PARNELL, THOMAS (1679–1718), poet, was the eldest son of Thomas Parnell of Congleton, Cheshire, and Anna, his wife. His great-grandfather, Thomas Parnell, was a mercer and draper at Congleton, of which he was alderman and mayor in 1620–1; he had sons, of whom the second, Tobias Parnell, a gilder and painter, was alderman, and the youngest, Richard Parnell, also alderman and mayor of Congleton in 1647–8. The Parnell family were strong supporters of the parliamentary cause in the civil wars, and intimate friends of John Bradshaw [q. v.], who was mayor of Congleton in 1637. Tobias Parnell refused to take the oath of allegiance to the king, and, dying in 1653, was buried at Astbury. He had ten children, of whom the second son, Thomas Parnell, was mentioned in Bradshaw's will. After the Restoration he went to Ireland and settled in Dublin. He is no doubt identical with Thomas Parnell of St. Michan's, Dublin, for whom a license was issued on 18 April 1674 to marry Anna Grice of St. John's, spinster. He died in 1685, leaving two sons, Thomas the poet, and John Parnell, afterwards judge of the Irish court of king's bench, and ancestor of Sir John Parnell [q. v.], Sir Henry Parnell, first lord Congleton [q. v.], John Vesey Parnell, lord Congleton [q. v.], and Charles Stewart Parnell [q. v.] A statement (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. viii. 509) that Thomas Parnell, goldsmith, of Dublin, who died in 1663, was great-grandfather of the poet is erroneous; he may be identical with Thomas Parnell, brother of Tobias and Richard Parnell, who received the king's pension in 1662 (see Robert Head, Congleton Past and Present, 1887, where the account of the Parnell family agrees with the papers still in the possession of the family).
Thomas Parnell, the poet, was born in Dublin in 1679, and attended a school kept by Dr. Jones, where he showed great powers of memory. In 1689 he was involved, with his mother (‘of Kilosty, Tipperary, widow’), in the attainder of the protestants (King, State of the Protestants of Ireland, 1691, pp. 287–9); but in 1693 he was admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, under Mr. Owen Lloyd, and there he took the degree of B.A. in 1697, and that of M.A. on 9 July 1700 (Stubbs, Hist. Univ. Dublin, p. 343). In 1700 Parnell was ordained deacon by Dr. William King [q. v.], bishop of Derry, after obtaining the dispensation required through his being under canonical age. He was ordained priest about 1703, was installed minor canon of St. Patrick's, Dublin, on 16 Aug. 1704, and was made archdeacon of Clogher on 9 Feb. 1706 by St. George Ashe, bishop of Clogher (Cotton, Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ, ii. 198, iii. 91). The parish of Clontibret was annexed to the archdeaconry. When Parnell informed Dr. King, now archbishop of Dublin, of his new appointment, King sent him an excellent letter (6 March 1705–6) of congratulation and advice (King MSS., Trinity College, Dublin). Soon afterwards Parnell married Anne, daughter of Thomas Minchin of Tipperary, by whom he had two sons, who died young, and a daughter, who is said to have been living in 1793 (Drake, Essays illustrative of the Tatler, &c., iii. 184). In 1709 his mother died, leaving to him lands in Armagh.
In 1709 the question of the conversion of the Roman catholics of Ireland was under discussion, and the lower House of Convocation in Ireland passed resolutions for printing the bible and liturgy in Irish, providing Irish preachers, &c. Parnell was chairman of the committee appointed to make recommendations, and he reported their resolutions to the house on 27 Aug. 1711. He also headed a deputation to the queen, when an address was presented; but nothing came of the proposals (Richardson, A Short History of the Attempts to convert the Popish Natives of Ireland, 1712, pp. 53, 58; King to Swift, 28 July 1711; Mant, History of the Church of Ireland, ii. 248–9).
By 1711 he had abandoned the political views of his early years, and was on friendly terms with Swift and other members of the tory party, then in power. He did not, however, desert his former acquaintances, and in 1712–13 he assisted Addison and Steele by contributing occasional papers of an allegorical nature to the ‘Spectator’ and ‘Guardian.’ The death of his wife, to whom he was much attached, in August 1711 was a severe blow. Nearly a year later Swift wrote: ‘He has been ill for grief of his wife's death, and has been two months at Bath’ (Journal to Stella, 1 July
