house in which the conspirators had taken refuge. Catesby and Percy fought desperately, back to back. The former was killed outright; Percy was desperately wounded, and died two days later.
Percy figures in Crispin Pass's engraving ad vivum of Guy Fawkes and his seven chief confederates.
Percy's wife is said to have removed from Alnwick during Percy's lifetime and to have settled at the upper end of Holborn, London, where she gained a livelihood by teaching. A son Robert married at Wiveliscombe, Somerset, on 22 Oct. 1615, Emma Mead, and left issue. Of Percy's two daughters, one married Catesby's son Robert.
[Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ix. 173–5, x. 142–3; De Fonblanque's Annals of the House of Percy, ii. 586–600; Jardine's Gunpowder Plot, 1857; see arts. Catesby, Robert, and Fawkes, Guy.]
PERCY, THOMAS (1768–1808), editor of Percy's ‘Reliques,’ son of Anthony Percy of Southwark and nephew of Bishop Thomas Percy [q. v.], was born on 13 Sept. 1768. After education at Merchant Taylors' School, he matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, on 27 June 1786, aged 17. Some eight years before he went up to Oxford, Daines Barrington relates that he had written not only ‘Ballads,’ one of which was set to music by the composer Samuel Wesley, but also an epic poem, consisting of more than six hundred lines, upon the invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar. In this work, says Barrington, no less than in a tragedy which this infant prodigy founded upon Peruvian annals, ‘there are strong marks of an early genius for Poetry, which he likewise recites admirably well upon the first stool you may place him. I asked this wonderful boy how many books he intended to divide his epic poem into, when he answered that he could not well bring all his matter into less than twenty-four.’ A pastoral, written by him at the age of eight, is given in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1778, p. 183), and some verses, written while he was at Merchant Taylors', ‘On the Death of Dr. Samuel Johnson’ (1785, 4to), were printed anonymously at the cost of an admirer. He graduated B.C.L. at Oxford in 1792, became a fellow of his college in the same year, and proceeded D.C.L. in 1793, having previously, in 1793, been presented to the vicarage of Grays Thurrock in Essex. His juvenile exploits seem to have exhausted his literary energy, for beyond supervising the publication of ‘Poems by a Literary Society, comprehending Original Pieces in the several Walks of Poetry’ in 1784, and contributing some verses to the ‘Poetical Register,’ he published nothing. In 1794, however, he was the ostensible editor of the fourth edition of the ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ the advertisement to which states: ‘Twenty years have near elapsed since the last edition of this work appeared. But although it was sufficiently a favourite with the publick, and had long been out of print, the original Editor had no desire to revive it. More important pursuits had, as might be expected, engaged his attention [Percy was created bishop of Dromore in 1782]; and the present Edition would have remained unpublished had he not yielded to the importunity of his friends, and accepted the humble offer of an Editor in a nephew.’ The editor then proceeds to refute the assertion of Ritson that the original manuscripts were not genuine.
Percy died, unmarried, at Ecton, near Northampton, on 14 May 1808. Nichols describes him, with his wonted generosity, as ‘an elegant scholar, a poet, and a very accomplished and amiable man.’
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1816; Gent. Mag. 1808, i. 470; Robinson's Merchant Taylors' Reg. p. 140; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 147, 148, and Lit. Illustr. vii. 54, 192, viii. 101, 108, 256; Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Introduction; Barrington's Miscellanies, p. 308; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature.]
PERCY, THOMAS (1729–1811), editor of the ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ and bishop of Dromore, was born in Cartway Street, Bridgnorth, Shropshire, on 13 April 1729. His father was a grocer and the son of a grocer, as appears from the ‘Bridgnorth Common Council Books;’ but, in later life at least, the bishop was anxious to deduce his descent from the Percys of Northumberland, with the living representative of whom he was brought into official and social connection. At Bridgnorth the name was spelt Pearcy and Piercy; in a Battel Book at Christ Church, Oxford, it is spelt Piercy. The first noted occurrence of the spelling Percy is in the register at Easton-Maudit, and was probably due to the aspiration just mentioned. In an entry in that register he states that his family came from Worcester; and it is from Sir Ralph Percy [q. v.], a younger son of Henry Percy, second earl of Northumberland [q. v.], who, however, was unmarried, that he seeks to trace his pedigree (Nash, Worcestershire). He was educated at Bridgnorth grammar school; and, obtaining a Careswell exhibition, he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1746. His career at the university was not specially distinguished. He graduated B.A. in 1750 and M.A. in 1753.
