Dorothy Percy, Countess of Northumberland

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Dorothy Percy, (née Devereux) Countess of Northumberland (c. 1564 – August 3, 1619), was the younger daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex by Lettice Knollys, and the wife of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland.

In 1583 she married Sir Thomas Perrott, 1st Baronet of Haroldston. They had three daughters, Penelope, Dorothy and Elizabeth. There were rumours at the time that Dorothy's father-in-law, John Perrot, was an illegitimate son of Henry VIII.

She married secondly, Henry Percy, but the marriage was not a success, and they separated. In 1605, the earl was sent to the Tower of London on suspicion of involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, and he was not freed until after his wife's death.

They had four children: Lady Dorothy Percy, Lucy Percy, Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, and Henry Percy.

[edit] References

• Betchemann, Lita-Rose (2005). Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Collins.
• Brenan, Gerald (1902). A History of the House of Percy. London: Freemantle.
• Brennan, Michael and Noel Kinnamon (2003). A Sidney Chronology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.