The House of Percy (old French Perci) were the most powerful noble family in northern England for much of the Middle Ages, having descended from William de Percy (d.1096), a Norman who crossed over to England with William the Conqueror in early December 1067, was created 1st feudal baron of Topcliffe in Yorkshire, and was rebuilding York Castle in 1070. The name derives from the manor of Percy-en-Auge in Normandy, the home of the family at the time of the Norman Conquest. Members have held the titles of Earl of Northumberland or Duke of Northumberland to this day, in addition to Baron Percy and other titles. In common with their rivals, the House of Neville, the Percy surname twice died out in the male line but was re-adopted by the husband of a Percy heiress and by their descendants. In the 12th century, the original Percy line was represented by Agnes de Percy, whose son by her husband Joscelin of Louvain adopted the surname Percy. Again in the 18th century, the heiress Elizabeth Percy married Sir Hugh Smithson, who adopted the surname Percy and was created Duke of Northumberland.
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Famous quotes containing the words house of and/or house:
“When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 8:12-14.
“But the house of the prudent countryman will be, of course, a place of honest manners; and Demeter Thesmophoros is the guardian of married life, the deity of the discretion of wives. She is therefore the founder of civilised order.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)