Percy, Thomas (1729-1811)

English scholar; bishop of Dromore, Ireland, from 1782. He was given a manuscript collection of songs, ballads, and romances, which became the basis of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). The Percy collection renewed interest in ballads and was influential in the Romantic revival.

He also published a translation (from Portuguese) of the first Chinese novel in English, Hau Kiou Choaun (1761), as well as translations from Icelandic and a new version of the Song of Solomon (1764).

Percy was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He made additions to the Reliques from the Pepys collection at Cambridge, the Ashmole Library at Oxford, the British Museum, and works of early poets, and included a few modern imitations of his own. The work inspired Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.