He was born as Thomas Percy in Bridgnorth, the son of Arthur Lowe Percy a grocer and farmer at Shifnal who sent Thomas to Christ Church, Oxford in 1746 following an education firstly at Bridgnorth Grammar School followed by nearby Adams' Grammar School in local Newport. He graduated in 1750 and proceeded M.A. in 1753. In the latter year he was appointed to the vicarage of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, and three years later was instituted to the rectory of Wilby in the same county, benefices which he retained until 1782. In 1759 he married Anne, daughter of Barton Gutterridge.
Dr Percy's first work, 'Hao Kiou Choaan, or The Pleasing History', was published in 1761. This is a heavily revised and annotated version of a manuscript translation of the 'Haoqiu zhuan', and is the first full publication in English of a Chinese novel. The following year, he published a two-volume collection of sinological essays (mostly translations) entitled 'Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese.' In 1763, he published
Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from the Icelandic. The same year, he also edited the Earl of Surrey's poems with an essay on early blank verse, translated the Song of Solomon, and published a key to the New Testament. His
Northern Antiquities (1770) is a translation from the French of Paul Henri Mallet. His edition of the 'Household Book' of the Earl of Northumberland (1770) (
The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his Castles of Wresill and Lekinfield in Yorkshire. Begun anno domini M.DXII) is of the greatest value for the illustrations of domestic life in England at that period.
These works are of little estimation when compared with the
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). In the 1760s, he obtained a manuscript of ballads (the Percy Folio) from a source in Northumberland. He had in mind the idea of writing a history of the Percy family of the peerage (the Dukes of Northumberland), and he had sought materials of local interest. He had sought out old tales from near Alnwick, the ancestral home of the Northumberland Percy family, and he had come across many ballad tales.
In 1763, Percy, aiming for the market that
Ossian had opened for "ancient poetry" (see James MacPherson), published
Five Pieces of Runic Poetry from Icelandic, which he translated and "improved."
Percy was a friend of Samuel Johnson, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and James Boswell. In 1764, Dr Johnson and others encouraged Percy to preserve the poetry he was finding at home. Percy therefore took the
ballad material he had from his folio and began searching for more ballads, in particular. He wanted to collect material from the border areas, near Scotland. In 1765, he published the
Reliques to great success.
Appointed a chaplain to the king in 1769, Percy was formally admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge that year, and received a doctorate of divinity from Cambridge in 1770.
Still not having secured an adequate living, Thomas Percy continued with his project of commemorating the Alnwick area, and so he composed his own ballad poem on Warkworth Castle, then a ruin, which the Dukes of Northumberland controlled and which the Duchess of Northumberland favored for its sublime views. Combining the vogue for the "Churchyard Poets" and the ballad vogue that he himself had set in motion, Thomas Percy wrote
The Hermit of Warkworth in 1771. Samuel Johnson famously composed three ex tempore parodies of this verse in the 1780s. When an admirer too often told Johnson of the beautiful "simplicity" of the ballad verse form, Johnson pointed out that the line between simplicity and simple mindedness is narrow: just remove the sense. He then demonstrated:
- "The tender infant meek and mild
- :Fell down upon a stone;
- The nurse took up the squealing child
- :But yet the child squeal'd on."
Thomas Percy was angered by the parody, but Hester Thrale says that he soon came to his senses and realized that Johnson was satirizing the form, and not the poem.
Soon after, he said,
- "I put my hat upon my head
- :And went into the strand.
- There I met another man
- :Whose hat was in his hand."
This extemporized parody was written down by Boswell and others. It may have been aimed less at Percy than at the ballads that were then appearing nearly daily on every subject.
Percy carried out most of the literary work for which he is now remembered at Easton Maudit. When he became famous, he was made domestic chaplain to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and was tempted into the belief that he belonged to the illustrious house of Percy. Through his patron's influence he became Dean of Carlisle Cathedral in 1778 and was ordained as Bishop of Dromore in County Down in 1782.
His wife died before him in 1806; the bishop, blind but otherwise in sound health, lived another five years. Both were buried in the transept which Percy had added to Dromore Cathedral.
