Northumberland, Earl, Henry Percy

Northumberland, Earl, Henry Percy surnamed the Wizard, figures in ecclesiastical history for the part he played in the Gunpowder Plot. He was born in 1563, and was a son of Henry, the eighth earl, who died in the Tower in 1585. In the battle against the Invincible Armada in 1588 he commanded a ship. He was a cousin of Thomas Percy, an accomplice in the Gunpowder Plot (1605); and although the earl himself was a Protestant, he was confined many years in the Tower on suspicion. He acquired the appellation of Wizard by his study of the occult sciences in prison. He died in 1632.