One of my long-standing historical pet theories is that the political history of Northumberland has really been a centuries-long vendetta between the Percys and the Greys. Seeing their name on the “Dering Roll” at Dover Castle on Saturday reminded me that the Percys really did, in Wodehouse’s inimitable phrase, come over with the Conqueror. They were loyalists during the Civil War, and one of them even before then had been in on the Gunpowder Plot. In 1780 Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley was in charge of the Northumberland Militia when they helped put down the Gordon Riots. Henry “Hotspur” Percy, of Shakespearean fame, is probably their most famous scion. The most notorious of the Greys on the other hand was that great Shakespearean villain Grey the Southampton traitor to Henry V. To this day, the Percys at Alnwick are solid Torys and the Greys are staunch Liberals.