OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Percy, Thomas (1768-1808)

​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engaged his attention [Percy was created bishop of Dromore in 1782]; and the present Edition would have remained unpublished had he not yielded to the importunity of his friends, and accepted the humble offer of an Editor in a nephew.’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.]
T. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Percy, Richard de

​PERCY, RICHARD de, fifth Baron Percy (1170?–1244), born about 1170, was second son of Agnes, heiress of the original Percy family, and Josceline de Louvain, a younger son of Godfrey, duke of Brabant, who took his wife's name on his marriage. Richard is said to have taken a prominent part in the vehement opposition of the northern barons to the proposed sale of Northumberland to William the Lion in 1194. In 1196 Percy's elder brother Henry died, leaving a son William (1183?–1245) [q. v.], in his fifteenth year. Percy assumed administration of his nephew's lands and the baronial rights as fifth baron Percy, though the officially appointed guardian of the minor was William Brewer (d. 1226) [q. v.] In the same year his mother Agnes died, and he seized her lands, while he received the lands of his aunt the Countess of Warwick by bequest. After his nephew had attained his majority, Richard retained his property. A long litigation between the two was not concluded till 1234, when it was decided that Richard should hold the moiety of the Percy estates bequeathed to him by the Countess of Warwick, but at his death the whole property was to revert to William.
Percy was one of the northern barons who began the struggle which ended in the signing of Magna Charta by refusing to accompany the king to France in 1213 (Stubbs, i. 580; Rog. Wend. Rolls Ser. ii. 114). On 7 May 1215 he and some others made an attempt to treat with the king (Patent Rolls, 17 John, Record Comm. p. 180); he was one of the twenty-five executors of Magna Charta (Stubbs, i. 582), and he was excommunicated by Innocent III by name on 26 Dec. In 1216 he and other northern barons reduced Yorkshire to the obedience of Louis of France (Rog. Wend. ii. 169, 190). On 11 May 1217 Henry III granted Percy's lands to his nephew William. But they were restored by the king on Percy's submission on 2 Nov. (Close Rolls, Record Comm. i. 308, 339).
Percy helped to besiege Ralph de Gaugi in Newark Castle in 1218 (ib. i. 379 b), and he was one of three barons charged with the destruction of Skipton Castle in 1221 (ib. p. 474). In 1236 he appears among the witnesses of the confirmation of the charters (Annals of Tewkesbury, i. 104). The year after, when in the parliament the barons prepared to deliberate apart on the king's demands, Gilbert Basset suggested to the king that he should send some of his friends to attend the conference. The words caught the ear of Richard de Percy, and he indignantly cried, ‘What did you say, friend Gilbert? Are we foreigners then, and not friends of the king?’ (Matt. Paris, Hist. Maj. iii. 381–2). He died before 18 Aug. 1244 (Excerpta e Rotulis Finium, Record ​ed. i. 421). The manor of Ludford was left by him to the priory of Sixhills (Rot. Cart. Joh. p. 159 b).
On the death of his first wife, a sister of William Brewer, Percy married Agnes de Neville, by whom he had two sons, Henry and Alexander.
W. E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Percy, William (1575-1648)

​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, ​or Cupid's Sacrifice,’ 1602; and ‘Necromantes, or the two supposed Heads,’ a comical invention acted by the children of St. Paul's about 1602. In 1619 Thomas Campion [q. v.] included in his ‘Epigrammata’ a friendly and appreciative address to Percy in Latin verse (bk. ii. No. 40; cf. edit. by Mr. A. H. Bullen, p. 325).
Percy seems to have lived a troubled life. At one time he was in the Tower on a charge of homicide. In 1638 he was residing obscurely in Oxford, ‘drinking nothing but ale’ (Strafford Letters, ii. 166). He died at Oxford in May 1648, ‘an aged bachelor in Pennyfarthing Street, after he had lived a melancholy and retired life many years.’ He was buried on 28 May in Christchurch Cathedral.
S. L.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Threlkeld, Caleb

​THRELKELD, CALEB (1676–1728), botanist, was born on 31 May 1676 at Keibergh in the parish of Kirk Oswald, Cumberland (Synopsis, Be). In 1698 he graduated M.A. in the university of Glasgow, and soon afterwards became a nonconformist preacher. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh on 26 Jan. 1712–13, and went to live in Dublin with his wife, three sons, and three daughters. At first he preached in a conventicle on Sundays and acted as a physician on week-days, but afterwards (dedication to Primate Boulter) became reconciled to the established church, practised medicine, and studied botany. He made botanical expeditions in every part of the neighbourhood of Dublin, into co. Wicklow, co. Meath, Queen's County, and into the north of Ireland. In 1727 he published in Dublin ‘Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum.’ The synopsis describes 535 species of plants with the localities in which they were found and their scientific, English, and Irish names. Threlkeld in most cases took the Irish names from a manuscript in his possession, ‘which I take to be of good authority’ (Synopsis, Br). He probably added a few notes of his own from the reports of rustics. Although the book has been frequently quoted as an authority for the Irish names of plants, the errors it contains show that Threlkeld had little acquaintance with the language. He died in Mark's Alley, Francis Street, Dublin, on 28 April 1728, and was buried in a graveyard in Cowan Street near St. Patrick's Cathedral.
[Threlkeld's Synopsis; Pulteney's Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany in England, 1790, ii. 196.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Thorpe, William (d.1407?)

​THORPE, WILLIAM (d. 1407?), Wyclifite, was a native of the north of England, was educated at Oxford, and took priest's orders. He was tried for heresy in 1397 by Archbishop Thomas Arundel [q. v.], imprisoned, and set free by Richard Braybrooke, bishop of London. For ten years he travelled about preaching; in 1407 he preached at Shrewsbury that the sacrament was consecrated bread, and that pilgrimages, images, and swearing should not be suffered. He was charged by the bailiffs of Shrewsbury and imprisoned. From Shrewsbury prison he was sent to the castle of Saltwood, and was examined before Archbishop Arundel on 7 Aug. 1407. His fate is uncertain, but it is stated that he was burned at Saltwood, August 1407.
He wrote an account of his trial called ‘The Examination of William Thorpe’ and a ‘Short Testament to his Faith;’ both are printed in Foxe's ‘Actes and Monuments.’ The ‘Examination’ is a fine piece of English prose composition, emended and modernised by Tindal. More refers to it in 1532 in his ‘Confutation’ as ‘put forth, it is said, by George Constantine.’ Bale ascribes ‘Glosses on the Psalter’ to his pen; Tanner's ascription of the ‘A B C,’ an heretical book generally coupled with Thorpe's ‘Examination,’ appears to be an error.
[Foxe's Actes and Monuments, 1844, iii. 826, 961; Bale's Bibl. Brit. vii. 42.]
M. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Thorpe, William de

​THORPE or THORP, Sir WILLIAM de (fl. 1350), chief justice, appears as an advocate in 1333, as one of the king's serjeants in 1341, as the king's attorney in 1342, and in the April of that year was appointed a justice, probably of the king's bench, where he certainly sat in 1345 (Foss), though Dugdale thinks that his first appointment may have been to the common pleas. On 26 Nov. 1346 he was appointed chief justice of the king's bench, in 1347 sat on the commission for the trial of the Earls of Menteith and Fife, and opened the parliament of that and the following year. Charges of corruption in the execution of his office were made against him in 1350, he was imprisoned, and on 3 Nov. Edward III issued a writ constituting the Earls of Arundel, Warwick, and Huntingdon, and two others, commissioners to try him. He confessed that he had received bribes from five persons indicted before him at Lincoln, and was sentenced to imprisonment and forfeiture. On the 19th the king issued a second writ to the same commissioners, setting forth the advantages of Thorpe's office and the enormity of his offence, stating that when he took the oath of his office the king had told him by word of mouth that if he transgressed he should be hanged and suffer forfeiture, and demanding sentence accordingly, which was passed by the commissioners. Edward remitted the capital punishment, and issued writs for the seizure of his lands and goods. In the parliament of February 1351 the king laid the record and process in Thorpe's case before the magnates, who declared that the judgment was right and reasonable. In the course of that year Thorpe was pardoned, and a portion of his lands—the manor of Chancton in Sussex—was restored to him. He was not reinstated as chief justice, but on 24 May 1352 was appointed second baron of the exchequer, and in 1354 was chief of a commission of assize in Sussex, and was one of the triers of petitions in parliament. In 1358 he was appointed a commissioner to treat with the ​Duke of Brabant, and in 1359 was a member of commissions of oyer and terminer for Sussex, Kent, and other counties, if, indeed, he is to be identified with the William de Thorp of that list. But the name was too common to be certain as to this, or as to the family to which the chief justice belonged, though it seems probable that he was either of Surrey or Sussex. Blomefield suggests that he was the Sir William who was brother of Sir Robert de Thorpe (d. 1372) [q. v.], the chancellor (Hist. of Norfolk, v. 147).
[Foss's Judges, iii. 527; Rymer's Fœdera, iii. 208–10, 392, 464 (Record edit.); Cal. Rot. Pat. pp. 142, 160; Abbrev. Rot. Orig. ii. 211–212; Rot. Parl. ii. 164, 200, 227, 254, 267 (Record publ.).]
W. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Throckmorton, John

​THROCKMORTON or THROGMORTON, Sir JOHN (d. 1445), under-treasurer of England, was the son of Thomas Throgmorton of Fladbury, Worcestershire, a retainer of Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick [q. v.], by his wife Agnes Besford. According to Dugdale he was ‘brought up to the study of lawes and was afterwards of the king's council.’ Probably in Henry IV's reign he became a clerk in the treasury, and in 3 Henry V (1415–16) he was granted lands in Fladbury for his services (Cal. Rot. Pat. in Turri Londin. p. 264 b). In 1417–1418 he was in attendance on Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick [q. v.], at Caen, of which the earl had been appointed governor on its surrender to Henry V. He was elected knight of the shire for Worcestershire in the parliament summoned to meet on 19 Nov. 1414, and was returned for the same constituency to those summoned on 2 Dec. 1420, 9 Nov. 1422, and 12 May 1432. In 1426 he was made a commissioner for raising a loan in Warwickshire. In 1431 he was appointed one of the Earl of Warwick's attorneys during his absence abroad, and in the same year was retained as a member of Warwick's council for life with a salary of twenty marks. On the earl's death in 1439 Throgmorton was made one of his executors and joint custodian of his castles and manors during his son's minority. In 1433 he was made ‘surveyor of the administration of the effects’ of Edmund, earl of March (Rot. Parl. iv. 471). In 1434 and again in 1440 he served on the commission of the peace in Warwickshire. In the latter year he was styled chamberlain of the exchequer and under-treasurer of England (Nicolas, Acts of the Privy Council, v. 81). He died in 1445; in accordance with his will, dated at London on 12 April in that year, he was buried in the church of St. John the Baptist, Fladbury, where there is an inscription to his memory (Nash, Worcestershire, i. 452). He married, in 1409, Alianora, daughter and coheiress of Sir Guy Spiney or De la Spine of Coughton, Warwickshire, which thus passed into the possession of the Throgmorton family. By her he had two sons, Thomas and John, and seven daughters. Thomas (d. 1472) succeeded to the estates, and was great-grandfather of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton [q. v.]
A. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Throsby, John

​THROSBY, JOHN (1740–1803), antiquary, son of Nicholas Throsby, alderman of Leicester and mayor in 1759, by Martha Mason, his second wife, was born at Leicester on 21 Dec. 1740, and baptised at St. Martin's Church there on 13 Jan. following. In 1770 he was appointed parish clerk of St. Martin's, which office he held until his death. He early turned his attention to the study of local history and antiquities, and in 1777, at the age of thirty-seven, published his first work, ‘The Memoirs of the Town and County of Leicester,’ which was issued at Leicester in six duodecimo volumes. In 1789 he brought out a quarto volume of ‘Select Views in Leicestershire, from Original Drawings,’ containing historical and descriptive accounts of castles, religious houses, and seats in that county, and in the following year a ‘Supplementary Volume to the Leicestershire Views, containing a Series of Excursions to the Villages and Places of Note in that County.’ This was followed in 1791 by ‘The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town of Leicester’ (Leicester, 4to). He also republished Robert Thoroton's ‘Nottinghamshire,’ with large additions (3 vols. 4to, 1790, new edit. 1797).
John Nichols [q. v.] incorporated most of Throsby's work in his ‘History of Leicestershire.’ He describes him as ‘a man of strong natural genius, who, during the vicissitudes of a life remarkably chequered, rendered himself conspicuous as a draughtsman and topographer.’ In later life Throsby was in indifferent circumstances. He attempted many expedients to maintain his family, few of which were successful, but in his later years he was assisted by friends. He died, after a lingering illness, on 5 Feb. 1803, and was ​buried on the 8th at St. Martin's, Leicester. Over the old vestry door is a tablet to his memory. He married at St. Martin's, on 29 Oct. 1761, Ann Godfrey, by whom he had five sons and five daughters. His widow survived him, and died on 1 Oct. 1813.
Besides those mentioned above, his works are: 1. ‘Letter to the Earl of Leicester on the Recent Discovery of the Roman Cloaca at Leicester, with Some Thoughts on the Jewry Wall,’ Leicester, 8vo, 1793. 2. ‘Thoughts on the Provincial Corps raised, and now raising in support of the British Constitution, at this aweful period,’ 1795. An engraved portrait of Throsby at the age of fifty is prefixed to his ‘Excursions’ and ‘History of Leicester.’
W. G. D. F.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wood, Searles Valentine (1830-1884)

​WOOD, SEARLES VALENTINE, the younger (1830–1884), geologist, the only child of Searles Valentine Wood (1798–1880) [q. v.], was born at Hasketon, near Woodbridge, on 4 Feb. 1830. He was educated at King's College, London, and in France; on returning to England he studied law, was admitted a solicitor in 1851, and practised in London. As he had been devoted to geology from his earliest years, he took the opportunity of his partner's death in 1865 to retire from business, after which he made his home with his father, in whose work he was constantly a helper. Elected F.G.S. in 1864, he published in that year a map of the East Anglian drifts. The next six or seven years after he became free were devoted to a more thorough study of those deposits in conjunction with F. W. Harmer, Wood taking as his especial task the drifts of Suffolk and Essex, his friend those of Norfolk. They embodied the results in a memoir and map, published by the Palæontographical Society in 1871, as an introduction to the supplement to the ‘Crag Mollusca’ by S. V. Wood, senior. The son wrote separately or jointly nearly sixty scientific papers. The earlier deal with rather wide geological problems, but the majority refer to Pliocene and glacial deposits, more especially the latter. As this is a controversial subject, Wood's views have not escaped adverse criticism, but they always demand respectful consideration as founded on most careful and conscientious investigation. Indeed he never spared any pains to get at the truth, for which alone he cared. For instance, in 1871, on finding a seam in the mid-glacial sands to be full of minute fragments of marine shells, he had a quantity of the material sent to Brentford, where he then resided. By patiently sifting this he obtained about seventy recognisable species of mollusca, some of which were novelties, and these led him to regard the deposit as older than a similar one in Lancashire, previously supposed to be contemporaneous.
About 1875 Wood's heath began to fail, but his mental powers were not affected, and he continued to work at and write on his favourite studies. His latest task was the investigation of the very early Pliocene deposit discovered at St. Erth's, Cornwall. He died at his residence, Beacon Hill House, Martlesham, near Woodbridge, on 14 Dec. 1884, and was buried near his father at Melton. In 1853 he married Elizabeth Gayler, but their union was childless.
[Obituary notices, Nature, xxxi. 318, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. 1885, vol. xli. Proc. p. 41, Geol. Mag, 1885, p. 138 (with list of scientific papers); also information from Mrs. Searles Wood (widow) and F. W. Harmer, esq.]
T. G. B.