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

ADDITIONAL NAMES GIVEN BY DUCHESNE.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Perwinke : from the Frenchpervenche, the old name of the periwinkle, one of the earliest of our English flowers—Chaucer's "fresche Pervincke rich of hewe." But, by a lamentable coincidence, the name also serves for a sort of periwig, as given by Hall—

"His bonnet vail'd, ere ever he could thinke,
Th' unruly wind blows off his periwinke."

According to Robson, the Perwinckes, Perwinges, or Perwings bore Sable three mullets Or and a bordure engrailed Argent; the metals being in some cases counterchanged. The Perwiches (of Leicestershire and Blisworth, Northants) bore Gules a cross moline Or: and another entirely different coat belonged to the same name: Per pale Or and Gules, three crescents counterchanged.
No mention of this family is to be met with in the early records; unless we include in it Thomas de Prendwyc, who in the thirteenth century held of the barony of Vesci in Northumberland.—Testa de Nevill. But, taking into account the very slight similarity between the two names, this would be a venturesome conjecture. A seal, with the legend "S' Elie Fil' Willelmi Parwikini," was found during the repairs of Stockbury Church, Kent. "Elias, son of William Parwikin, lived probably in the reign of Henry HI. The name has not been traced: it may have been a nickname, in which, as frequently found in early times, the epithet parvus is combined; the terminal may be the diminutive found in numerous 'nurse-names,' such as Peter-kin or Perkin, Watkin, Tomkins, &c."—Archaeological Journal, vol. 10, p. 327. Here, again, we are evidently on a false scent. In Normandy I can meet with no name that even approximately resembles it, unless it be Perrinz, in Duchesne's Feoda Normanniae.

I have failed to find any mention of this family in Nichol's Leicestershire, and but few notices of it are to be gleaned in Northants. "Sir Henry Greene of Drayton was in the first year of Henry V. joined in commission with William Lord Ros of Hamlake, for suppressing the insurrection of William Perwich and his adherents, who in a hostile manner had fallen upon several of the King's subjects. * * * Thomas Parwich, 7 Hen. VI. held a knight's fee at Middleton and Collingtree: and 10 Hen. VIII. died Goditha Wigston, possessed of the manor of Milton, which she had held of the King as of his manor of Shelford in Nottinghamshire. She was the wife of William Perwich, son of William Perwich of Lubenham in Leicestershire, by whom she had issue Rose her only daughter and heir, first married to—Kehull, and afterwards to William Digby of Kettleby in the same county."—Bridge's Northants.

"A family named Perwich, who kept a boarding school for young ladies at Hackney after the Restoration, obtained celebrity on account of the beauty and accomplishments of Susanna Perwich, who was buried in the middle aisle of the church in 1661, having died 'in the twenty-fifth year of her age, of a fever she caught by sleeping in a damp bed.'"—Lottie's London. She was sung by a contemporary Calvinistic poet, who published a whole volume of lucubrations, entitled "The Virgin's Pattern," in her honour, and describes her as a paragon of perfection, "rarely accomplished," and rarely beautiful, with temples like "alabaster rocks," and "black, jetty, starry eyes."