vicar of Shabbington in Buckinghamshire on 8 March 1672, canon of Llandaff on 10 June 1681, portionist rector of Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire on 20 April 1682, rector of Oddington in Gloucestershire in 1687 (when he resigned Shabbington), and archdeacon of Gloucester on 10 March 1703. From 26 May to 26 July 1680 he was in constant attendance on John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester [q. v.], and was responsible for his deathbed repentance. Parsons died on 18 July 1714, and was buried at Oddington. Administration was granted to his son Robert on 6 Sept., his widow Joanna having renounced. Hearne tells an amusing story of how Parsons recognised in a sermon preached by Anthony Addison, before the judges, at St. Mary's, Oxford, the work of William Pindar of University College, and charged the preacher with the plagiarism as he left the church. He left three sons, Robert (b. 1678), John (1682–1699), and Bainton or Baynton (1691–1742).
Parsons published: ‘A Sermon preached at the Funeral of John, Earl of Rochester,’ Oxford, 1680; Dublin (reprinted), 1681; London, 1707, 1709, 1723, 1727 (12th ed.); 1728 (13th ed.), 1735, 1765? 1798, 1800 and 1807 in vol. ix. of Religious Tracts dispersed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. On the title-pages of the editions of 1727, 1728, and 1765? the author is erroneously called Thomas Parsons. The biographical portion of the sermon was printed at the end of Gilbert Burnet's ‘Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester,’ Glasgow, 1752, and in Wordsworth's ‘Ecclesiastical Biography,’ iv. 646–51 n. The whole of it is in the editions of Burnet's work of 1782, 1805, 1810, 1819, 1820, and in Burnet's ‘Lives of Sir Matthew Hale,’ &c., London, 1774. With Burnet's ‘Rochester,’ it was translated into German, and published at Halle in 1698 and 1775? Abstracts from the sermon were published about 1690, as ‘The Libertine Overthrown.’
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), vol. ii. cols. 297, 319; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, i. 453, 496; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), i. 446, ii. 267; Le Neve's Monumenta Anglicana, 1700–1715, p. 294; Hearne's Remains (Oxford Hist. Soc.), i. 120; Kirby's Winchester Scholars, pp. 211, 212, 217; Bloxam's Reg. of Magd. Coll. vi. 138; Hasted's Kent, ii. 546; P.C.C. Administration Act-book, 1714; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 204; registers of Adderbury, kindly supplied by the Rev. H. J. Gepp.]
PARSONS, Sir WILLIAM (1570?–1650), lord justice of Ireland, the eldest son of James Parsons, second son of Thomas Parsons of Disworth Grange, Leicestershire, and Catherine Fenton, sister of Sir Geoffrey Fenton [q. v.], was born apparently about 1570. According to Carte (Life of Ormonde, i. 190), whose account, however, is not strictly accurate, he ‘imbibed early puritanical sentiments,’ but after the death of his patron, the Earl of Leicester, in 1588, ‘he made shift to raise up about 40l., and, with this as his whole fortune,’ transported himself to Ireland, where he found employment as assistant to his uncle Sir Geoffrey Fenton, surveyor-general, and eventually, on 26 Dec. 1602, succeeded to his office. He was ‘plodding, assiduous, and indefatigable, greedy of office, and eager to raise a fortune’ (ib.) On 24 Oct. 1603 he was appointed a commissioner to inquire into the dissolved monasteries in Tyrconnel, and on 20 Dec. 1605 a commissioner for the apportionment and erection of the county of Wicklow. His office of surveyor-general afforded him unique opportunities to acquire land; and the eagerness with which he availed himself of them, especially in the case of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow [see under O'Byrne, Fiagh MacHugh], gained him an unenviable notoriety as a land-hunter. But it may at least be said for him that private interest was in his case balanced by a sincere belief in the efficacy of the plantation system as a means to establish the English interest in Ireland on a firm and endurable basis. He took an active part in his double capacity of commissioner of plantations and surveyor-general in the plantation of Ulster in 1610, of Wexford in 1618, of Longford and Ely O'Carrol in 1619, of Leitrim in 1620, and in the subsequent settlement of the O'Byrnes' territory in Wicklow. As an English undertaker in Ulster he obtained one thousand acres of arable land in the precinct of Clogher in co. Tyrone, called by him the Manor of Cecil, the exact position of which is accurately marked in Norden's map (Cott. MS. Aug. i. ii. 44). As a servitor or Irish official, he was allotted one thousand acres in the precinct of Dungannon in the same county, and he subsequently acquired one thousand acres in the precinct of Tullagha in co. Cavan, which, as being concealed lands, were exempted from the usual conditions of plantation. As an undertaker in Wexford he obtained fifteen hundred acres at an annual rent to the crown of 8l., and eight hundred acres in the plantation of Leitrim.
Nor does this by any means exhaust the list of his acquisitions. His salary as surveyor-general amounted to 80l. On 31 Jan. 1611 he received a pension of 30l. in consideration of his services in the plantation of Ulster. He was created a baronet on 10 Oct.
