Нортумберленд графинясы Дороти Перси: Өмір және туыстар тарихы

English noble

Dorothy Percy (née Devereux), Countess of Northumberland (formerly Perrot, née Devereux; c. 1564 – 3 August 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.

Dorothy was born in about 1564, the daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys, a lady in waiting of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Her paternal grandparents were Sir Richard Devereux and Dorothy Hastings, after whom she was named. Her maternal grandparents were Sir Francis Knollys and Lady Catherine Carey, the daughter of Mary Boleyn, herself the sister of Queen consort Anne Boleyn. Dorothy had an elder sister Penelope Devereux, who was said to have been the inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella. She had three younger brothers, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Walter Devereux and Francis Devereux. In September 1576, Dorothy's father died in Dublin, Ireland, of dysentery. Two years later, her mother married secondly and in secret, Queen Elizabeth's favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, thus earning the wrath of the queen, who promptly banished her from court. The marriage produced one son Robert, Baron Denbigh who was born in 1581. The boy died at the age of three. In 1589, eleven months after Leicester's death, Dorothy acquired another stepfather, Sir Christopher Blount, who was thirteen years younger than her mother. On 25 February 1601, her brother Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex was beheaded at the Tower of London for treason. Unlike their sister Penelope, Dorothy was not suspected of playing any role in the rebellion. Essex denounced Penelope as a traitor, an act which shocked many, but did not accuse Dorothy.

A sole novel, Beryl Walthew's 1979 Sister to Essex, features Dorothy Devereux as the protagonist. It tells the story of her two marriages—one for love, the other for money—and that of the more famous members of the Devereux family: her mother, Lettice, her sister, Penelope, and her brother, Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex. Most events are described second hand as Dorothy is seldom present at key moments. Dorothy is a minor character in the historical novel The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham. The narrator describes how her second husband, Northumberland, used their marriage to heal the old quarrel between his wife and his close friend Sir Walter Raleigh (who some years earlier had ruined an attempt by Dorothy to regain the Queen's favour), with the further aim of arranging a reconciliation between Raleigh and Dorothy's brother Essex.