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 by profession, took upon him to fast twelve days and twelve nights without any sustenance at all’ (black letter broadside, with three woodcuts). These exaggerated effusions were answered on 5 June by Parnell's friends in ‘The Lamb's Defence against Lyes. And a true Testimony given concerning the Sufferings and Death of James Parnell. And the ground thereof. By such hands as were eye-witnesses, and have subscribed their names thereto,’ London, Giles Calvert, 1656. The tone of this is temperate and convincing.

Parnell's undoubted ability, extreme youth, and untimely death at once exalted him into the position of the ‘quaker protomartyr.’ His works show acumen and skill in argument. Had he attained to maturity, he would probably have been a great writer. As it is, they abound in bitter invective, exaggerated by the crudity of youth. Besides the works noticed, he wrote: 1. ‘The Trumpet of the Lord blowne, or a Blast against Pride and Oppression,’ &c., London, Giles Calvert, 1655, 4to. 2. ‘A Shield of the Truth, or the Truth of God cleared from Scandalls and Reproaches,’ &c., London, 1655, 4to. 3. ‘The Watcher … or a Discovery of the Ground and End of all Forms, Professions, Sects, and Opinions,’ &c., London, 1655, 4to. 4. ‘Goliath's Head cut off with his own Sword; In a Combat betwixt Little David, the Young Stripling … and Great Goliath, the Proud Boaster,’ &c., London, 1655. This was in answer to a paper issued against him by Thomas Drayton of Abbot's Ripon, Huntingdonshire. He also wrote from prison, shortly before his death, many epistles and addresses, as well as ‘A Warning to all People’ (translated into Dutch, 1670), all of which are printed in ‘A Collection of the several Writings given forth from the Spirit of the Lord, through … James Parnel, &c. Published in the year 1675.’ An original letter from Parnell to Stephen Crisp is in the Colchester collection of manuscripts (see Crisp and his Correspondents, 1892, p. 4).

[Works, ed. Crisp, 1675; the present writer's Crisp and his Correspondents, pp. xvii, xxxiii, xxxiv, 4–8, 70; Besse's Sufferings, i. 86, 190, 191; Callaway's Memoir of Parnel, 1846; Life, in vol. ii. of Tuke's Biographical Notices; Sewel's History of the Rise, &c. i. 137–41; David's Hist. of Evangelical Nonconformity in Essex, pp. 319–321 n., 402; Dale's Annals of Coggeshall, pp. 172–5; Fox's Great Mystery, &c. pp. 13, 14; Fox's Journal, ed. 1891, pp. 172, 201, 231; Barclay's Letters of Early Friends; Smith's Catalogue, ii. 268–72; Smith's Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana, p. 199; Cutts's Colchester, p. 209; Whitehead's Christian Progress, p. 65; Wood's Fasti, i. 435; Evans's Old and New Halstead, 1886, pp. 52, 53; manuscript Book of Sufferings preserved at Colchester; Register of Burials of Colchester Monthly Meetings.] 

PARNELL, JOHN (1744–1801), chancellor of the Irish exchequer, born on 25 Dec. 1744, was the only son of Sir John Parnell, bart., of Rathleague, Queen's County, M.P. for Maryborough, by his wife Anne, second daughter of Michael Ward of Castle Ward, co. Down, a justice of the king's bench in Ireland, and sister of Bernard, first viscount Bangor. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 7 Jan. 1766. He was never called either to the English or the Irish bar, but was elected a bencher of King's Inns, Dublin, on 11 Feb. 1786. He was appointed a commissioner of customs and excise for Ireland on 16 Dec. 1780, and succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father in April 1782. He appears to have represented Bangor in the Irish parliament of 1761–8, and Inistioge in that of 1776–83. At the general election in the summer of 1783 Parnell was returned for Maryborough and Queen's County, and elected to sit for Queen's County. He spoke for the first time in the house on 11 Nov. 1783, when he vindicated the conduct of the commissioners of the revenue board (Irish Parl. Debates, ii. 112). On the 29th of the same month he warmly opposed Flood's reform bill, and declared that he could not sit patiently by and see the constitution of his country overturned (ib. ii. 248). He succeeded John Foster, afterwards Lord Oriel [q. v.], as chancellor of the Irish exchequer on 22 Sept. 1785, and was sworn a member of the British privy council on 27 Oct. 1786. In February 1788 he brought in a bill for reducing the interest on the national debt from six to five per cent. (ib. viii. 237–9). He defended the administration of the Marquis of Buckingham with considerable vigour during the debate on the address on 22 Jan. 1790 (ib. x. 16–18), and was again returned for Queen's County at the general election in that year. In January 1792 he accompanied the chief secretary for Ireland (Robert Hobart, afterwards fourth earl of Buckinghamshire) to England, where they had an interview with Pitt and Dundas, and succeeded for a time in frustrating the liberal policy of the British government. Parnell, who was a protestant, appears to have told the ministers that ‘there was nothing to fear from the catholics; that they had always receded when met; that he believed the bulk of them perfectly satisfied, and that there would be no dissatisfaction if the subject had not been written upon, and such infinite pains