Henry Percy, Earl Percy

The Right Honourable
Earl Percy

Earl Percy, photographed by Sir John Benjamin Stone
Under-Secretary of State for India
In office
18 August 1902  9 October 1903
Monarch Edward VII
Prime Minister Arthur Balfour
Preceded by The Earl of Hardwicke
Succeeded by Vacant
Under-Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs
In office
9 October 1903  4 December 1905
Monarch Edward VII
Prime Minister Arthur Balfour
Preceded by Viscount Cranborne
Succeeded by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice
Personal details
Born (1871-01-21)January 21, 1871
Died 30 December 1909(1909-12-30) (aged 38)
Nationality British
Political party Conservative

Henry Algernon George Percy, Earl Percy (21 January 1871 - 30 December 1909), styled Lord Warkworth until 1899, was a British Conservative politician. He held political office under Arthur Balfour as Under-Secretary of State for India and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs before his early death in 1909.

Background

Earl Percy as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, September 1897

Percy was the eldest son of Henry Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, and his wife Lady Edith, daughter of George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll. Alan Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland, and Eustace Percy, 1st Baron Percy of Newcastle, were his younger brothers.[1]

Political career

Percy was returned to Parliament for Kensington South in a November 1895 by-election, replacing the ennobled Sir Algernon Borthwick.[2] In 1902 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for India in the Conservative administration of Arthur Balfour, a post he held until 1903, and was then Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Balfour from 1903 to 1905.

Personal life

Lord Percy died in Paris in December 1909, aged 38. The official cause of death was pleurisy although there were rumours that he had been mortally wounded in a duel.[3]

Further unfounded rumours circulated that he had been murdered on the orders of Winston Churchill, then a rising politician, and that Percy had been the lover of Clementine Hozier, whom Churchill married in 1908. Churchill's mild-mannered brother Jack was whispered to have been the unlikely perpetrator of this act.[4]

Percy was unmarried and his younger brother Alan succeeded their father in the dukedom.[1]

See also

References

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Sir Algernon Borthwick, Bt
Member of Parliament for Kensington South
18951909
Succeeded by
Lord Claud Hamilton
Political offices
Preceded by
The Earl of Hardwicke
Under-Secretary of State for India
19021903
Vacant
Preceded by
Viscount Cranborne
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
19031905
Succeeded by
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice


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