William Percy's Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia

"WILLIAM PERCY, the "Sweet Singer" of these Sonnets, was the third, but second surviving son of Henry, Eighth Earl of Northumberland, by Catherine Neville, eldest daughter and co-heir of John, Lord Latimcr. The Earl, his father, having been committed to the Tower of London, charged with plotting an invasion of England for the purpose of setting free Mary Queen of Scots, perished therein by his own hand on 2ist June, 1585. His mother died 28th October, 1 596, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His eldest brother was born in 1564, and a fifth brother in 1575 ; so that his birth may be approximately assigned to about 1570.

"In the Strafford Papers (vol. ii, p. 168), a Mr. Garrard says in 1638 that "he lives obscurely in Oxford, and drinks nothing but ale." He lived a mal-content and retired many years and died in Penny-Farthing street, — according to Wood's Ashmolean MSS. He was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, 28th May, 1648, and is simply called in the register "William Percy, Esquire." Such is the meagre l of outward biographic fact that has come down concerning this so long forgotten scion of an illustrious House..."

So begins A. B. Grosart's Introduction to The Sonnets of William Percy, first published as Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia in 1594. According to Grosart, Percy wrote much, "...Comoedyes and pastoralls, with their songs ; as also one bookc of cpigrammes, by W. P., Esquire," and his Grace the Duke of Devonshire has other MSS. of his. For the Roxburghe Club Joseph Haslewood edited " The Cuck-quenes and the Faery Pastorall, or Forest of Elves " (1824)..." but I cannot locate a copy on the Internet.  It is a shame a copy written by one in the Shakespeare circle--for he is, at least through his acquaintance with Barnabe Barnes, of whom more below--with a comedic-pastoral theme on the subject of Faeries, written so close to the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream cannot be conveniently examined.

Percy and Barnes seem to have been close friends.  Percy published a madrigal, prefixed to Barnes' Four Books of Offices (1606), and Barnes dedicated the Offices to "the right noble and virtuous gentlemen, M. William Percy, Esquier, his deerest friend." 

Of Percy's Sonnets, Grosart observes:

"Intrinsically these Sonnets belong to a humble class. They have the plaintive tone of a genuine love-disappointment. That, too, imparts its own music to several of them, e.g., Sonnets vi, xiii, xiiii, xvi, xviii. There are, also, gleams of word-beauty, though "few and far between." Taken altogether, for themselves and from the position of the Author, " Coelia " must be regarded as worthy of a place in the yet unwritten history of our Sonnet-literature, and so of our limited reproduction."  [The volume digitized by Google Book Search is number 23 of only 50 printed.  "Proof-sheets and waste pages have been destroyed."].

One must agree with Grosart's evaluation, but what fodder for imaginative literary speculations...