General Notes

William de Percy; born c1030, allegedly travelled with Hugh d'Avranches, later Earl of Chester, from Normandy to England, though not necessarily as early as 1066.  He seems to have been granted a Barony (at this time a territorial possession rather than peerage) of 30 knight's fees following the Conquest, though 20 years later the Domesday Survey mentions him as holding much more: 80 Lordships in Yorkshire and 32 in Lincolnshire, together with other land in Essex, Notts and Hambledon, Hants (the last acquired through his marriage).  He helped reconstruct York Castle 1070 after it was destroyed by the Danes and accompanied William I The Conqueror on his invasion of Scotland 1072.  He was a tenant-in-chief of William at the time of Domesday and under-tenant of Hugh, Earl of Chester.  It was Hugh, Earl of Chester, who had been granted the lion's share of Gospatric, Earl of Northumberland's lands following the latter's rebellion against William in 1069.  William de Percy helped Gospatric win forgiveness from William The Conqueror, however, and was granted some of the forfeited lands as a sub-tenant by Hugh.  William de Percy was known by contemperaries under the sobriquet "als gernons" ("William with the Whiskers"), whence the frequency of the forename Algernon in the family ever since.  He refounded the Abbey of St Hilda, Yorkshire, of which his brother Serlo de Percy became first Prior; married Emma, sometimes called daughter and heiress, but certainly a close relative, of Hugh de Port, feudal Lord of Semer, near Scarborough, and a Saxon, and accompanied Duke Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade, during which he died 1096 at Montjoie or Mountjoy, near Jerusalem, a peak so called because it was there where Christians on pilgrimage to the Holy City first got a view of their destination.  [Burke's Peerage]