Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy 1729-1811, English antiquary and churchman, b. Shropshire. In 1782 he became Protestant bishop of Dromore (Ireland). He achieved literary fame as the editor of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 vol., 1765), a collection of 176 English and Scottish ballads. Its publication initiated a general interest in earlier literary forms and exercised a great influence on the romantic poets in Germany as well as England.

Bibliography: See his letters (ed. by C. Brooks and D. N. Smith, 6 vol., 1944-61).

Percy, Thomas (1729–1812). Percy was the son of a grocer from Bridgnorth in Shropshire and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He took orders, from 1757 to 1782 held the living at Easton Maudit in Northamptonshire, and for the rest of his life was bishop of Dromore in Co. Down. A scholar and antiquarian, he began early in life collecting ancient ballads, having rescued from a friend in Shifnal an old manuscript folio of verse which the maids were using to light the fire. The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry came out in 1765 and was a leap forward in the preservation and understanding of medieval ballads.

Percy, Thomas, born Piercy (1729–1811), published in 1761 a translation (from the Portuguese) of the first Chinese novel to appear in English, Hau Kiou Choaan, and in 1763 his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated from the Islandic Language, which considerably influenced the study of ancient Norse in England. Percy also published poetry (including his ballad The Hermit of Warkworth, 1771), translated from the Hebrew and Spanish, and wrote a Memoir of Goldsmith (1801). He is best known for his celebrated collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 vols, 1765), which contributed greatly to the understanding of the older English poetry. (See also Percy Folio and ballad.)