Sir Josceline Percy, and the Essex rebellion.
“Sir Josceline Percy was the seventh son of Henry eighth Earl of Northumberland; he was born in 1578, and knighted in 1599.* * *
Having been an adherent of the Earl of Essex, together with his elder brother Sir Charles Percy, they both received the royal pardon in 44 Elizabeth, for any concern they might have had in that Earl’s rebellion.
The name of Sir Josceline does not occur in the court history of James I.; the whole house of Percy having fallen into disgrace, together with Sir Josceline’s eldest brother the Earl, on account of the Gunpowder Treason. He died unmarried in 1631.
Sir Josceline seems to have imagined that the Council acted upon the rule layed down in Magna Charta, that a man should only be fined salvo contenemento, that is, saving to a freeholder his freehold, to a merchant his merchandise, to a rustic his plough, to a soldier his arms, and to a scholar his books. But the practice of the Council was as much at varince with magna Charta as their authority, and many members of the Percy family had sufficient reason to know that it was so. The Earl was fined in the Star Chamber £30,000, besides being sentenced to imprisonment for life, and he actually paid £20,000, . . . ” (Camden Society, Anecdotes and Traditions, 65)."
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