Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/362

Parr  1882, i. 108; Antiquary, March 1884, pp. 118 sq. (memoir by J. E. Bailey); Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 271; extract from burial register of St. Mary de Ballaugh, per the Rev. E. W. Kissack.]  PARR, RICHARD, D.D. (1617–1691), divine, was born in 1617 at Fermoy, co. Cork, of which parish his father, Richard Parr, was perpetual curate. At his birth his mother was fifty-five years of age. Having learned Latin at a priest's school, he entered Exeter College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1635. He commenced B.A. on 13 June 1639, and, being a good preacher, was chosen chaplain-fellow (1641), at the instance of John Prideaux [q. v.], then rector. He proceeded M.A. on 23 April 1642. In 1643 Archbishop Ussher found a refuge in Exeter College; he made Parr his chaplain, and took him to Cardiff, Glamorganshire, at the beginning of the following year. In 1646 he obtained the vicarage of Reigate, Surrey; it is not certain whether he took the ‘league and covenant.’ He resigned his fellowship in 1649. He retained his connection with Ussher, who died (1656) in the Countess of Peterborough's house at Reigate. In 1653 he obtained the vicarage of Camberwell, Surrey. At the Restoration he was created D.D. (30 Oct. 1660). He declined the deanery of Armagh and an Irish bishopric, but accepted a canonry at Armagh. He appears to have held with Camberwell the rectory of Bermondsey, Surrey, from about 1676 to 1682. At Camberwell he was very popular; he ‘broke two conventicles’ by ‘outvying the presbyterians and independents in his extemporarian preaching.’ He was ‘a lover of peace and hospitality.’ He died at Camberwell on 2 Nov. 1691, and was buried in his churchyard, where a monument was erected to his memory. He married a rich widow, sister of Roger James, the patron of Reigate; she died before him.

He published, besides three single sermons (1658–72), including a funeral sermon (1672) for Robert Bretton, D.D.: 1. ‘Christian Reformation,’ &c., 1660, 8vo (addressed to his ‘dear kindred and countrymen of the county of Cork,’ and the parishioners of Reigate and Camberwell). 2. ‘The Life of … James Usher … with a Collection of … Letters,’ &c., 1686, fol. (Thomas Marshall, D.D. [q. v.], had a considerable hand in this life, but died before its publication. Evelyn says the impression was seized on account of a letter of Bramhall's reflecting on ‘popish practices.’)

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 172, 341 (the account is by Tanner), and Fasti (Bliss), i. 507, ii. 8, 242; Ware's Works (Harris), 1764, ii. 206 seq.; Memoirs of Evelyn, 1818, i. 423, 503, 587, ii. 131; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict. 1815, xxiv. 142 seq.]  PARR, SAMUEL (1747–1825), pedagogue, born at Harrow-on-the-Hill on 26 Jan. 1746–7, was the son of Samuel and Anne Parr. The Parrs traced their descent to Sir Thomas Parr (d. 1464), the great-grandfather of Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, and the father of Sir William Parr [q. v.] The family was settled in Leicestershire in the seventeenth century, and produced some royalist divines. Samuel Parr, vicar of Hinckley, Leicestershire, married the daughter of Francis Brokesby [q. v.] the nonjuror. His two sons—Robert (1703–1759), rector of Horstead, Norfolk; and Samuel (b. 1712)—were ardent Jacobites; and in 1745 Samuel gave 800l., nearly his whole fortune, to the Pretender. The loss of the money led him, it is said, to see that the winning side was in the right, and he brought up his son upon sound whig principles. He married the daughter of Leonard Mignard, the descendant of one of the French refugees of 1685, an apothecary and surgeon at Harrow, to whom he had been apprenticed, and on Mignard's death he succeeded to the business. Parr was a man of strong character and good education. His only son was precocious, and afterwards declared that he could remember being suckled by his mother. He learnt Latin grammar from his father when four years old, and played at preaching sermons. At Easter 1752 he was sent to Harrow School, then under Thomas Thackeray (the novelist's great-grandfather). At Harrow Parr became intimate with two schoolfellows, William Bennet [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Cloyne, and Sir William Jones the orientalist. The boys encouraged each other in literary amusements, became rulers of imaginary Greek countries in the fields round Harrow, wrote plays and imitations of Swift and Addison, and even ventured into logic and metaphysics. Parr was at the top of the school when he was fourteen, but was removed in the spring of 1761 to be placed in his father's business. He read medical books, and acquired some knowledge of medicine, afterwards useful to him in his parish. But he hated the business, was shocked by operations, and criticised the Latin of prescriptions while neglecting their substance. He kept up his classics, and obtained notes of the school lessons from Jones and Bennet. His father yielded at last to his wishes, and in 1764 he was allowed to change medicine for divinity. His mother had died on 5 Nov. 1762, leaving Samuel and a daughter Dorothy, born on 6 June 1749, who became Mrs. Bowyer, and survived her