The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Perceval of Nork House, Earl of Egmont in Ireland 1733; Baron Lovell and Holland 1762; Baron Arden 1802.

"The House of Yvery," a work privately printed by the second Earl of Egmont in 1742, professes to give the history of this family, but the earlier descents cannot with certainty be relied on, and even the extraction of Richard Perceval, the modern founder of the present family in the time of James I., from the Somersetshire Percevals, is according to Brydges, in his Biographical Peerage, not without some doubts. It appears, however, certain that he was the son of George Perceval, of Tykenham, in the county of Somerset, by Elizabeth Bampfylde, and fifth in descent from Richard Perceval, of Weston-Gordein, in the same county, who died between 1433 and 1439, the representative of a family who had been seated there from the reign of Richard I., and who claim to be descended from the House of Yvery in Normandy. The elder branch of the Percevals continued at their manor of Weston until the extinction of the male line in the person of Thomas Perceval, Esq. in 1691. The younger branch, the ancestors of the present family, were seated in the county of Cork in Ireland, and in the eighteenth century at Enmore in Somersetshire, sold after the death of the fifth Earl of Egmont. Nork House was the seat of Lord Arden, father of the present Earl, and brother of the third Earl of Egmont.

See "A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, &c." 8vo. 1742; and Collinson's History of Somersetshire, vol. iii. p. 171.

Arms.—Argent, on a chief indented gules three crosses patée of the first. This coat appears to have been borne by Sir Roger Perceval in the reign of Edward I. See his seal engraved in "The House of Yvery," vol. i. p. 41.

Present Representative, George James Perceval, sixth Earl of Egmont.

Gentle.

Weston of West-Horsley.

Adam de Weston, living in 1205, was the ancestor of this family, which has been from a very early period connected with Surrey. In the reign of Edward II., the Westons were of West-Clandon, and also of Weston in Albury, and of Send and Ockham, in this county. The last was sold in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and West-Horsley inherited by the will of William Nicholas, Esq. in 1749.