PERCY, Richard, of Shaftesbury, Dorset.

Richard may have belonged to the family which had settled at Stratton in Dorset before the mid fourteenth century, Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 292-3. and was probably a relation of Robert Percy, a member of a jury at Shaftesbury in 1419. The latter, together with his wife Margaret, subsequently acquired in Margaret’s right an interest in land a few miles to the south of the town, at Sturminster Newton, but there is no evidence that this ever passed to Richard. C138/43/92; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 353. Of greater significance, a contemporary namesake of the MP became abbot of the Dorset abbey of Abbotsbury, and the fact that he himself was styled ‘franklin’ in the year of his election to Parliament suggests that the Percys belonged to the lesser gentry of the county. Nevertheless, he could also be more disparagingly referred to as a husbandman or yeoman, e.g. CP40/798, rot. 193. and how he made his livelihood has not been discovered. Such details about his life as have come to light do little to provide a coherent pattern for his career.

Although Percy evidently lived in Shaftesbury (where he witnessed deeds and held office as a constable at the time of his election to Parliament), nothing has been found in the records about any property he held there. He was selected to serve as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in the town in October 1443 and June 1448, providing information to the escheator about the Dorset estates and heirs of John, Lord Tiptoft†, and the courtier John St. Loe*. C139/110/45; 131/25. The latter had been three times sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, and one of his successors, Robert Cappes (the sheriff of 1444-5), was later to claim that Percy had failed to render full account for the sums of money he had collected as his bailiff and receiver in Shaftesbury. Perhaps Percy had been engaged as one of the sheriff’s officers in the locality. CP40/757, rot. 181d. Before his election to Parliament Percy employed attorneys to represent him in the lawcourts at Westminster, such as in 1441 when he sued two men of Shaftesbury for debts amounting to £6, and in 1443 when he brought pleas against a local butcher for a debt of £40 and the widowed Margaret Lovelaunde of Pimperne for a smaller one of £4. CP40/720, rot. 145; 722, rot. 193d; 728, rot. 71. More seriously, in the Easter and Trinity terms of 1450 John Roger of Bryanston, an important landowner in the county, alleged that the franklin was indebted to him in £10. The death of the esquire in October probably brought an end to the proceedings. CP40/757, rot. 53d; 758, rot. 46; C139/140/34. By then Percy had been returned by Shaftesbury to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 6 Nov., along with the lawyer Thomas Walrond*.

Percy sat on a jury at sessions of the peace held in Shaftesbury in August 1453 at which Robert Spetchley* of Bristol, who had been under escheator of Dorset in 1451-2, was indicted for serious offences committed during his term of office. KB9/273/88. Thereafter, he continued to be cited in the court of common pleas as a defendant in a number of actions for debt, CP40/778, rot. 39; 798, rot. 193. in one such being accused by the plaintiff Thomas Kent of failing to hand over the sum of £10. This arose from a longstanding quarrel, for in Michaelmas term 1463 he and his wife Alice accused Kent of violently assaulting her at Shaftesbury as long as 12 years previously. CP40/810, rot. 57; 811, rot. 207. Percy was described as ‘late of Shaftesbury, gentleman’ in 1467, in a plea brought by an attorney called John White, perhaps to recover legal fees, CP40/825, rot. 48. so it may be that by then he had moved away from the town. Yet members of the Percy family continued to live in Shaftesbury. Thomas Percy served successively as deputy to the King’s bailiff there (in 1474) and constable (in 1475 and 1487), before being elected mayor in 1498 and 1512; Recs. Shaftesbury, 20, 21, 80, 81. while John Percy† represented the borough in the Parliament of 1491. Through his marriage to Christine, the daughter of William Leyot* of Manston, John eventually acquired the Manston estate in east Dorset for his family after her two brothers died childless. J. Hutchins, Dorset, iv. 73-74.