Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/550

P E R P E R PERCY, THOMAS (1729-1811), bishop of Dromore, the editor of the Percy ^cliques, was bom at Bridgnorth 13th April 1729 and baptized at St Leonard s Church 29th April. His father, Arthur Lowe Percy, a grocer by trade, lived in a large house at the bottom of the street called " The Cartway," and acquired sufficient means to send his son, who had received the rudiments of his education at Bridgnorth grammar-school, to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1746. 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 instituted to the rectory of Wilby in the same county, benefices which he retained until 1782. On the 24th of April 1759 Percy was married at Desborough, North amptonshire, to Anne, daughter of Barton Gutteridge. During his residence in the delightful but secluded neigh bourhood of Easton Maudit most of the literary work for which he is now remembered including the Jteliques was completed. When his name became famous through his publications he complied with the request of the duke and duchess of Northumberland that he would reside with them as their domestic chaplain, and was tempted into the belief that he belonged to the illustrious house of Percy. Through this connexion he became dean of Carlisle in 1778 and bishop of Dromore in Ireland in 1782, from which date he was a constant resident in his adopted country. His wife predeceased him at Dromore Palace, 30th December 1806 ; the good bishop, blind but otherwise in sound health, lived until 30th September 1811; both of them were buried in the transept which he added to Dromore Cathedral. For many years Dr Percy enthusiastically laboured in the fields of literature. He translated the Song of Solomon and published a key to the New Testament, a work often reprinted; he edited poetry from the Icelandic language and translated Mallet s Northern Anti quities. His reprint of The, Household Book of the Earl of Northum berland in 1512 is of the greatest value for the illustrations of domestic life in England at that period. But all of these works are of little estimation when compared with the Rcliqucs of Ancient English Poetry, a publication which has entranced successive gen erations of schoolboys and students since its first appearance in February 1765. It was based on an old manuscript collection of poetry, but, unfortunately for the editor s peace of mind, it was modernized in style, a circumstance which exposed him to the sneers and suspicions of Ritson. The work as originally issued by Percy has been re-edited by many British antiquaries, whilst selec tions have been issued for boys and girls, and the manuscript on which he worked has been edited in its complete form by J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall. The bishop was possessed of great poetic feeling. His ballad of "The Hermit of Warkworth " was too simple for the austere taste of Dr Johnson, but it has always and deservedly been popular; and his song now generally known as " Nanny, wilt thou gang wi me?" is a universal favourite, from its own merits as well as from the musical setting of an Irishman called Thomas Carter. The greater part of the seventh volume of Nichols s Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th Century is filled with Bishop Percy s correspondence. PERDICCAS, son of Orontes, a distinguished Mace donian general under Philip and Alexander the Great, and regent of the empire from the death of the latter till he perished in a mutiny in 321 B.C. See MACEDONIAN EMPIRE, vol. xv. p. 142, and PERSIA, infra, p. 585. The same name was borne by three kings of Macedonia : PERDICCAS I., whom Herodotus calls the founder of the monarchy of Macedon ; PERDICCAS II., the enemy of Athens in the Peloponnesian War (died c. 414 B.C.); and PEKDICCAS III. (died 359 B.C.). PEREKOP, a town of European Russia, in the Crimea, 60 miles south-east of Kherson on the isthmus which con nects the peninsula with the continent, and, as its name (perekop, a cutting) indicates, commanding the once de fensive ditch and dyke which cross from the Black Sea to the Sirvash lagoon. It was formerly an important place, with a great transit trade in salt (obtained from the great salt lakes of the immediate neighbourhood), which occupied so large a place in popular estimation that the Tatars of the Crimea were usually styled the " Perekop horde" and their khans the " Perekop khans." Since the opening of the railway route to the Crimea it has greatly declined. In 1865 the population of Perekop and its mercantile suburb (Armyanskii Bazar, 3 miles to the south) was only 4927, and the number has slightly decreased since. In ancient times the isthmus was crossed (about H miles south of the present town) by a ditch which gave the name of Taphros to a Greek settlement. This line of defence having fallen into decay, a fort was erected and a new ditch and dyke constructed in the loth century by Mengli Girai and his son and successor Sahib Girai. The fort, known as Kapu or Or-Kapi, became the nucleus of the town. In 1736 Perekop was captured by Field-Marshal Munnich, and in 1738 by Field-Marshal Lascy, who blew up the fort and de stroyed a great part of the dyke. In 1754 the fort was rebuilt by Krim Girai ; but the Greek and Armenian inhabitants of Perekop preferred to form a new settlement at Armyanskii Bazar (Armenian Market). Captured by the Russians in 1771, the town passed into Russian possession with the rest of the Crimea in 1783. PEREYASLAFF, a town of European Russia, in the Poltava government, 175 miles west-north-west of Poltava, at the junction of the Trubezh and the Alta, which reach the Dnieper 5 miles lower down at the town s port, the village of Andrushi. Besides the town proper there are three considerable suburbs. Though founded in 993 (by Vladimir Svyatoslavitch in memory of his signal success over the Petchenegs), Pereyaslaff has now few remains of antiquity; while the original erection of some of the churches goes back for many hundred years (that of the Assumption, e.f/., to 1010), the actual buildings are not older than the 17th century. The town has trade in grain, salt, cattle, and horses, and some manufactures tallow, wax, tobacco, etc. The population was 10,835 in 1865 and 9300 in 1870. From 1054 Pereyaslaff was the chief town of a principality which passed from one prince to another of the Mstislavitches, Vladimir- ovitches, and Olgovitches. As a southern outpost it often figures in the llth, 12th, and 13th centuries; in later times it was one of the great centres of the Cossack movement; and in 1628 the neighbourhood of the town was the scene of the extermination of the Polish forces known as " Taras s Night." It was by the treaty of Pereyaslaff that in 1654 Bogdan Khmyelnitzkii and the Cossacks acknowledged the supremacy of Alexis. At that time the town contained from 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants. PEREYASLAVL, or PERESLAVL (called Zalyesskii, or " Beyond the Forest," to distinguish it from the older town in Poltava after which it was named), is one of the earliest and most interesting cities in north-west Russia, situated in Vladimir government, 87 miles east of Moscow on the road to Yaroslavl, and on both banks of the Trubezh near its entrance into Lake Pleshtcheevo. Pereyaslavl was formerly remarkable for the number and importance of its ecclesiastical foundations (there were in 1764 no fewer than eleven monasteries in the town and neighbourhood, and the churches about the same period numbered thirty- seven). Among those still standing are the 12th-century cathedral of the Transfiguration (with ancient wall-paint ings and the graves of Demetrius, son of Alexander Nev- skii, and other princes), and the church of the Birth of John the Baptist, founded by Euphrosyne, wife of Demetrius Donskii, in the close of the 14th century. It is by its extensive cotton manufactures (the spinning factory alone employing 1700 hands and producing to the annual value of 195,000) that Pereyaslavl is now best known through out Russia ; and it also manufactures linen, leather, and tobacco. The fisheries on the lake (20 square miles in extent and 175 feet deep) have long been of great value. The population was 6253 in 1864, 7210 in 1870, and 8700 in 1880. Founded in 1152 by Yurgii (George) Vladimirovitch Dolgoruki, prince of Suzdal, Pereyaslavl soon began to play a considerable part in the history of the country. From 1195 till 1302 it had princes of its own ; and the princes of Moscow, to whom it was then bequeathed, kept it (apart from some temporary alienations