ABSTRACT
While no expense was spared introducing the eminently marriageable Percy sisters Dorothy and Lucy (illustration 26) at court during the festivities that accompanied the Palatine wedding in 1612/13, the attempts of Henry Percy (1564-1632), ninth earl of northumberland, and Dorothy Devereux (1563/65-1619) to control the love interests of their teenage daughters were in vain. The young Dorothy caught the eye of the much older Frederick Henry, future Prince of Orange, who had accompanied his nephew, the elector Palatine, from the Low Countries to the Stuart court. John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton: “Here is whispering that the Count [Frederick] Henry of nassau hath a month’s mind to my Lord of northumberland’s daughter, which if it should fall right might prove a great match for her” (1:441). A year later, Walter, second Lord Scott of Buccleuch, also showed some interest (Betcherman 30). Dorothy, however, had fallen in love with Robert Sidney, heir to Viscount Lisle. Her mother conducted negotiations, but Robert’s father did not feel the proposed dowry of £5,000 sufficient. He entered into negotiations with the Watson family instead, but his son was not keen, as Chamberlain noted: “it is thought the young gentleman inclines to a daughter of the earl of northumberland … [Robert] grows weary of hunting in a foiled scent, that hath been haunted by so many others” (2:571). Robert and Dorothy took matters into their own hands, marrying without either settlement or full parental consent; the marriage was kept secret, possibly for over a year (Betcherman 34; Atherton). Like her sister, Lucy also got engaged without first informing her father of her attachment to the fashionable spendthrift James Hay, a match brokered by her mother’s friend Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford, Queen Anne’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, who presumably envisioned a court career for Lucy similar to her own.
