in Hertfordshire on 26 Oct. 1789. In 1790 he actively aided in the dissenters' endeavours to obtain the repeal of the test and corporation acts, and published three letters to Lord Aylesford, chairman of a meeting of gentlemen and clergy held at Warwick on 2 Feb. 1790 to oppose the repeal of the acts. From that time he continued to publish tracts on subjects of religious and civil interest until within a few years of his death. In 1795 he supported the scheme for spreading the gospel in unenlightened parts of the county by the formation of the Essex Congregational Union. But his congregation fell off owing to the emigration to America of many of its leading members. He consequently accepted the tutorship of the academy of the Coward Trust, about to be removed in 1799 to Wymondley in Hertfordshire. This post he held for the rest of his life.
His lectures were noticeable for their simplicity and their avoidance of technical terms. Seventeen volumes of them in manuscript are in the Historical Library at New College, Hampstead. He died on 9 Jan. 1819, after a few weeks' illness, and was buried on 21 Jan. in the ground adjoining the congregational church at Hitchin. He was twice married—first, in 1780, to Rachel, daughter of Edward Hickman, minister of Back Street Independent Chapel, Hitchin, from 1758 to 1771; she died in 1791, leaving him with four children; and secondly, in 1793 or 1794, to Susannah, daughter of the Rev. William Lincoln of Bury, who survived him.
Parry's published works include:
- ‘Thoughts on such Penal Religious Statutes as affect the Protestant Dissenters,’ London, 1791.
- ‘Vindication of Public and Social Worship,’ London, 1792 (in answer to Gilbert Wakefield's ‘Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public and Social Worship’).
- ‘An Enquiry into the Nature and Extent of the Inspiration of the Writers of the New Testament,’ London, 1797, 1822.
- ‘Strictures on the Origin of Moral Evil,’ London, 1808 (in answer to Edward Williams's ‘Predestination to Life.’). It was replied to by Thomas Hill in ‘Animadversions on Parry's Strictures,’ when Parry retorted in
- ‘Vindication of Strictures on the Origin of Moral Evil,’ London, 1808.
[London Christian Instructor or Congregational Magazine, 1819, pp. 127, 257–61, 321–8, 385–92; manuscript Memorials of the Academical Institutions sustained by the Coward Trust, by the Rev. Samuel Newth, D.D., pp. 118–24 (in the Historical Library, MS. Division, of New College, Hampstead); Chaplin's Admonitions from the Dead (funeral sermon), and Turnbull's Address, passim; Memoir by Newton prefixed to 2nd edit. of Parry's Enquiry; Urwick's Nonconformity in Herts, pp. 606, 633, 650; Congregational Magazine, 1834, p. 132; Evangelical Magazine, 1818, p. 172. See also Coward College Correspondence MS. vol. i. letters 28 and 29, at New College.]
PARRY, WILLIAM (fl. 1825), major of Lord Byron's brigade in Greece, was originally ‘a firemaster in the navy,’ in which he served with credit, and subsequently a clerk in the civil department of the ordnance at Woolwich. While Lord Byron was endeavouring to assist the Greeks, Thomas Gordon [q. v.], of Cairness in Aberdeenshire, an enthusiastic supporter of the Greek cause, employed Parry in 1823 to prepare a plan for supplying artillery. The result was an estimate that for 10,500l. an efficient corps could be organised in Greece. Gordon supported the plan, and offered personally to bear one-third of the cost; but the Greek committee in London decided to send out a corps on a much smaller scale. Parry was accordingly sent out with a few men, some of whom were skilled artisans capable of making the carriages in Greece, and stores. On 5 Feb. 1824 Byron wrote to Charles Hancock at Missolonghi: ‘Amongst other firebrands, our firemaster Parry has just landed.’ According to Trelawny, Parry was a ‘rough burly fellow, never quite sober.’ He prepared a plan for placing Missolonghi and the harbour in a state of efficient defence at a cost of a thousand dollars (Stanhope, App. p. 295), but actually did very little, probably because he had neither the money nor the men, his artisans having returned to England within three weeks of their arrival.
Parry kept Byron's accounts, and is said to have been his favourite butt at Missolonghi; he appears, however, to have repaid familiarity with devotion, and to have faithfully nursed the poet in his last illness, which terminated in 1824. In 1825 he published in London ‘The Last Days of Lord Byron,’ in which he highly praises Byron, and condemns the conduct of Colonel Stanhope, ‘who had brought with him Nabob airs from Hindostan.’ An absurd description of Jeremy Bentham is included. Trelawny thus sums up Parry's subsequent career: ‘After three months' service in Greece, he returned to England, talked the Greek committee out of 400l., and drank himself into a madhouse.’
