A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Percy, Elizabeth
PERCY, ELIZABETH,
Was the only child and heiress of Jocelyn Percy, last Earl of Northumberland. Her mother was Elizabeth Wriothesly, the sister of Lady Rachel Russel. Upon the death of her husband, she married Mr. Montague; and the young Elizabeth was given in charge to her paternal grandmother, but with the pledge that she was not to contract any marriage without the consent of her mother, who entered into a similar engagement with the grand-mother. Notwithstanding these promises, at the age of eleven, Elizabeth Percy was, in 1679, made the wife of Henry Cavendish, Earl of Ogle, only son of the last Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, without the knowledge of her mother. The youthful husband died the following year, leaving her again an object of intrigue and speculation. She had scarcely been a widow a twelvemonth, when she was again, through the management of her grandmother, married to Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat, remarkable for his large fortune. Though still a child in the nursery, the little beauty had learned to have a will of her own; and while she was made the tool of others, conceived so violent a dislike to her future husband, that she made her escape to Holland. Young as she was, the fame of her beauty, as well as her great wealth, attracted universal attention. Admiration and cupidity combined, caused a plan to be laid to set her free from the trammels that bound her, and leave her at liberty to make a new choice. The celebrated Count Koningsmark, whose beauty and daring had made him the theme of conversation and scandal from one end of Europe to the other, cast his eyes on the fair Elizabeth, and marked her for his own. He hired three bravoes, and to these he gave commission to assassinate Mr. Thynne. This audacious project they boldly carried into execution. While their victim was driving through Pall-Mall, they stopped his horses, and fired at him through the carriage window. The first shot was fatal; five balls entered his body, and he expired in a few hours. The heiress, now a second time a widow, though still little more than fifteen, was again disposed of; her third husband being Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset, of whom the tale is told of his repressing the familiarity of his second wife, Lady Charlotte Finch, when she tapped him upon the shoulder with her fan, "Madam," he said, turning haughtily round to the presuming beauty, with a frowning brow, "my first wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty." The Duke of Somerset was, at the period of his marriage, just twenty, handsome, commanding in his person, and with many good qualities. Nothing appears to have interrupted this marriage, or its subsequent harmony. The period of the Duchess of Somerset's death is unrecorded. The Duke's marriage with his second wife took place in 1726. The Duchess of Somerset was Groom of the Stole to Queen Anne. She succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in that office, and was hence-forward an object of dislike and vituperation to that power-loving duchess, who possessed in an eminent degree the quality so commended by Doctor Johnson, being "a good hater."