From time to time I stumble on something that is quite extraordinary on the web. At the following link you can find a great deal of information on the Percy family which if you have read Sidney Graveston's scholarly work on the ancestry of Gamel de Pennington you will know that he thinks that this first recorded Pennington was a son of William de Percy (from the other side of the sheets). This would account for the striking similarity between the Percy and Pennington arms. I have written to Charles Percy to ask him if he is interested in a DNA Study of Percies since if all this is true some Penningtons may have an identical Y chromosome to some Percies! http://www.geocities.com/percyfamilyhistory/index.html The text below is very interesting and suggests that the Percies were not Norman but Flemish since their arms are just too old to be Norman! The acknowledged and recognised link to the Percy family's history before their arrival in Normandy is all to do with the bearing of their arms. This is reflected in the actual coat that was used by the family as can be seen from the Norman charters of the time which are still in existence today. The Normans did not use heraldy at this time but the Percy family certainly did. They bore a coat then (as shown above), which can be traced to those previously used by the Aristocratic families who inhabited the region to the North of France known as Flanders. That the Baronial family of Percy took their name from their fiefdom in Normandy is also true but the notion of their Viking ancestry and that of being of Norman heritage has at best been displayed as a fashionably romantic idea. What follows here is a description kindly offered by Baronage Press Magazine, an online authority on such matters who have spent much time and effort researching this very same subject in some detail. "The known marital alliances of the Percies during the centuries succeeding, shouts aloud their Flemish origin. The arms used by the Percies in the late 11th century are not Norman (for the Normans, unlike the Flemings, then had no heraldry), and in accordance with the manner in which early heraldic symbolism operated strongly suggest a connection with Bethune (a few miles west of Lille in what was then the county of Flanders). That the western part of Normandy had in the middle of the 11th century a strong representation of the Flemish aristocracy tends to be overlooked by those English writers who have not examined the "Norman" charters of the period. This is especially true of the Cotentin peninsular, a desolate area of infertile ground that had been a French princess's dowry when she married Baldwin of Flanders. (It had previously appeared to be Norman, because Duke Richard III had received it as that same princess's dowry when he was supposed to marry her, and had returned it to her when the marriage failed to proceed.) Baldwin populated the area with Flemings who knew from their own experience in northern Flanders just how such a bleak coastal area could be defended militarily and exploited agriculturally, and it is from this heritage that such great families as Bruce, Ferrers, Haig, Hay, Mandeville, Morville, Percy and Vere emerged, most taking their names from their Norman fiefs (and their arms from their origins in Greater Flanders)". http://www.baronage.co.uk/2001/northeast.htm The village of Percy en Auge is still in existence, as is another village of the same name in the Department of Calvados nearby. French relatives of the English Percies are also still to be found in this region today. PERCY ANCESTORS Galfred de Perci. Geoffrey de Perci. William de Perci. Geoffrey de Perci. Alan de Percy. Baron William de Perci ( Algersnons), had brothers Serlo and Picot de Percy The next we know is that Edward the confessor, King of England (circa 1040) hired Alan de Percy of Normandy to assist him in defending England, North of the Humber against the invading Vikings. But when Harold became King he was suspicious of the connection between Alan de Percy and Duke William of Normandy and expelled Alan from England. A son was born to Alan de Perci near Alnwick before 1066. William de Perci was wild and adventurous and wore a beard(which was apparently unusual at this time). For this he was known as Al-gers-nons (meaning with whiskers) and the name of Algernon has followed the Percy race to this very day. There does not seem to be any proof that William de Percy was with William the Conquerer at the battle of Hastings in 1066. In fact it seems that William (Algernon) de Percy arrived in England in 1067 to assist the Conquerer mop up remaining resistance in Yorkshire and shore up the defences against the threat from Scotland and from the possibility of Viking invasion. For his trouble William de Percy was given knights fees and land, initially under Earl Hugh of Chester. By 1086 William's family including brothers Serlo and Picot is charted as owning various estates in Yorkshire and the surrounding counties. The shield at the top of this page is the earliest recorded Percy blazon and is considered to date from Flanders near the town Bethune South West of Lille well before 1066. It is described in heraldry as, Azure, five fusils in fess argent.