[Illustration] The first in the pedigree is Sir Robert Bray, of
Northamptonshire, father of Sir James, who lived about the period of
Richard I. His great-grandson, Thomas, was lord of Thurnby, in the
same county, in the ninth of Edward II. (1316); from him descended
Sir Edward Bray, who died in 1558. Harleston, also in the county of
Northampton, was an ancient seat of the Bray family, which rose into
opulence with the success of Henry VII. after the Battle of
Bosworth, where Sir Reginald Bray, the devoted adherent of the King,
was said to have discovered the crown in a thorn-bush, in memory of
which he afterwards bore for his badge, "a thorn with a crown in the
middle of it." Shere was granted, with many other manors, to Sir
Reginald as a reward for his services. The present family spring
from Reginald, eldest son by the first wife of Sir Edward Bray, son
of John, and nephew of the celebrated Sir Reginald. Edmund Lord Bray
was elder brother of Sir Edward; he had an only son, John Lord Bray,
who died s. p. in 1557.
Of this family was William Bray, Esq., Treasurer of the Society of
Antiquaries, and joint Historian of Surrey.
See Leland's Itinerary, viii. 113, a; and Manning and Bray's Surrey,
vol. i. p. 514-523.
ARMS.--_Argent, a chevron between three eagle's legs sable erased a
la cuisse, their talons gules_. Another coat usually quartered with
the above is, _Vair, three bends gules_.
Present Representative, Edward Bray, Esq.
PERCEVAL OF NORK HOUSE, EARL OF EGMONT IN IRELAND 1733; BARON LOVELL
AND HOLLAND 1762; BARON ARDEN 1802.
[Illustration] "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.+