Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)

He was ordained deacon in 1751, and preached at several churches in the Bridgnorth area before becoming priest in 1753, when 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.

This is a heavily revised and annotated version of a manuscript translation of the Haoqiu zhuan (好逑傳), and is the first full publication in English of a Chinese novel.

[citation needed] The following year, he published a two-volume collection of sinological essays (mostly translations) entitled 'Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese.

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.

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 then demonstrated: 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.

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.

The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry set the stage not only for Robert Burns, but also for Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads.

The book is based on an old manuscript collection of poetry, which Percy claimed to have rescued in Humphrey Pitt's house at Shifnal, Shropshire, "from the hands of the housemaid who was about to light the fire with it."

This manuscript provides the core of the work but many other ballads were found and included, some by Percy's friends Johnson, William Shenstone, Thomas Warton, and some from a similar collection made by Samuel Pepys.

Percy's collection of c.120 volumes were kept by his daughters on his death and were presented to the Bodleian Libraries in 1933 by his great granddaughter, Miss Constance Meade.