Anne Percy and her letters

During the brief and ill-fated Northern Rebellion of 1569, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, gave a frank assessment of the leadership of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, stating that his wife, Anne Percy, Countess of Northumberland, was the driving force behind the earl's rising. Hunsdon suggested that she was encouraging the earl to rebel, ‘so as the gray mare ys the better horse’. Anne was later attainted independently from her husband for her own participation in the rebellion, riding with the rebel forces, intercepting post, and choosing exile, first in Scotland and later in the Habsburg-ruled Low Countries, rather than suing for clemency. Her activities in exile warranted surveillance by English intelligencers under the authority of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and between 1570 and 1577 her correspondence was routinely intercepted. During her years in exile, she was implicated in political projects that included an abortive papal-backed invasion of Ireland in 1578, and the campaign to restore Mary, Queen of Scots. Throughout the 1570s her position amongst the English exile community was such that Queen Elizabeth I ‘raged marvously’ against Anne and, according to one contemporary intelligence report, desired to see Anne burned for the support she continued to receive on the Continent.

Early life and marriage

Anne was born and baptised sometime before Michaelmas 1536, the third daughter of Henry Somerset, second Earl of Worcester (1496–1549), and his second wife Elizabeth Browne (c.1502–1565). Anne's exact date of birth is not clear, but the Earl of Worcester's accounts indicate that a child named Anne was baptised by Michaelmas 1536. Elizabeth, Coun¬ tess of Worcester, was known to be pregnant in 1536 when she testified against Anne Boleyn, to whom she had formerly been lady-in-waiting. A salacious contemporary rumour asserted that the countess was in fact pregnant with the child of Thomas Cromwell. There is little evidence to support this, and the rumour seems to have grown out of a request from the countess to Cromwell asking that he not inform her husband of her debts, including a loan of £100 from Queen Anne.

Relatively little is known about Anne Percy's early life, although she spent much of her childhood at her father's principal seat of Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, under the care of her nurse and with her sib¬lings for company.