Sir Robert Percy

by W E Hampton

Sir Robert Percy of Scotton is a somewhat obscure figure,  who, unlike his remote kinsfolk the Percies of Alnwick, was a staunch supporter of the Yorkist cause. Sir Robert was probably the son of Robert Percy of Scotton (alive in 1474) by Cecily Metcalfe.  He was a follower of the Yorkist Nevilles and of the Duke of York, and was taken prisoner at the disastrous battle fought at Wakefield on 30th December 1460, where York and Salisbury, and two of their sons were among the slain. After Edward IV’s accession the widowed Countess of Salisbury made a formal appeal of murder against nine principals and thirty nine accessories, mostly Yorkshiremen, Robert Percy accusing one of the principals, Sir William Plumpton, of having ‘laboured to have his head stricken off’ following his (Percy’s) capture at Wakefield.

The elder Percy having fought and suffered for York, it is hardly surprising that his son may have been educated in the household of that greatest of Yorkists, the Kingmaker.  The younger Robert could not have been born much after 1445, and would therefore have been aged about sixteen when the nine or barely ten-year-old Richard, Duke of Gloucester entered Warwick’s household. Said to have been brought up with Richard III ‘from a child’, the reverse would be more nearly true, for Robert would at sixteen have then been considered an adult, liable to be called upon as a fighting man for serious military service.

He is believed to have been in the Duke’s service as a squire by 1469, when ‘John of Par and Perse’ were among the royal party entertained  to dinner by John Paston. Perhaps Robert, like the Parrs, fought under the Duke of Gloucester’s banner at Barnet, two years later. There is no record of his having followed Richard of Gloucester to Scotland in the campaigns of 1481-2, where so many of Richard’s northern followers were knighted, and it would seem that he had no military reputation in the sense that, for example, Sir Richard Ratcliffe had. He was, however, prominent in the festivities which accompanied the coronation of Richard III – having been knighted the day before – and, with Francis Viscount Lovell, served the King and Queen at the coronation banquet.  He was made Comptroller of the Household (replacing Sir William Parr), and it has been vaguely asserted that he was also Captain of the King’s Guard (of which stout body of men no record exists), and a Privy Councillor.  He may have accompanied the King to York after the coronation; he certainly attended the reception of the Scottish envoys at Nottingham in September 1484.  Commissioned to enquire into treasons and the possessions of traitors in Essex and Hertfordshire in December 1483, he was a commissioner of array for those counties in May and December 1484,  and sheriff there in November.  In December 1484 he was also a commissioner of array for the West Riding of Yorkshire, but it will have been his son Robert who, with Philip Conyers and other northerners was a commissioner of array for Cambridgeshire in the same month. Sir Robert served on the only commission of the Peace for Essex of Richard’s reign.

If not, then one of Richard III’s great captains – and this is not to call into question his courage – Sir Robert was clearly trusted and favoured by the King, and he received numerous grants. In February 1484 he was granted the manors of Garboldsham, Norfolk, Maldon, Walton’s Hall, Flannerswick, Jakelottys, and Monden in Essex, formerly of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford. Associated with him – unusually – in this grant, was his second wife, Joyce.  In March 1483 he also received the de Vere properties of Campes, Saxton and Abyton in Cambridgeshire, and in reversion on the death of Thomas Lord Stanley, the manors of Scotton and Brearton, with other properties in Scotton, Brearton, Staveley, Steynley, Burton and Knaresborough in Yorkshire.

At about the same time Sir Robert, Robert his son (by his first wife, Ellinor, daughter of Sir Ralph Bewley), Robert Lampton (who will be Sir Robert’s cousin, Robert Lampton, then aged about thirty-two years), and John Pulleyn, a distant kinsman, and also of Scotton and Serjeant of the Cellar to Richard III, shared an annuity of £35 out of Clitheroe, during the life of Lord Stanley.  Pulleyn was the brother in law of another of Richard III’s influential supporters, Sir Thomas Mauleverer. Robert Lambton’s brother Percival was, in 1491, Serjeant-at-law and Attorney-General to John Shirwood, Bishop of Durham, and in 1494, Seneschal (until 1501) and Attorney-General to Shirwood’s successor, Fox.

According to the Croyland Chronicle, Sir Robert fought for the King at Bosworth, and was slain. He was not attainted, perhaps because without the grants made by Richard III his property was not great. Yet his son, Robert, like John Pulleyn, Richard Banke, Sir Thomas Mauleverer, the Lords Scrope, Kay of Halifax, and others, joined the Earl of Lincoln and Viscount Lovell in 1487, in rebellion against Henry VII. After the defeat of Lincoln at Stoke Field, Percy, Banke, and Kay were attainted, Robert’s attainder being reversed two years later. His wife was Elizabeth Norton. Their posterity continued at Scotton for several generations.

Taken from ‘Sir Robert Percy and Joyce his wife’ by W E Hampton, The Ricardian, 1978.

Articles with named authors reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Richard III Society.