Anne Percy, Countess of Northumberland (née Somerset; 1536 – 17 October 1596) was an English noblewoman and one of the instigators of the Northern Rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England.
On 22 June 1558, she married Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, one of the most powerful nobles in Northern England, and like Anne, he practised the Catholic religion.
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, who headed a detachment of royal troops sent by the Queen to quell the rising, reported that Anne, who was pregnant at the time, had been "stouter than her husband", and rode "up and down with the army".
Later, the Earl of Shrewsbury wrote that Mary Queen of Scots had planned to escape after the birth, dressed as Christine Hogg's midwife or nurse.
[6] After the insurrection was put down by Baron Hunsdon's troops, Anne and Percy fled to Scotland, where they sought refuge with Hector Graham of Harlaw, a Border outlaw.
When Graham betrayed her husband to James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, she and her baby escaped to the Continent, arriving in Bruges on 31 August 1570, where she sought aid from Pope Pius V and King Philip II of Spain to raise money for her husband's ransom; the Pope gave her four thousand crowns and King Philip sent her six thousands marks.
Anne would spend the rest of her life as an exile in Flanders, while in 1572, Earl Morton sold her husband to Queen Elizabeth who had him publicly executed at York for treason.
[11] In September 1591, Charles Paget, an exile in Antwerp, informed the Percy's that Anne had died and requested that they send her daughter Joan to Flanders to fetch her belongings.