PARR, THOMAS (1483?–1635), ‘Old Parr,’ described by John Taylor, the water-poet, as the son of John Parr of Winnington, a small hamlet in the parish of Alberbury, thirteen miles west of Shrewsbury, is said to have been born in 1483. He is stated to have gone into service in 1500, but, upon his father's death in 1518, returned to Winnington to cultivate the small holding which he inherited there. The lease of this property was renewed to him by John, the son of his old landlord, Lewis Porter, in 1522, and in 1564 he received a new lease, renewed in 1585, from John's son Hugh. In the meantime, in 1563, being then eighty years of age, he married his first wife Jane Taylor, by whom, the legend avers, he had a son John, who died aged ten weeks, and a daughter Joan, who also died in infancy. Parr was now, according to his biographer, the water-poet, in the prime of life. Years elapsed without in any degree impairing his vigour, which was so far in excess of his discretion that, in 1588, he was constrained to do penance in a white sheet in the neighbouring church of Alberbury for having begotten a bastard child by a certain Katherine Milton. Seven years after this exploit, being then 112 years old, he buried his first wife, and ten years later, in 1605, he married Jane, daughter of John Lloyd (or Flood) of Guilsfield in Montgomeryshire, and widow of Anthony Adda. Thirty years now passed peacefully over the head of ‘Old Parr,’ until in the spring of 1635 Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel [q. v.], the most accomplished curiosity-hunter of his day, visited his estates in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury. The fame of Parr soon reached the earl's ears; he saw him, and ‘the report of this aged man was certified to him.’ Determined to exhibit this ‘piece of antiquity’ at the court, Arundel had a litter constructed for him, and sent him up by easy stages to London, where, in September 1635, he was presented to the king. Charles asked him, ‘You have lived longer than other men: what have you done more than other men?’ Parr replied, ‘I did penance when I was an hundred years old.’ He claimed to have lived under ten kings and queens, well remembered the monasteries, and, when questioned on religious matters, replied that he held it safest to be of the religion of the king or queen that was in being, ‘for he knew that he came raw into the world, and accounted it no point of wisdom to be broiled out of it.’ He was exhibited for some weeks at the Queen's Head in the Strand. But the ‘old, old, very old man,’ as he was styled, did not long outlive his fame and hospitable reception in London. The change of life and plethora of rich diet proved fatal to a man who had lived the simple and abstemious life of a husbandman, and who is stated to have threshed corn when he was in his 130th year. Parr died at Lord Arundel's house on 14 Nov. 1635, and on the following day an autopsy was made by the great physician, William Harvey. Harvey reported that his chief organs were in a singularly healthy condition, and attributed his death mainly to the change of air to which Parr had been subjected, on his removal to London, ‘from the open, sunny and healthy region of Salop’ (Harvey, Report; cf. Diary of Lady Willoughby, 24 Nov. 1635). Aitzema, the Dutch envoy, visited the ‘human marvel’ on the day before his death, and deemed the circumstance worthy of a communication to the States-General (cf. Southey, Common-place Book, iii. 311). Parr was subsequently buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, where is an inscription (recut in 1870) to the following effect: ‘Tho: Parr of ye county of Sallop. Borne in Ao 1483. He lived in ye reignes of Ten Princes, viz., K. Edw. 4. K. Ed. V. K. Rich. 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen. 8. K. Edw. 6. Q. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. Ja. and K. Charles, aged 152 yeares, and was buried here Nov. 15 1635.’ He is also commemorated by a brass plate in Wollaston Chapel in his native parish of Alberbury.
Parr, like Henry Jenkins [q. v.], who was reputed to have lived 169 years, left no issue; but lovers of the marvellous have credited him with a numerous progeny, which, of course, inherited his extraordinary tenacity of life. His son is stated to have lived to 113, his grandson to 109, one of his great-grandsons, Robert Parr, to 124, and another, John Newel (who died at Mitchelstown in July 1761), to 127. Catherine Parr, an alleged great-granddaughter, is described
