Percy

The Percys arrived in England in 1066 with the Norman conquest, settling first in Yorkshire and later acquiring through marriage and grant the great northern estates centred on Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, which they have held continuously since 1309. The 1st Earl of Northumberland was created in 1377 by Richard II, and for the next two centuries the Percys ran the English border country with effectively palatinate authority, raising and commanding the northern levies for the crown in every major Scottish and continental campaign.

The towering figure of the late medieval line is Sir Henry Percy (1364-1403), 'Hotspur', son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland, the most celebrated knight of his generation and immortalised in Shakespeare's Henry IV. Hotspur fought the Scottish wars at Homildon Hill in 1402, where he defeated Archibald Douglas. The Percys' political weight was such that the crown took repeated steps across the 15th century to balance them against the Nevilles and the Dacres on the northern Marches.

The senior earldom passed through the male line until the late 17th century and was revived in 1766 when Sir Hugh Smithson, who had married the Percy heiress Lady Elizabeth Seymour, was created Duke of Northumberland and adopted the Percy surname. The Percy dukedom has continued unbroken since, the family still seated at Alnwick Castle, the second-largest inhabited castle in England after Windsor. The current 12th Duke of Northumberland holds Alnwick along with Syon House in west London and the family estates across the north-east.