the Black Prince and John of Gaunt in the court of King Edward III. included, who also accepted him into the Order of the Garter in April 1376 . In December 1375, Percy served as the messenger of John of Gaunt, bringing the king reports of the armistice negotiations with the French in Bruges. In January 1377, Duke John of Brittany explicitly asked for Percy, who should bring a letter from him to Flanders. The king rewarded Percy with pensions, which his successor King Richard II confirmed on February 1, 1378. Percy had attended Richard II's coronation with his brother Henry. In October 1378, together with another knight of the court, he led the church reformer John Wyclif to the House of Commons , where he had to answer. During the Peasants' Revolt , he was one of the few companions of King Richard II when he faced the rebels at Mile End in June 1381 . Subsequently, Percy was part of the army that put down the rebellion in Essex and St Albans .

As an admiral at sea

During his career, Percy rarely served in northern England and on the Scottish border, where his family's estates were located. In 1377 and from 1383 to 1384 he was briefly tasked with securing part of the Scottish Marches . In 1378, 1384 and 1398 he was part of the English negotiating delegation in peace and armistice negotiations with Scotland. From 1377 to 1380 he was responsible for the isolated Roxburgh Castle . However, he was rarely in this fortress, but from 1377 at the latest he often served at sea. From 1377 to early 1378 he served in the fleet of Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham , who fought a Castilian squadron in the English Channel . In 1378 he took part in the unsuccessful sea expedition of John of Gaunt against the Castilian fleet. On November 5, 1378 Percy was appointed admiral, this command he held until April 8, 1380. In 1379 he served as admiral of Sir John Arundel's fleet , which after a long delayed departure finally got caught in a storm in December. While Arundel's ship sank and Arundel drowned, Percy's ship weathered the storm without loss. From May 20, 1379 to June 24, 1381 he was together with Sir Hugh Calveley , then until February 18, 1386 sole captain of Brest , although he rarely stayed in the Breton city. In 1380 he took part in the campaign of the Earl of Buckingham in Brittany. After no major sea expeditions had taken place due to financial bottlenecks from 1381, Percy served from January 29, 1385 to February 22, 1386 again as an admiral. From May to July 1385 he led a fleet of over 30 ships with Sir Baldwin Raddington against a French fleet that had assembled for an invasion of England at Sluis . He then took part in King Richard II's campaign to Scotland.

As an admiral and diplomat in Spain

The next year he served as admiral of the fleet with which John of Gaunt set out on July 7th from Plymouth for Spain to claim his inheritance claim to Castile. In northern Spain he took part in the campaign of John of Gaunt, but Percy served Gaunt not only as a military, but above all as a diplomat. He was involved in the negotiations for an alliance with Portugal and then accompanied Gaunt's daughter Philippa to Portugal, where she King John I married. On June 10, 1387 John of Gaunt instructed him to negotiate an agreement with the Castilian ambassadors on Gaunt's claims to Castile together with Sir Jean Trailly . The negotiations took place in Trancoso , Portugal , where a peace treaty was negotiated until July 1387, in which John of Gaunt recognized the claims of his rival John of Castile . At the end of 1387 Percy returned to England to report the outcome of the negotiations to the king. That meant he had not been in England during the politically troubled period when the power struggle between the King and the Lords Appellant broke out . In June 1388 he returned to Bayonne in south-west France with reinforcements for Gaunt and finally brought the peace treaty to a conclusion, which was concluded on July 8, 1388 between Gaunt and the Castilian ambassadors. Percy served as Gaunt's chamberlain as the first witness to the treaty and then returned to England with him.

Career as a courtier of Richard II.

Percy officially remained Gaunt's henchman, and in his will, Gaunt named him his first executor in February 1398. But after his return from Spain Percy soon belonged to the court of King Richard II. After a short time Percy was one of the most influential courtiers at the royal court. On February 22, 1390, the King made him his deputy Chamberlain of the Household , and on March 24, 1393 he made him Steward of the Household . The offices, pensions and gifts he received from the king included the appointment as legal advisor of South Wales, the 1390 lifelong transfer of Newcastle Emlyn, and 1393 that of Haverfordwest Castle . In 1392 Percy served the king as ambassador to France. During Parliament in September 1397, in which the King indicted and disempowered the remaining four Lords Appellant, Percy acted as the clergy's advocate reviewing the judgments and penalties. The king rewarded him richly. On September 29, he was promoted to Earl of Worcester and given extensive lands that the king had confiscated from the convicts. More gifts followed, and in October he and his brother Henry Percy received the Castle, City and Forest of Jedburgh , so that he was now considered a rich man for the first time. In early 1398 he was appointed military commander of Calais .

In 1395 and 1399 Percy took part in Richard II's campaigns in Ireland. When the king learned in Ireland in 1399 that the exiled Henry Bolingbroke had landed in England and was leading a rebellion against him, the king returned to South Wales in late July. At Carmarthen , the king realized that his army was disintegrating and that his rule was collapsing. The King dismissed Percy, whose brother Henry Percy was a major supporter of Bolingbroke, as Steward of the Household, and Percy broke his staff. While the king left his army with a few loyal followers and went to North Wales, Percy Bolingbroke joined Chester . He did not take an active part in the further action against the disempowered king.

Service under Henry IV.

As a loyal follower of Bolingbroke's father John of Gaunt, Percy, despite his prominent position at the court of the overthrown king, suffered no disadvantages from Bolingbroke, who had become the new king as Henry IV . Although he had to return the lands he had received in 1397 to the previous owners, the king compensated him with a corresponding pension of 500 marks . He was also allowed to keep his title. In addition, Henry IV confirmed him as Admiral of the North and West, Percy had held this office since January 16, 1399. On October 12, 1399, the King appointed Percy as envoy to lead the difficult negotiations with France about the continuation of the armistice and the return of Queen Isabelle de Valois , wife of Richard II. The negotiations dragged on until 1401, and on July 31, 1401 Percy himself handed over the former queen at Calais to the French Count Walram of St. Pol. From March 1, 1401 to the beginning of March 1402, Percy was again Steward of the Household, which is why he gave up his office as admiral on April 20, 1401. After the death of Sir Hugh le Despenser of Collyweston in October 1401, Percy became tutor to Harry of Monmouth , the Prince of Wales. Because of the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr he was appointed deputy king in Wales on October 21, 1401. The king's confidence in Percy was shown when Percy was among the ambassadors who brought Joan of Navarre , the king's bride, to England in January 1403 .

Rebellion and death

In South Wales, Percy fought the Welsh rebellion without much success, while his nephew Harry Hotspur cracked down on the rebels in North Wales. Percy unsuccessfully advised the king to end the rebellion through negotiations, while Hotspur pressed in vain for the release of his brother-in-law Edmund Mortimer , who had been captured in Welsh in 1402 . Both Thomas Percy and his nephew were frustrated by the king's ruthless policy towards the rebels.

On April 1, 1403 Percy was replaced as the King's Deputy in South Wales by the Prince of Wales, but Percy remained in his service. The Prince of Wales undertook a campaign to North Wales with an army of 3,000 men, in which Percy participated with a contingent of a knight, 38 men-at-arms and 200 archers. As of June, Sir Hugh Browe reinforced the army with another 19 men in arms and 100 archers. In early July, Percy met his nephew Hotspur in Chester, who was already rebelling against the king by then. Browe and Percy joined Hotspur, and together they moved with their troops to Shrewsbury . When they reached the city on July 20, they found that the king's army had already united with the troops of the Prince of Wales. Negotiations the next morning were unsuccessful, leading to the bitter Battle of Shrewsbury , where the Hotspur fell and Thomas Percy was captured. After a brief trial, he was beheaded two days later in Shrewsbury.

His body was buried in St Peter's Abbey in Shrewsbury, and his severed head was sent to London and on display over London Bridge until December 18th . His title had expired with his conviction. Parliament subsequently declared its rebellion to be treason in January 1404; this judgment was passed in 1484 during the reign of Richard III. repealed by Parliament at the instigation of Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland , a great-great-grandson of his brother.

Percy remained unmarried but left behind an illegitimate son, Thomas Percy , mentioned in 1408.

rating

The chronicler Jean Froissart described Percy as polite, loyal, and taper, and other contemporaries also confirmed this assessment. He was one of the most famous English knights of the second half of the fourteenth century, and probably none of the participants in the Battle of Shrewsbury had as much military experience as Thomas Percy. His involvement in his brother and nephew's rebellion came as a surprise, especially to the king. Percy, who had not given his life for the king towards the end of Richard II's reign, risked it for his brother and nephew. The reasons for this are unclear, but Percy probably resented King Henry IV's dismissal and murder of his predecessor more than the king had assumed. Contemporaries already suspected that the betrayal of his confidante Thomas Percy had prevented the king from negotiating the Percys rebellion at Shrewsbury.

Web links

• AL Brown: Percy, Thomas, Earl of Worcester (c.1343-1403). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Adrian R. Bell; Anne Curry; Andy King; David Simpkin: Online Sir Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester (1343–1403) (The Soldier in later Medieval England: An exciting AHRC research Project)
• Thomas de Percy, 1st and last Earl of Worcester on thepeerage.com , accessed August 22, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ JW Sherborne; Anthony Tuck: War, politics, and culture in fourteenth-century England . Hambledon Press, London 1994. ISBN 0-8264-3273-5 , p. 101
2. ^ Rees R. Davies: The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr . University Press, Oxford 1995, ISBN 0-19-285336-8 , p. 181
3. ↑ The Soldier in later Medieval England: Sir Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester (1343-1403). (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 22, 2015 ; accessed on August 24, 2015 . 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.  
4. ↑ AL Brown: Percy, Thomas, Earl of Worcester (c.1343-1403). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004