Background
Northumberland was the second son of General Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, and his second wife Frances Julia, daughter of Peter Burrell.
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
Northumberland was the second son of General Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, and his second wife Frances Julia, daughter of Peter Burrell.
He was educated at Eton and Street John"s College, Cambridge.
Northumberland entered the Royal Navy in March 1805, aged 12, on board HMS Tribune and served in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1815, when only 22, he was promoted to captain, taking command of HMS Cossack in August, and commanding her until she was broken up some 10 months later. The following year, aged 23, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Prudhoe, of Prudhoe Castle in the County of Northumberland (Prudhoe being a town in Northumberland).
He later became an Admiral in the Royal Navy.
Between 1826 and 1829 he was part of an expedition to Egypt, Nubia and The Levant. In 1834, he travelled to the Cape of Good Hope with John Herschel to study the southern constellations.
Northumberland became the first president of the newly formed National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck in 1834, and went on to become the president of its successor, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Northumberland succeeded his childless elder brother in the dukedom in 1847.
In 1852 he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, with a seat in the cabinet, by the Earl of Derby, a post he held until the fall of the government in December 1852.
In 1853 he was made a Knight of the Garter.
Royal Society.