Sir Philip Perceval (1605 – 10 November 1647) was an English politician and knight. He was knighted in 1638, obtained grants of forfeited lands in Ireland to the amount of , and lost extensive property in Ireland owing to the rebellion of 1641. He opposed Charles I's intention of granting the demands of the Irish Confederates in order to employ them in England: joined the parliamentary party in 1644, obtaining a seat in the House of Commons of England as member for Newport, Cornwall, where he threw in his lot with the moderate presbyterians; compelled to retire into the country owing to his opposition to the independents, September 1647.
Biography
Philip was the younger of the two sons of Richard Perceval of Tickenham, Somerset, by his second wife Alice, daughter of John Sherman of Ottery St. Mary, Devon. Philip's elder brother Walter and himself had been appointed by their father joint successors in his office of registrar of the Irish court of wards. Walter died in 1624, so Philip obtained the family estates in England and Ireland, and the sole enjoyment of the Irish registrarship.
Perceval now definitely settled in Ireland, and by means of his interest at court gradually obtained a large number of additional offices. In 1625 he was made keeper of the records in Birmingham Tower. In 1628 he was joined with Henry Andrews in the offices of clerk of the crown to the Court of King's Bench (Ireland) and the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland), and keeper of the rolls of those tribunals; and in 1629 he was made joint collector of customs at Dublin with Sir Edward Bagshawe of Finglas. By early 1634 his friends in Dublin included Sir Philip Mainwaring and Sir George Radcliffe who were two of Wentworth's closest advisers. In 1636 Perceval was admitted to King's Inns, Dublin, and on 2 June the same year he was knighted by Lord Deputy of Ireland. Thomas Wentworth. In 1638 he, with Sir James Ware, obtained the monopoly of granting licenses for the sale of ale and brandy, and was also made a member of the privy council.
Perceval's energy was chiefly shown in the part he played in the prevailing jobbery connected with Irish landed estate. Holding, in this connection, the offices of general feodary of Ireland, escheator of Munster, and (1637) commissioner of survey into land titles in County Tipperary and County Cork, he took a prominent share in the discovery of technical defects in Irish titles; and obtained enormous transfers of forfeited lands to himself.
The importance of these acquisitions, which lay mainly in Cork, Tipperary, and Wexford, may be shown in two instances. In 1630 he obtained the manors of Haggardstown, Herfaston, and Blackrath in Tipperary, and a quarter part of Kilmoyleron in co. Cork, at the quit rent of £1. 7s. 5d. for all services, and special exemption from any taxes that might be laid thereon by parliament or any other authority. In 1637 he obtained the manor of Annagh, with numerous towns, castles, and lands adjoining it in Cork and Tipperary, the whole being, by special license of the crown, erected into the manor of Burton, with liberty to impark sixteen hundred acres, and right to enjoy numerous exceptional privileges.
By 1641 he is described as being possessed of the enormous amount of seventy-eight knights' fees and a half, containing 62,502 Irish acres, (about ), in the finest parts of the country, above £4,000 a year of the best rents, and a stock in woods, houses, &c., worth above £60,000, with employments for life of the value of above £2,000 a year, besides other employments of equal profit, which he held by an uncertain tenure. This list does not include his patrimonial estate of Burton in Somerset.
With the fall and execution of Wentworth (by then Earl of Strafford) in May 1641, Perceval had lost his major patron and protector. His part in the shady land transaction was revealed, and in September 1641 Perceval narrowly avoided prosecution in England.
Perceval was one of the few who perceived the approach of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, an event which his own extortion and chicanery had done much to produce. For example, some of the more rich and powerful families from whom he had obtained land, and who thought of him as a corrupt "New English" official who had taken undue advantage of his position, where the Barrys, MacCarthys, O'Callaghans, and the Roches.