From Margaret - HENRY HOTSPUR A NORTHUMBERLAND LEGEND

With a lot of help from the internet, I have been doing research into local heroes. Here is an offering about Henry Hotspur.

Henry Percy, "Hotspur", is one of Shakespeare’s best-known characters. In Henry IV, Part I, Percy is portrayed
as the same age as his rival, Prince Hal. In fact he was 23 years older than Prince Hal, the future Henry V who
was a youth of 16 at the date of the Battle of Shrewsbury.

The name of one of England's football clubs, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, acknowledges Henry Percy,
whose descendants owned land in the neighbourhood of the club's first ground in the Tottenham Marshes.

Henry Percy was born 20 May 1364 at either Alnwick Castle or Warkworth Castle in Northumberland. He was
the eldest son of Henry Percy, 1 st Earl of Northumberland and Margaret Neville, daughter of Ralph de Neville,
2nd Lord Neville of Raby, and Alice de Audley. (Ralph Neville led the victorious English army at the Battle of
Neville’s Cross.)

He was knighted by Edward III in April 1377 together with the future Richard II and Henry IV. He was
appointed Warden of the East March either on 30 July 1384 or in May 1385, ] and in 1385 accompanied Richard
II on an expedition into Scotland. As a tribute to his speed in advance and readiness to attack on the Scottish
borders, the Scots bestowed on him the name "Haatspore".

In April 1386, he was sent to France to reinforce the garrison at Calais and led raids into Picardy. In
appreciation of these military endeavours he was made a Knight of the Garter in 1388. Reappointed as
Warden of the East March, he commanded the English forces against James Douglas, 2nd Earl of Douglas, at the
Battle of Otterburn on 10 August 1388, where he was captured, but soon ransomed for a fee of 7000 marks.

In spite of the favour that Henry IV showed the Percys in many respects, they became increasingly discontented
with him. Among their grievances were:

• The king's failure to pay the wages due to them for defending the Scottish border
• The king's favour towards Dunbar
• The king's demand that the Percys hand over their Scottish prisoners
• The king's failure to put an end to Owain Glyndŵr's rebellion through a negotiated settlement
• The king's increasing promotion of his son's (Prince Henry) military authority in Wales
• The king's failure to ransom Henry Percy's brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, whom the Welsh had captured in June 1402.

Spurred on by these grievances, the Percys rebelled in the summer of 1403 and took up arms against the king. It
is thought that the Percys were in collusion with Owain Glyndwr, in his campaigns against the English.
The circumstances of Percy's death differ in accounts. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham stated, in his
Historia Anglicana that "while he led his men in the fight rashly penetrating the enemy host, [Hotspur] was
unexpectedly cut down, by whose hand is not known". Another account states that Percy was struck in the face
by an arrow when he opened his vizor for a better view. The legend that he was killed by the Prince of Wales
seems to have been given currency by Shakespeare writing at the end of the following century.