1200 William was appointed one of the two custodes of the county of York under William de Stuteville (Rot. de Obl. et Finibus, p. 109). In the same year he appears as sheriff of Northumberland (Rot. Curiæ Regis, ii. 178). In 1204 he was one of the justices before whom fines were acknowledged (Hunter, Fines sive Pedes Finium, Record Comm., Introd. p. lv). In 1213 he was one of the two commissioners appointed to inquire into the losses inflicted on the church in the bishopric of Carlisle (Rot. de Obl. et Finibus, Record Comm., p. 526). In 1214 he was sent in the king's service to Poitou, with horses and arms (Close Rolls, Record Comm., i. 207). But he was among the followers of the twenty-five barons who opposed King John in 1215 (Matt. Paris, Hist. Maj. ii. 605; Stubbs, i. 583). There are indications of his having left the baronial party before John's death (Close Rolls, i. 250). On 11 May 1217 he had certainly joined the royalists, for on that date Henry III granted to him the whole of the lands of his uncle Richard, who was still in rebellion; but these were restored to the latter on his submission on 2 Nov. 1217 (ib. pp. 308, 339). William was with the king at the siege of Biham in the early part of 1221 (ib. p. 475 b). In 1234 he gained possession of a great part of the family estates by judgment of the king's court [see Percy, Richard de]. In 1242 he paid 100 marks to be exempted from service with the king in Gascony. On the death of his uncle Richard in 1244, he succeeded to the whole of the barony (Excerpta e Rot. Finium, p. 423). He died before 28 July 1245 (ib. p. 440), and was buried at Sawley Abbey. He gave his manor of Gisburn, with the forests, to that abbey, reserving the services of the freeholders and his liberty of hunting. To the master and brethren of the hospital at Sandon in Surrey he gave all his lands in Foston and the twenty marks paid annually by the abbey of Sawley for the manor of Gisburn.
He married, first, Elena, daughter of Ingelram de Balliol, by whom he had seven sons—Henry (1228?–1272), seventh Baron Percy, who was succeeded by his third son, Henry Percy, first Baron Percy of Alnwick [q. v.]; Ingelram, William, Walter, Geoffrey, Alan, and Josceline—and one daughter, Elena. His second wife was Joan, daughter and coheiress of William Brewer, the wardship and marriage of whom, along with that of her four sisters, he obtained from Henry III on 12 June 1233 (ib. i. 243). By her he had four daughters: Anastasia, Joan, Alice, and Agnes.
His third wife was Nicholaa de Stuteville (1244?) (ib. i. 417). He had to pay 100 marks for marrying her without royal consent, her hand being in the king's gift.
[Authorities cited; De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy, 1887, vol. i.; Dugdale's Baronage of England, i. 271; Foss's Lives of the Judges of England, ii. 103.]
PERCY, WILLIAM (1575–1648), poet, probably born at Topcliffe, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, was third son of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland [q. v.] He matriculated from Gloucester Hall (afterwards Worcester College), Oxford, on 13 June 1589, aged 15. Barnabe Barnes [q. v.], son of the bishop of Durham, was studying at Oxford at the same time, and Barnes and Percy strengthened at the university a friendship doubtless previously begun in the north. ‘To the right noble and vertuous gentleman, M. William Percy,’ Barnes dedicated his ‘Parthenophil’ in 1593. Percy was ambitious to emulate his friend's literary example. In 1594 he published a collection of ‘Sonnets to the fairest Cœlia’ (London, by Adam Islip, for W[illiam] P[onsonby]), and closed the slender volume with a madrigal in praise of Barnes's poetic efforts, entitled ‘To Parthenophil upon his Laya and Parthenophe.’ Only twenty pieces are included, and none are impressive. The work was reprinted by Sir Egerton Brydges in 1818; by Dr. Grosart in ‘Occasional Issues’ in 1877, by Mr. Arber in ‘English Garner’ (vi. 135–50), and in ‘Elizabethan Sonnets,’ ed. Sidney Lee, 1904, ii. 137. Copies of the original belong to the Duke of Northumberland and Mr. A. H. Huth.
In an address to the reader prefixed to the sonnets, Percy promised ‘ere long to impart unto the world another poeme more fruitful and ponderous.’ It is doubtful if this promise were literally fulfilled. His only other acknowledged publication is ‘a poor madrigall,’ signed ‘W. Percy, Musophilus: spes Calamo occidit,’ in Barnes's ‘Four Bookes of Offices,’ 1606. But six plays by him—all amateurish dramatic essays—remain in manuscript in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Of these Joseph Haslewood printed two for the first time for the Roxburghe Club in 1824. The one, entitled ‘The Cuck-queanes and cuckolds errants, or the bearing down the Inn: a comoedye,’ is in prose, and is introduced by a prologue spoken by Tarleton's ghost. The other, ‘The Faery Pastorall, or Forest of Elues,’ is chiefly in blank verse. The four unpublished plays are: ‘Arabia Sitiens, or a Dream of a Dry Year,’ 1601; ‘The Aphrodisial, or Sea Feast,’ 1602; ‘A Country's Tragedy in Vacuniam,
