Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland
Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (* April 27 1564 in Tynemouth, † November 5, 1632 ) was a powerful intellectual and cultural personality of the English aristocracy.
He was given the nickname The Wizard Earl ( Earl " Warlock " ) for his scientific ambitions, his alchemical experiments, his interest in cartography and its large library. His mild hearing and speech disorder did not prevent him to have become one of the major intellectual and cultural figures of his generation with influence and wealth.
Life
Percy was born in Tynemouth Castle, the son of the 8th Earl of Northumberland, whose successor he was in 1585. He was one of the richest nobleman in England. Although his title came from the north of England, he also owned property in the South of England, Petworth House and Syon House, a few miles north of Richmond ( London ), which he in 1594 through his marriage to Dorothy Devereux, widow of Sir Thomas Perrot and sister of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex had acquired. From the marriage with two daughters Dorothy Dorothy ( 1558 ) and Lucy (1600) and two sons Algernon, 10th Earl of Northumberland (1602 ) and Henry ( 1605), emerged after two early losses child (1597 ). Her daughter Dorothy married Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester. This marriage was after about two years in the fractures.
Life in prison (1606-1621)
His cousin Thomas Percy (1560-1605), Chief Officer in the north of England was one of the five main conspirators of the Gunpowder plot ( Gunpowder Plot ) of 5 November in 1605. Through uncovering the conspiracy was Henry Percy by the government under James I suspected at to have been involved in the betrayal. He was sentenced by the Star Chamber to life imprisonment in the Tower of London prison including the loss of all public offices and fined ( £ 30,000 ) in June 1606. He finally arrived at the age of 57 years in 1621 again.
His conditions of stay in the Tower were comfortable. His apartment was located in the Martin Tower with a good view. His housing conditions allowed him to accommodate about 20 staff, partly to educate his young sons and to keep its own library .. He had a tower of jail almost free access of his friends such as Thomas Harriot, Sir Walter Raleigh ( temporary detention comrade ), the mathematician Walter Warner, Thomas Allen and Nicholas Hill, the physicist, Robert Norton, Robert Hues, Robert Flood, Nathaniel Torporley uva
With Raleigh he discussed scientific ideas and made experiments. Harriot, who had been introduced by Raleigh 1588/89 and employed by Henry Percy as a tutor and house - scientists, it instructed, inter alia, in navigational astronomy. From 1598 (or 1607? ) Harriot lived in Percy's estate Syon House near Richmond. Here Harriot made already at maps of the moon, months before Galileo succeeded in doing so. It will report that he, almost 200 sunspots described next to Moon and Venus between December 1610 and Januar 1612/13.
Raleigh had - and prescribe as a medical genius of the royal family recipes - as a state prisoner. Raleigh had already used a converted chicken house as a distillation station when Henry Percy followed him into the Tower, and they share a new distillation facility constructed there in order, inter alia, produce esoteric table drinks and medicine. Contemporaries Percy et al For this reason, the name " the Wizard Earl " given.
By Henry Percy two "scientific" work has become known posthumously. In one untitled work freed Henry Percy of the Aristotelian position that there is no vacuum in nature. The work indicates Harriots " atomistic " influence. In the second paper ( "Advice to his Son " ), he deals with principles of education.
The School of Night
Henry Percy is a suspected 'secret' Association (also known as the school of night) by intellectuals, selected members of the progressive nobility and educated citizens, including mathematicians, astronomers, travelers to the New World, geographers, philosophers, poets, among others have heard ( alongside others such as Lord Strange, Thomas Harriot, William Warner, Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman, Mathew Roydon, Richard Baines ( who testified against Marlowe in the process to Marlowe's atheism ), Sir George Carey, etc.) These are secretly met have to discuss new developments in religion, atheism, etc. Machiavellianism. However, there are no reliable sources that can prove that knew all these people. There are, however, various sources already in the Elizabethan age, who speculated about connections of several of these people.
Marlowe and Henry Percy
The fact that Henry Percy may have been the patron of the poet Christopher Marlowe is to suspect due to contemporary sources. As Marlowe 1592 got into trouble because of a presumed Counterfeit Coins in Vlissingen by Richard Baines, Marlowe called, according to the so-called " Flushing letter " by Robert Sidney to Lord Burghley explicitly to his association with Henry Percy (The scholer [ Marlowe ] sais himself to be very well known .... to the Earle of Northumberland ). There are also contemporary sources ( charges against " Richard Cholmley " ), demonstrating a connection from Marlowe to Henry Percy's friend Raleigh ( ... that Marlowe told him did he hath read the atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others. ). In the indictment for the death of Christopher Marlowe the informer Richard Baines formulated (2 June 1593 - the next day of Marlowe's " official " death) with the words Marlowe (he affirmed what did Moses but a Juggler and Hariot did one, being Sir W. Raleigh you can do more than he ... )
Swell
- JW Shirley: The Scientific Experiments of Sir Walter Ralegh, The Wizard Earl and The Three Magi in the Tower, 1603-17 ', Ambix, Vol 4. 1949
- Gordon Batho: The Education of a Nobleman Stuart, British Journal of Educational Studies, 1957
- Robert Kargon: Thomas Hariot, the Northumberland Circle and Early Atomism in England, Journal of the History of Ideas 1966
- Mark Nicholls: The ' Wizard Earl ' in Star Chamber: The Trial of the Earl of Northumberland, June 1606 The Historical Journal 1987