Pessoa singular

Prudhoe, Lord

• Percy, (Lord) Algernon, 1st Baron Prudhoe and 4th Duke of Northumberland

1792-1865

British collector; he was born in Syon House, 15 Dec. 1792, second son of Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke, by his second marriage to Frances Julia Burrell; he entered the Navy, 1805; retired Captain, 1815; Rear-Admiral, 1850; Vice-Ad., 1857; Admiral, 1862; he was created Baron Prudhoe, 1816; from 1826 he travelled in the East for some years with Major Orlando Felix and met Champollion in Cairo in Sept. 1828 and again in Nubia in Jan. 1829; he reached Sennnar in 1829 and removed two granite lion statues from Gebel Barkal which were later presented to the British Museum (EA 1 and 2); he formed an extensive collection of Egyptian antiquities (over 2,000 objects), added to by his descendants, of which a catalogue by Samuel Birch was published in 1880; he accompanied Sir John Herschel's expedition to the Cape, 1834; DCL, Oxford, 1841; FRS; FSA; FGS; FRAS; he financed E. W. Lane's Arabic Lexikon and sent him to Egypt to collect materials; his wife, nee Lady Eleanor Grosvenor, continued to support Lane after the Duke's death; he succeeded as 4th Duke, 1847; he also restored Alnwick Castle and greatly improved the estate; First Lord of the Admiralty, 1852-3; a Trustee of the British Museum; the bulk of the Alnwick collection of antiquities were purchased by the University of Durham in 1950, but some pieces were sold at the same time to the British Museum; his papers are at Alnwick Castle; he died in Alnwick, 12 Feb. 1865, and was buried in the Percy Chapel.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 423 fig. (portrait).