Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/385

 Majesty a grant of the whole island of St. John's in the Gulph of St. Lawrence,’ &c.], [London, 1763], 8vo; privately printed. He collected materials for the third volume of the ‘Genealogical History of the House of Yvery’ [see, first ], the manuscript of which is among the muniments of the Earl of Egmont (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. p. 233).

[Besides the authorities quoted in the text, the following books among others have been consulted: Grenville Papers, 1852–3, vols. ii. iii. and iv.; Mahon's Hist. of England, 1858, vols. iv. and v.; Drummond's Hist. of Noble British Families, 1846, vol. ii. art. ‘Perceval;’ Collinson's Somerset, 1791, i. 94; Hasted's Kent, Blackheath Hundred, 1886, pp. 17 n., 121 n., 140, 166–7 n.; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, 1789, ii. 266–7, vii. 86–7; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage, 1890, iii. 245; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 89, 101, 115, 129, 658; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 147, 167, 187, 254, 432, 433; Haydn's Book of Dignities, 1890; Watt's Bibl. Brit. 1824; Halkett and Laing's Dict. of Anon. and Pseud. Lit. 1882–8; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 

PERCEVAL, PHILIP (1605–1647), politician, was born in 1605. He was the younger of the two sons of Richard Perceval [q. v.] of Tickenham, Somerset, by his second wife Alice, daughter of John Sherman of Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. Philip's elder brother Walter and himself had been appointed by their father joint successors in his office of registrar of the Irish court of wards. Walter died in 1624, so that Philip obtained the family estates in England and Ireland, and the sole enjoyment of the Irish registrarship.

Perceval now definitely settled in Ireland, and by means of his interest at court gradually obtained a large number of additional offices. In 1625 he was made keeper of the records in Birmingham Tower. In 1628 he was joined with Henry Andrews in the offices of clerk of the crown to the Irish courts of king's bench and common pleas, and keeper of the rolls of those tribunals; and in 1629 he was made joint collector of customs at Dublin with Sir Edward Bagshawe. On 2 June 1636 he received the honour of knighthood from the hands of Lord-deputy Wentworth at Dublin. In 1638 he, with Sir James Ware [q. v.], obtained the monopoly of granting licenses for the sale of ale and brandy; in the same year he was sworn of the privy council; and in March 1641 he was made commissary-general of victuals for the king's army in Ireland.

But Perceval's energy was chiefly shown in the part he played in the prevailing jobbery connected with Irish landed estate. Holding, in this connection, the offices of general feodary of Ireland, escheator of Munster, and (1637) commissioner of survey into land titles in Tipperary and Cork, he took a prominent share in the discovery of technical defects in Irish titles; and obtained enormous transfers of forfeited lands to himself. The importance of these acquisitions, which lay mainly in Cork, Tipperary, and Wexford, may be shown by two instances. In 1630 he obtained the manors of Haggardstown, Herfaston, and Blackrath in Tipperary, and a quarter part of Kilmoyleron in co. Cork, at the quit rent of 1l. 7s. 5d. for all services, and special exemption from any taxes that might be laid thereon by parliament or any other authority. In 1637 he obtained the manor of Annagh, with numerous towns, castles, and lands adjoining it in Cork and Tipperary, the whole being, by special license of the crown, erected into the manor of Burton, with liberty to impark sixteen hundred acres, and right to enjoy numerous exceptional privileges. By 1641 he is described as being possessed of the enormous amount of seventy-eight knights' fees and a half, containing 62,502 Irish acres, making 99,900 English acres, in the finest parts of the country, above 4,000l. a year of the best rents, and a stock in woods, houses, &c., worth above 60,000l., with employments for life of the value of above 2,000l. a year, besides other employments of equal profit, which he held by an uncertain tenure. This list does not include his patrimonial estate of Burton in Somerset.

Perceval was one of the few who perceived the approach of the Irish rebellion of 1641, an event which his own extortion and chicanery had done much to produce. On its outbreak in October, however, he remained in Dublin, where, as clerk to the king's bench, he took a prominent part in drawing up the notorious list of three thousand indictments for high treason against the rebellious gentlemen. Perceval at length saw that, owing to the vacillation of the government, his own property in Munster would be left exposed to the rebel onslaught. He therefore garrisoned and provisioned his castles in this territory at his own expense. In the summer of 1642 a detachment of the confederate army under Lord Muskerry advanced into Perceval's districts. All his castles were taken, though Annagh and Liscarrol offered a stubborn resistance, the former holding out for eleven days against an attacking force of 7,500 men (20 Aug.–2 Sept. 1642). Perceval now obtained the command of a corps of firelocks