The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Percelay : or Percehaie, as Leland gives it. This name occurs several times in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of the twelfth century. Ralph Percehaie is one of the tenants in chief entered in Domesday, and held in Berkshire vii. hagae in burgo de Walingeford. No more mention of his posterity is to be found in that county; but in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1194-98 occur Roger Percehaie of Bedfordshire, and Reginald Percehaie of Norfolk. They are said to have been collaterals of the great House of Percy, though their coat has no resemblance to the five fusils in fesse of the latter. They bore Ermine on a chief Gules a lion passant crowned Azure. "It is worthy of remark that, in Yorkshire as in Wilts, there was a Percehaie neighbour of a Percy; and they may be of the same stock remotely, although their arms are different. There is a radical distinction between the two names; the prefixes may be the same, but hay (la haia, Latin = etum) means an enclosure; and y or ey (ac or aix, Latin = iacum) indicated a spring or running water (vide Mordacque's translation of Salverte's work, ii. 205)."—A. S. Ellis. To my ears it is obviously a nickname. The first Percehaie—it is never De Percehaie—may have been some adventurer who had stormed the guarded hate that surrounded some outlying hamlet or manor; or had cunningly stolen through to take it by surprise. Or he may have been simply a mauvaise fete given to breaking bounds in an altogether different sense.

This enigmatical name was very generally distributed throughout the country. We find it in Cheshire between 1172 and 1190, when Andrew Fitz Geoffrey Percehai granted to Adam de Dutton a bovate of land in Budworth, where he and his ancestors held eight bovates by knight's service under Gilbert Fitz Brito.—Ormerod's Cheshire. It is entered, temp. Stephen, in the chartulary of Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, where Percenhaie de Sepenheve appears as a witness.—Nichols' Leicester. William Percehay and John his son held in Huntingdonshire about 1272 (Rot. Hundred.), and Walter Pertchay in Scotland under Robert Bruce. William Percehaye, joint Lord of Titherington in Wiltshire (can this have been the same William?) was fined and pardoned as an adherent of the Earl of Leicester in 1322.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. The Percehaies of Little Chaldfield, in that county, were close neighbours of the Percies of Great Chaldfield (see above): but this is all I know of them, as they are passed over in silence by Sir Richard Hoare. In Devonshire, "Kitton, that lyeth in the parish of Holcombe Rogus, was in Henry the Third's tyme the dwelling of Roger Percehay, to whom succeeded William, Henry, Sir Henry Percehay the judge, William, and William which died without issue, whose inheritance was divided anno 22 of King Richard II. betwixt Richard Warr and Alis, wief of Nicholas Heale, as cosens and next heyres. The said Richard Warr (to whom Kitton was assign'd) was sonne of Jone, daughter of Gonilda, one of the sisters of Sir Henry Percehaye, and ye said Alis Heale was daughter of Alis, the other sister."—Westcote's Devonshire. The longest-lived family was the one seated in Yorkshire. They held Ryton in Rydale, and Park in Lincolnshire, but the Sheriff of Lincolnshire reports them as non-resident in 1325. This was in the time of "Walterus de Perzhay," Persay, or Persay, a Commissioner of Array in the Wapentake of Rydale in the North Riding in 1322, who was summoned to the great Council at Westminster in 1324.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. William Percehaie was Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1375; and John Percehaie de Ryton occurs in 1433 among the gentry of the county. They intermarried with the Stricklands, Wyvills, Fauconbergs, &c. Matilda Fauconberg, who brought Whitton in Lincolnshire to Edmund Percehaie, was the great grand-daughter of Walter, fifth Lord Fauconberg. Her father had been the son of another county heiress, Margaret d'Arcy of Flixburgh. Leonard Percehaie, a cadet of this house, served in the Guard of Henry IV. of France. Dugdale, in his Visitation of Yorkshire, furnishes us with the pedigree of four generations, commencing with Leonard (grandfather of the above-named younger son) and ending with Christopher, then (in 1665) eleven years old. He was the son of an earlier Christopher, who had been one of Cromwell's Commissioners of Sequestration in Yorkshire, and proved the last of the line. His daughter and heiress, Barbara, was the wife of William Selby of Biddleston in Northumberland.