Hon. George Percy, Colonial Governor of Virginia

Evidence needed to support Anne Floyd, {possibly fictional} as wife and Anne West as daughter. There seems no evidence George Percy married or had children.

George Percy

George Percy (September 4, 1580 – 1632) was an English explorer, author, and early Colonial Governor of Virginia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Percy

George Percy was born in England, the youngest son of Henry Percy, 2nd/8th Earl of Northumberland and Lady Catherine Neville. He was sickly for much of his life, possibly suffering from epilepsy or severe asthma. He graduated from Oxford University in 1597. While at university, he gained admission to Gloucester Hall and the Middle Temple.

Percy's vocation was the military. His first service came in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain in the early 1600s. He also served in Ireland.

Percy was part of the first group of 105 English colonists to settle the Jamestown Colony. He departed England in December 1606 and kept a journal of his voyage. He arrived in Virginia in April 1607 and recorded the struggles of the colonists to cope with the American environment, disease, and the Powhatan Indians. "Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distress," he wrote in his journal, "not having five able men to man our bulwarks upon any occasion."

Although Percy had a higher social rank than all of the other first colonists, he was initially denied a seat on the Virginia Council. Nevertheless he took the lead in the early life of the colony, taking part in the expedition to the James River falls in May and June 1607. In autumn 1607, he sided with the President of the colony, Edward Maria Wingfield, who was subsequently deposed by John Ratcliffe, Gabriel Archer, and John Smith. From late 1607 until autumn 1609, Percy had little power in Jamestown but served as Smith's subordinate.

When Smith left the colony in September 1609, Percy assumed the presidency of the colony. However, his persistent illness kept him from executing his office, leaving the duties of the presidency to Ratcliffe, Archer, and John Martin. It was during Percy's tenure that the colony suffered through the "Starving Time" in the winter of 1609-10. "Now all of us at James Town beginning to feel that sharp prick of hunger, which no man truly describe but he which hath tasted the bitterness thereof," he recounted later. Percy accomplished little while President, other than to order to construction of Fort Algernon at Old Point Comfort. When Sir Thomas Gates arrived in May 1610, Percy happily surrendered control of the colony to him.

In June 1610, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr arrived in Jamestown and with a commission to serve as the colony's governor. De la Warr appointed Percy to the council and named him captain of the Jamestown fort. In August 1610, De la Warre sent Percy and seventy men to attack the Paspahegh and Chickahominy Indians. The force ravaged the Indians' settlements, burning their buildings, decimating their crops, and indiscriminately killing men, women, and children. Percy also led the successful defence of the Jamestown fort against an Indian attack and earned the praise of De La Warr. When the Governor returned to England in March 1611, he appointed Percy to lead the colony in his absence. But the winds not favoring them, they were enforced to shape their course directly for England--my lord having left and appointed me deputy governor in his absence, to execute martial law or any other power and authority as absolute as himself. Percy's term as Governor lasted until April 22, 1612, when he departed for England.

After his service in the New World, Percy returned to England but remained interested in colonization schemes. In 1615, he proposed an expedition to Guiana but found no supporters. In 1620, he sold his four shares in the Virginia Company and returned to military service. Percy returned to the Netherlands in 1621 when war between Spain and the Dutch resumed. He was the commander of a company in the Low Countries in 1627. It is uncertain whether he died in England or in the service abroad.

George Percy married Anne Floyd.[4] The couple had one daughter, Anne Percy, who married Governor John West.-

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633

George Percy was one of the original Jamestown settlers and the author of two important primary accounts of the colony. He served as president of the Council (1609–1610) during the Starving Time, and briefly as deputy governor (1611). Born in Sussex, England, to the eighth earl of Northumberland, Percy hailed from a family of Catholic conspirators; his father died while imprisoned in the Tower of London, his uncle was beheaded, and his older brother, the ninth earl of Northumberland, was also imprisoned. While his accounts suggest that Percy was awed by the natural beauty of Virginia, he was nevertheless overwhelmed by the many problems the first colonists faced, including hunger, disease, internal dissention, and often-difficult relations with Virginia Indians. While president of the Council, he and his fellow colonists suffered through the Starving Time, initiated in part by the Indians' siege of Jamestown at the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614). Through support from his older brother, Percy seems to have lived in relative comfort, but he also suffered from recurring illness, finally leaving Virginia in 1612. His second account of Jamestown, A Trewe Relacyon , was written in the mid-1620s with the intention of rebutting Captain John Smith's popular version of events in the colony. Percy died in the winter of 1632–1633, leaving no will.

Early Years

Percy was born on September 4, 1580, at Petworth House, Sussex, in the southeast of England, the eighth and youngest son of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, and Catharine Neville. The seventh earl of Northumberland, George Percy's uncle, was beheaded by Queen Elizabeth in 1572 for conspiring to release Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic. Percy's father, meanwhile, was confined to the Tower of London three separate times on similar charges. He was found shot to death in his cell in 1585 in what later was ruled a suicide.

George Percy was educated at Eton College, Gloucester Hall, at the University of Oxford, and at the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court, in London. A sickly child, he may have suffered from some form of epilepsy or a recurrent fever. A petition to Percy's brother Henry Percy, the ninth earl of Northumberland, dating from the 1590s, refers to the boy's "greivous and tedious sicknesse." A warm climate was then considered beneficial for certain ailments, and in 1602 Percy embarked on a voyage to the West Indies. Nothing certain is known about this adventure; the next surviving reference to Percy, from 1603, refers to a visit to his brother Sir Richard Percy in Ireland. Nevertheless, this early experience of an Atlantic voyage may explain why Percy later threw in his lot with the settlers who established the first enduring English colony in the Americas.

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 also may have been a factor. After the discovery, very late in the day, of a conspiracy by English Catholics to blow up the House of Lords at the state opening of Parliament, George Percy's brother Henry Percy was accused of complicity in the treason. He was tried in the Star Chamber and sentenced to a massive fine and indefinite imprisonment. After this, England was no place for a dependent younger brother. The imprisoned Northumberland, nicknamed the Wizard Earl for his fascination with science, understood Percy's predicament. Also interested in colonization and exploration, he was friends with Sir Walter Raleigh, who had financed the Roanoke voyages between 1584 and 1590, and Thomas Hariot, who had accompanied one, and possibly two of those trips. The earl's support for his brother likely was seen as an endorsement of the Virginia Company of London, which received its royal charter to settle America on April 10, 1606.

Arrival in Virginia

Percy sailed to Virginia aboard the Susan Constant , the flagship of a three-vessel fleet that anchored in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607. There, the hundred or so Englishmen found "nothing worth the speaking of," Percy later wrote, "but faire meddowes and goodly tall Trees, with such Freshwaters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof." That night, Percy and a group of twenty to thirty of the colonists were attacked by local Indians, leaving two men in the party injured. Three days later, according to Percy, "we set up a Crosse at Chesupioc Bay, and named that place Cape Henry," after King James I's son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.

From May 21 to 27, Percy joined Captain Christopher Newport, Captain John Smith, Captain Gabriel Archer, and others on an exploration voyage up the James River, or what Percy described as "one of the famousest Rivers that ever was found by any Christian." The colonists made mostly friendly contact with the Kecoughtans, the Paspaheghs, the Quiyoughcohannocks, and the Appamattucks, all Algonquian-speaking groups in the paramount chiefdom of Tsenacomoco. At the falls of the James, on May 24, the Englishmen "set up a Crosse at the head of this River naming it Kings River, where we proclaimed James King of England to have the most right unto it."

The colony's first few years proved much more difficult than those first few weeks. The settlers mostly were military men and skilled laborers who hoped to be supplied with food either by England or the Indians. That they arrived at the beginning of a seven-year drought tested their relations with the Indians. Malnutrition among the colonists soon led to disease and many deaths, especially during the summer months. (In his account, Percy is matter of fact. After vividly describing an Indian ceremony, he writes: "The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie Flixe. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling. The tenth day died William Bruster Gentleman, of a wound given by the Savages, and was buried the eleventh day.")

All of these difficulties were exacerbated by chronic internal dissention. Percy, despite his wealthy background—or perhaps because of his family's pro-Catholic mischief—was not initially chosen by the Virginia Company to sit on the Council, the seven-man body charged with carrying out the company's orders in Virginia. John Smith, the son of a farmer, however, was chosen, and Percy, for various reasons, was frequently critical of his leadership. According to Percy, Smith was "an ambityous unworthy and vayneglorious fellow, attempteinge to take all mens authoreties from them."

Smith was elected president of the Council on September 10, 1608, a time when hunger was still a prevailing concern among the colonists. That autumn, Percy accompanied Smith on an expedition to the Chickahominies, whom the Englishmen threatened into trading away a hundred bushels of corn. In May 1609, in yet another of many attempts to relieve the continuing hunger at Jamestown, Smith dispatched Percy and about twenty men to Point Comfort, at the mouth of the James, to live off oysters.

Starving Time

By the autumn of 1609, Percy had gained a seat on the Council, but tensions with Smith were particularly high. Smith sent two groups of soldiers on missions to bargain with the Indians, one to the falls of the James and the other, under Percy and John Martin, to the mouth of the James. After the apparent deaths of two messengers at the hands of the Nansemonds, Percy and his men destroyed the Indians' village. That, in turn, led to a nasty fight with the Nansemonds. Both missions were disasters for the Englishmen and led to the loss of half their men. And the violence they sparked turned into the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

On September 10, 1609, Percy was elected president and Smith, injured in a gunpowder explosion, left the colony for England in October. Soon after Smith's departure, Percy ordered Captain John Ratcliffe to build a fort at Point Comfort, to be used in defense against the Spanish. (As imperial rivals of the English, the Spanish were seen as a greater threat to the colony's safety than the Indians of Tsenacomoco.) Percy called the fort Algernon in honor of his relative, William Algernourne de Percy.

In November, Ratcliffe was ambushed and tortured to death by Indians, and all the colonists retreated to the fort at Jamestown save for thirty, under Captain James Davis, who remained at Fort Algernon. That month, the Indians laid siege to Jamestown, preventing settlers from hunting or fishing outside the fort. Soon, "all of us att James Towne beginneinge to feele the sharpe pricke of hunger which noe man trewly descrybe butt he which hathe Tasted the bitternesse thereof," Percy wrote. By the time the Indians lifted their siege in May, only sixty colonists out of about 240 remained alive. None of Davis's well-supplied men died, however, and Percy charged them with having "concealed their plenty from us."

With the arrival of the new governor, Sir Thomas Gates, late in May, Percy stood down as the colony's leader. He continued to sit on the Council as part of a new, more strict colonial government, and one that waged brutal war against the Indians. On August 10, 1610, Percy led an attack on a Paspahegh town, killing more than a dozen warriors. His men captured the wife and two children of the weroance, and when Percy did not move to execute them, the soldiers "did begin to murmer." Percy agreed they should "putt the children to deathe the which was effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water." The children's mother was executed that night at Jamestown. Percy and his men finally managed to kill the weroance, Wowinchopunck, in the spring of 1611.

After the departure of an ill Governor Thomas West, baron De La Warr, Percy briefly served as deputy governor, from March 29 until May 19, 1611. A year later, after weighing the continuing hardships of life in Virginia and his own recurring ill health, he decided to return home, setting sail for England in April 1612.

The Earl's Support

The earl's support for his younger brother is evident from accounting papers now at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. In 1607, when the first resupply voyage to Jamestown was in preparation (it arrived on January 2, 1608), the earl spent £9—a considerable sum—on a chest containing clothing and provisions for Percy's Virginia adventure. Throughout Percy's residence in Jamestown the earl sent out luxuries as well as necessities: clothing and books, paper and ink, wax and lights. "Blew beades and read copper" for trading accompanied "a fetherbedde bolster 2 blanketts and a covering of tapestrye." Tobacco and pipes also appear in these papers. These items represent a considerable commitment, and Percy apparently expected no less. In a surviving letter to the earl dated August 17, 1611, he asked Northumberland to help him maintain a lifestyle appropriate to the "governour" of Jamestown, where he was expected to keep a "continuall and dayly table for Gentlemen of fashion."

The earl was being generous, if not overgenerous. Like his other brothers, Percy inherited a personal income from their mother's dower estates. When many of these estates were sold off after 1600, the earl bought out the brother's interest by guaranteeing him an equivalent income from the household account. Before sailing for Virginia, Percy and the earl seem to have struck a deal. While Northumberland did not have to pay the household annuity, he settled debts that Percy incurred in England and made sure that his younger brother did not lack material support. There was a mutual convenience in this, though in later years Northumberland was pestered by merchants seeking settlement of debts allegedly run up long before. He eventually lost patience, suspecting chicanery. "This," he wrote at the foot of one such petition, "I granted not, for I have to[o] many of this nature brought me every day."

After Percy's return from Virginia, his annuity was increased by installments to £100. This should have guaranteed comfort to a single man, but surviving evidence hints at the occasional financial crisis. Whether these crises were brought about by late payment or profligacy is unknown. On two occasions the earl had to redeem Percy's cloak from a creditor, and he spent £2 recovering Percy's pawned "sute of Apperell" in 1616.

Writing

While in Virginia, Percy kept a journal, extracts of which were published in 1625 by the Reverend Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes. Titled "Observations Gathered Out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English," Percy's account describes the transatlantic voyage and the landing in Virginia before breaking off in September 1607. As the account ends, an alarming number of men are dying of disease: "many times three or foure in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their Cabines like Dogges to be buried: in this sort I did see the mortalitie of divers of our people."

In the mid-1620s, Percy wrote an additional account of the events at Jamestown between 1609 and 1612, which he intended to serve as a response to the self-serving version published by John Smith in his Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624). "A Trewe Relacyon" was addressed to Percy's nephew, Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland, to show "how mutche I honnor you" and to rebut the "many untrewthes" circulating about Virginia. Although it was not widely published until 1922 by Lyon G. Tyler, it survives in a unique contemporary copy in the Free Library of Philadelphia. Historians have long used it as a critical primary source on the politics and intrigues of Jamestown, the First Anglo-Powhatan War, and, most vividly, the suffering of the Starving Time.

Later Years

As with so many younger sons and landless siblings in the seventeenth century, Percy's later years are now obscure. Clues hint at a group of erudite friends, based in London. In a letter dated August 1607, Dudley Carleton told John Chamberlain that Percy had, in turn, addressed a letter to Walter Warner, the mathematician and recipient of a pension from Percy's brother the earl: "Mr Warner hath a letter from Mr George Percie who names their towne James-fort, which we like best of all the rest because it comes neere to Chemes-ford [Chelmsford, in Essex]." William Strachey, secretary to the Virginia colony and author of the Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, nodded to a friendship with Percy when dedicating his book to Northumberland. If his work had merit, Strachey argued, this was in part due to the earl's "noble brother (from whose Commentaries and observations, I must freely confesse, I have collected these passadges and knowledges) [and who] out of his free and honorable love to me hath made me presume to offer unto your Lordship."

Percy was still prone to illness. In 1615 he contemplated sailing to the Amazon delta. He pointed out to the earl that his "fitts here in England are more often, more longe and more grievous" than "in other parts neerer the lyne [the equator]." He was susceptible to anger as well. When Richard Plumleigh slandered the earl's recently deceased wife in 1619, Percy challenged him to a duel, but the Privy Council, in a typical action, stepped in to prevent bloodshed. A family tradition insists that Percy fought in the Low Countries during the 1620s: in the fine portrait of Percy at Syon House, the middle finger of his left hand appears to be missing, and, so the story goes, it was shot away in an engagement during these campaigns. Such tales, though, set aside the picture itself: the finger may just as credibly be folded back. They also disregard chronology: the portrait is dated 1615. A copy was presented to the Virginia Historical Society by Charles Wykeham Martin of Leeds Castle in 1853, and is still among its collections. Percy died during the winter of 1632–1633, leaving no will. Algernon Percy settled his uncle's debts.

Descendants

Some seventeenth-century pedigrees at Alnwick Castle insist that Percy married Anne Floyd or Lloyd in Virginia, while others include no reference to a marriage. One pedigree compiled around 1673 states categorically that Percy died a bachelor, that he "left noe estate." None of this can be taken at face value. Many family pedigrees from the 1670s were "adjusted" either to refute or sustain the claim of James Percy, who, with the earldom vacant for want of a male heir, maintained that he was descended from one of the ninth earl's brothers. When the genealogist Sir Thomas Banks visited America early in the 1800s he met two brothers in Virginia who claimed descent from Percy. Banks pointed out that if what these men said were true, they would be "the right male heirs of the earldom of Northumberland of the de novo creation, the ancient one being suspended in the crown." The claim seems never to have been pursued in England.

Major Works

"Observations Gathered Out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English" (In Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes; Samuel Purchas, ed., 1625)

A Trewe Relacyon of the Pcedeinges and Ocurrentes of Momente wch Have Hapned in Virginia from the Tyme Sr Thomas Gates Was Shippwrackte uppon the Bermudes ano 1609 untill My Depture Outt of the Country wch Was in ano Dñi 1612 (1922)

Time Line

September 4, 1580 - George Percy is born at Petworth House, Sussex, in the southeast of England, the eighth and youngest son of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, and Catharine Neville.

1602 - George Percy embarks on a voyage to the West Indies.

April 26, 1607 - Jamestown colonists first drop anchor in the Chesapeake Bay, and after a brief skirmish with local Indians, begin to explore the James River.

April 29, 1607 - Jamestown colonists plant a cross at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and name the place Cape Henry after King James's son, the Prince of Wales.

May 21–27, 1607 - Captain Christopher Newport, Captain John Smith, George Percy, and others explore the James River, making mostly friendly contact with the Kecoughtans, the Paspaheghs, the Quiyoughcohannocks, and the Appamattucks.

May 24, 1607 - Captain Christopher Newport and his fellow English colonists, in the words of George Percy, "set up a Crosse at the head of this River naming it Kings River, where we proclaimed James King of England to have the most right unto it."

September 10, 1608 - John Smith is elected president of the Council at Jamestown.

May 1609 - With the Jamestown population at about 200, John Smith sends a third of the men downriver on the James to live off oysters. Twenty go with George Percy to Point Comfort to fish, and another twenty go with Francis West to live at the falls of the James. The rest stay at Jamestown.

Early September 1609 - John Smith sends Francis West and 120 men to the falls of the James River. George Percy and 60 men attempt to bargain with the Nansemond Indians for an island. Two messengers are killed and the English burn the Nansemonds' town and their crops.

September 10, 1609 - In the absence of Governor Sir Thomas Gates and his implementation of the Second Charter, George Percy is elected president of the Council in Virginia.

October 1609 - John Smith leaves Virginia. The Jamestown colony's new leadership is less competent, and the Starving Time follows that winter.

November 1609 - Powhatan invites a party of about thirty colonists, led by John Ratcliffe, to Orapax on the promise of a store of corn. The English are ambushed and killed; Ratcliffe himself is tortured to death.

November 1609 - Powhatan Indians lay siege to Jamestown, denying colonists access to outside food sources. The Starving Time begins, and by spring 160 colonists, or about 75 percent of Jamestown's population, will be dead from hunger and disease. This action begins the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614).

Early May 1610 - Powhatan Indians lift their winter-long siege of Jamestown.

May 21, 1610 - Having been stranded in the Bermuda islands for nearly a year, the party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Point Comfort in the Chesapeake Bay.

May 24, 1610 - The party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates, now aboard the Patience and Deliverance, arrives at Jamestown. They find only sixty survivors of a winter famine. Gates decides to abandon the colony for Newfoundland.

June 8, 1610 - Sailing up the James River toward the Chesapeake Bay and then Newfoundland, Jamestown colonists encounter a ship bearing the new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, and a year's worth of supplies. The colonists return to Jamestown that evening.

August 10, 1610 - At night, George Percy attacks a Paspahegh town, killing fifteen to sixteen, burning houses, and taking corn. The wife and two children of the weroance, Wowinchopunck, are captured and executed.

March 29, 1611 - After the departure of an ill Governor Thomas West, baron De La Warr, George Percy begins a brief service as deputy governor of Jamestown.

May 19, 1611 - Sir Thomas Dale arrives at Jamestown. The colony's marshal, he assumes the title of acting governor in the absence of Lieutenant Governor Sir Thomas Gates and Governor Sir Thomas West, twelfth baron De La Warr.

August 17, 1611 - In a letter requesting support, George Percy asks his older brother, the ninth earl of Northumberland, to help him maintain a lifestyle appropriate to the "governour" of Jamestown, where he is expected to keep a "continuall and dayly table for Gentlemen of fashion."

April 1612 - After weighing the continuing hardships of life in Virginia and his own recurring ill health, George Percy leaves the colony for England.

1615 - George Percy contemplates, but does not take, a voyage to the Amazon delta, an environment he thinks better suited to his health.

1616 - Henry Percy, ninth earl of Northumberland, spends £2 recovering his younger brother George Percy's pawned "sute of Apperell."

1619 - George Percy challenges Richard Plumleigh to a duel in defense of Percy's recently deceased sister-in-law. The Privy Council intervenes to prevent bloodshed.

1625 - George Percy's account of the early Jamestown settlement, "Observations Gathered Out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English," is published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes.

Winter 1632–1633 - George Percy dies, leaving no will and likely no descendants.

1922 - Lyon G. Tyler publishes George Percy's account of Jamestown from 1609 until 1612, A Trewe Relacyon. Percy wrote it in the mid-1620s as a rebuttal to the more popular version of events published by John Smith.

• George Percy1
• M, #21866, b. 4 September 1580, d. March 1632
• Father Sir Henry Percy, 8th Earl Northumberland b. c 1532, d. 21 Jun 1585
• Mother Catherine Neville b. 1546, d. 28 Oct 1596
• George Percy Colonial Governor of Virginia. He was born on 4 September 1580 at of Newborn Manor, England. He married Anne Ffloyd, daughter of Nathaniel Floyd, between 1607 and 1612 at Jamestown, James City, VA. George Percy died in March 1632 at England at age 51.
• Family Anne Ffloyd
• Child
  • Anne Percy+ b. bt 1608 - 1613
• Citations
• [S6630] Unknown author, The Noble Lineage of the Delaware-West Family of Virginia by Ann Woodard Fox & Margaret NcNeill Ayres.
• From: http://our-royal-titled-noble-and-commoner-ancestors.com/p728.htm#i...

  ---

• Hon. George Percy1
• M, #663631, b. 4 September 1580, d. 1632
• Last Edited=4 Jul 2015
• Consanguinity Index=0.51%
• Hon. George Percy was born on 4 September 1580.1 He was the son of Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland and Katherine Neville.1 He died in 1632.1
• He was a soldier in the Low Countries.2 In December 1600 he sailed in the first settlement of Virginia.1 In 1609 he was an incorporator of the Second Company of Virginia.1 He held the office of Deputy Governor of Virginia from 1609 to 1610.1 He held the office of Member of the Council of Virginia in 1610.2 He held the office of Deputy Governor of Virginia between March 1611 and May 1611.2 In 1612 he returned to Europe.2 He was a soldier in the Low Countries against the Spaniards between 1625 and 1627.2
• Citations
• [S37] BP2003 volume 2, page 2941. See link for full details for this source. Hereinafter cited as. [S37]
• [S37] BP2003. [S37]
• From: http://www.thepeerage.com/p66364.htm#i66363

  ---

• George PERCY
• Born: 4 Sep 1580, England
• Died: Mar 1632, England
• Father: Henry PERCY (8º E. Northumberland)
• Mother: Catherine NEVILLE (C. Northumberland)
• Married: Anne FLOYD 1607, Virginia
• Children:
  • 1. Anne PERCY
• From: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/PERCY.htm#George PERCY2

  ---

• Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 44
• Percy, George by Raymond Beazley
• PERCY, GEORGE (1580–1632), author and colonist, was eighth son of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland [q. v.], by his wife Catherine, eldest daughter and coheiress of John Neville, lord Latimer. Henry Percy, ninth earl of Northumberland [q. v.], was his brother. Born 4 Sept. 1580, he served for a time in the Low Country wars, and subsequently took part in the first permanent English colonisation of America. He sailed for Virginia in the first expedition of James I's reign (December 1606). On 23 May 1609 his name appeared among the incorporators of the Second Company of Virginia. On 31 Aug. of the same year Gabriel Archer mentions him as one among the ‘respected gentlemen of Virginia’ who can testify how false are the stories of mutiny in Jamestown at this time. Percy was made deputy-governor on the recall of John Smith in September 1609 to answer some misdemeanours, as Percy and others of Smith's enemies declared. He held office during a critical period until the arrival of Sir Thomas Gates [q. v.] in May 1610. Lord De la Warr became governor a month later, and appointed Percy a member of his new council (12 June 1610) (cf. R. Rich, Metrical News from Virginia, London, 1610). On the departure of Lord De la Warr in March 1611, Percy, in recognition of his former services, was reappointed deputy-governor until the arrival of Dale in the following May. According to Spelman's ‘Relation of Events,’ 1609–11—probably written in the autumn of 1611—Indians at this time came from the ‘great Powhatan’ with venison for Captain Percy, ‘who now was president,’ and Sir Thomas Dale wrote to the Virginia Company from Jamestown, 25 May 1611, that he was received by Percy, who, after hearing his commission read, surrendered up his own, ‘it being accordingly so to expire.’
• On 17 Aug. 1611 Percy excused himself for his large expenditure to his brother Henry, who had paid on his account 432l. 1s. 6d. during the past year. He argued that, as governor of Jamestown, he was ‘bound to keep a continual and daily table for gentlemen of fashion.’ A Spanish writer (in the Simancas archives) drew the distinction between Percy and his successor Dale, that the former had been ‘appointed for himself,’ the latter by order of the king. Percy left Virginia for England on 22 April 1612. Dudley Carleton, in a letter on the exploration of the James River, credits Percy with having named the main settlement James Fort. On 15 May 1620 he transferred to Christopher Martin four of his shares in the Virginia Company, and, after the war broke out again in the Low Countries, returned for a time, probably in 1625, to his old occupation of volunteering against Spain in the service of the United Netherlands. Here, we are told, he distinguished himself, had one of his fingers shot off, and was active in commanding a company, in 1627. He died unmarried in 1632.
• Percy played a leading part in the controversy between Captain John Smith and the other original settlers in Virginia. After the appearance of Smith's ‘General History,’ with its account of affairs during the time of Percy's government, Percy wrote, in answer, about 1625, ‘A True Relation of the Proceedings and Occurrents of moment which have happened in Virginia from the time Sir Thomas Gates was shipwrecked upon the Bermudas, 1609, until my departure out of the country, 1612.’ This he sent to his brother, the Earl of Northumberland, who fully accepted his statements, and treated him through life with the utmost kindness and confidence. Percy was also the writer of a ‘Discourse [or Observations] of the Plantation of the Southern Colony in Virginia,’ one of the manuscripts printed by Hakluyt. This manuscript came to Purchas, who printed in his collection illustrative extracts. It is chiefly devoted to accounts of native customs, and describes the famine and diseases from which the colonists suffered.
• If the ‘True Relation’ is to be believed, Smith, who was once known as the ‘Saviour of Virginia,’ must be treated as a braggart and a slanderer. But Percy, who appears from his letters to have been a needy, extravagant dependent of his brother, wrote this full thirteen years after the events it records; and his evidence hardly carries sufficient weight to warrant the full adoption of his statements. His ‘Discourse’ (in Purchas) does not contain a word of censure on Smith.
• [Percy's Discourse and True Relation; Gardiner's Hist. of England, ii. 61, &c.; Cal. of State Papers, Col. 1574–1660, pp. 8, 67 (4 Oct. 1609, and July 1624); Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. iv. 1685–1690; Wingfield's Discourse; Allibone's Dictionary of British and American Authors; Brown's Genesis of U.S.A. passim, and esp. pp. 964–5; Harris's Voyages, i. 818–37.]
• From: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Percy,_George_(DNB00)

First military service was in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain in the early 1600's; also served in Ireland; Oxford graduate 1597; president of the Jamestown Colony during the "Starving Time" (winter of 1609-10); governor of Virginia Colony .

Percy Descendants

Some seventeenth-century pedigrees at Alnwick Castle insist that Percy married Anne Floyd or Lloyd in Virginia, while others include no reference to a marriage. One pedigree compiled around 1673 states categorically that Percy died a bachelor, that he "left noe estate." None of this can be taken at face value. Many family pedigrees from the 1670s were "adjusted" either to refute or sustain the claim of James Percy, who, with the earldom vacant for want of a male heir, maintained that he was descended from one of the ninth earl's brothers. When the genealogist Sir Thomas Banks visited America early in the 1800s he met two brothers in Virginia who claimed descent from Percy. Banks pointed out that if what these men said were true, they would be "the right male heirs of the earldom of Northumberland of the de novo creation, the ancient one being suspended in the crown." The claim seems never to have been pursued in England.

Baronia Anglica Concentrata, Or, A Concentrated Account of All the Baronies ... by Thomas Christopher Banks. Publication date 1844. Vol l, page 369. < Archive.Org > Mr. Maximilian Woodroffe, son of Bichard and Lady Elisabeth Percy, went to Virginia, where his cousin George Percy, brother to Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland, had gone, and in a MS. entitled. Indigested Chronology, among the Stirling Papers in the Histo- rical Library at New York, is said to have planted Viiginia, and to have discovered Powhatan, now called James River. In Campbell's History of Virginia, (1813) p. 49, it is stated that Mr. George Percy was left in direction of the colony of Virginia on the departure of Lord De la Warre.

In 1887, when the Editor was in the United States, be met two brothers of the name of Percy, who held lands in Virginia, and claimed deecent from the said Mr. George Percy ; in which respect they would be the right male heirs of the earldom of Northumberland, of the de Bovo creation, the ancient one being suspended in the crown.

Note: the author T.C. Banks was known to create fraudulent pedigrees.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-341765

Richardson does not give a maiden name for Anne [wife of John West] in either his 2011 Magna Carta Ancestry or his 2013 Royal Ancestry.[3][4] Wikipedia names her "...Anne Percy, daughter of George Percy and Anne Floyd."[5]. The source cited by Wikipedia, Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion (2011) mentions the marriage in a note without further citation following a mention of Henry Percy:

"Dee was well known to Thomas Hariot and Henry Percy, later 9th Earl of Northumberland (called the "wizard Earl" because of his interest in astronomy and chemistry), and the backers of Drake.[22][6]

"[22] Henry Percy's younger brother George would emigrate to Virginia and serve as deputy governor until 1612. His daughter, Lady Anne Percy, married John West, brother of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr."[7]

”Though commonly found online from older sources, there is absolutely no evidence that Anne West's LNAB is Percy. In fact there is no contemporary evidence that her supposed father George Percy ever married or had any children at all. It is an old identification (probably intentional fraud) which is no longer accepted.”< Wikitree >

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Virtual Jamestown: George Percy

References

• Virtual Jamestown: George Percy < link >
• "Observations Gathered out of 'A Discourse of the Plantation of the Southern Colony in Virginia by the English'," by George Percy, 1606. George Percy's account describes the first voyage of exploration to Virginia sponsored by the Virginia Company. < link >
• "A True Relation," by George Percy, 1609-1612. George Percy served as governor of Virginia between September 1609 and May 1610 and from March 1611 to May 1611. This document is his relation of the "Starving Time" and the war with the Indians from 1609 to 1612. < link >
• Tyler, Lyon Gardiner (editor). Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907). Pages 3-23. Viewed online at http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-073/ , 16 September 2022.
  • At the Virtual Jamestown website, you can find a portrait of George Percy, at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/pic24a.html as well as other first-hand accounts of the Jamestown settlement (see http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/fhaccounts_date.html.
• Brenan, Gerald (1902). A History of the House of Percy, from the Earliest Times Down to the Present. London: Freemantle. Vol. II pp. 208–209.Note: This source documents marriage to Anne Floyd, but states that the couple had no children. < Archive.Org > “His death occurred in 1632, a few months after that of Northumberland ; and he does not appear to have left any children by his wife, Ann Floyd.” 1. This, however, is not absolutely certain. Ann Floyd remained behind in America after her husband's return to England.
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jun 13 2018, 3:21:49 UTC English explorer and Governor of Virginia. Son of Henry and Lady Catherine (Neville) Percy Husband of Anne (Floyd) Percy Their daughter, Ann Claiborne Percy (m. John West, Sr., Governor of Virginia)
• John West in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Page 423: "John West, brother of Thomas, Third Lord Delaware,... married Anne ______, and had only one child, John West, Jr."
• Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists. Page 144. https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/30421969?h=dfcc3e Children of Thomas West & Ann Knollys: v. Col. John West, Governor of Virginia m Ann __. a. Col John West, b 1632 …
• “Hon. George Percy of VA (1580-app.c.1632)” < soc.genealogy.medieval > Post by Tony Hoskins, Oct. 4, 2005. document attached … "Governor John West married Ann whose surname is unknown, though it is believed by many of her descendants that she was the only child of George Percy (1580-1632) [eighth and youngest son of Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland] and his wife Ann Floyd, daughter of Nathaniel Floyd of Jamestown. George Percy came to Virginia in 1607 and returned to England in 1612, leaving his wife in Virginia." [Fox and Ayres, _The Noble Lineage of the Delaware-West Family of Virginia_ (1958), p. 185]. The 1958 work by Fox and Ayres is at the moment the earliest reference in print I have discovered on this matter. I can attest though that among some descendants of the Hon. John West of Virginia this legend was widely believed well before 1958.
• The Noble Lineage of the Delaware-West Family of Virginia: Through Col. John West, His Sons, and His Daughter Anne West who Married Henry Fox. Ann Woodard Fox. Seebode Printing Service, 1958 - Families. Page 8, page 184. < GoogleBooks >