17 October 2006 Garter
Correspondence by email
Sent: Tuesday, 17 October 2006 2.35am
Subject: Percy Research
Dear Mr Percy,
Thank you for your recent letter and enclosures.
I should be happy to examine the evidences you have sent, together with the relevant pedigrees on record here and suggest a sum of £500 would enable such a programme of research to be put in hand.
I understand that your emigrant ancestors came from Sherborne, Dorset in 1841 and research has been undertaken by Di Clements back to the family of Purse(y) in Taunton. The name is clearly prevalent in Somerset.
I note that you suggest that there is a connection to the Percy family from whence came the Earls of Northumberland. There is, I suggest, little likelihood of this. The printed pedigree III in the file The Percy Family of New Zealand does not show any such suggestion.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Gwynn-Jones
Garter King of Arms
We refute the above assertion by the Garter, when considered with our genealogists records which Garter has. The Gunpowder Plotter's eldest grandson (Francis Percy Snr. who claimed to be de jure Earl of Northumberland before his son Francis of Cambridge claimed) is shown on the chart but his younger siblings Ann, Thomas and James have been left out. All four along with our family records are recorded in the Taunton St. Mary Magdalene registers.