William Henry Percy


William Henry Percy was a British Royal Navy officer and politician.

Family

Percy was the sixth son of Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley, and his wife, the former Isabella Susannah Burrell, daughter of Peter Burrell.

Naval and political career

Entering the navy as a first-class volunteer on board the 64 gun in May 1801 and going with it to China, Percy returned in November 1802 and was posted to as a midshipman..
He was made post captain on 21 March 1812, but his next command came to grief when he lost 50 of his crew wounded or killed in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Bowyer, Mobile and then had to set fire to his own ship to keep her out of enemy hands. A court martial determined that the attack was warranted by the circumstances. Still, this was his last naval service, though he did carry back to England despatches announcing the British defeat at the Battle of New Orleans.
For a while during his retirement he was a commissioner of excise and - thanks to the influence of his maternal aunt's stepson, the second Marquess of Exeter - he sat as Tory MP for Stamford, Lincolnshire from 1818 to 1826. He resigned from Parliament in order to take up an excise appointment, worth £1,200 a year. He was made a rear-admiral on the retired list on 1 October 1846.
Percy died unmarried in October 1855, aged 67, at 8 Portman Square, London, his eldest brother's home.