of a singing-master, and was acknowledged by a severe critic to be equal to any in London (A B C Dario). An introduction to court procured him, on the death of Stanley in 1786, the post of master of his majesty's band, conductor, and composer of the odes and minutes performed at court on the king's birthday, with a salary of 300l. His first essay was the setting of an ode by Warton, ‘In rough magnificence array'd,’ performed at court to celebrate the new year 1787.
On 26 June 1790 Parsons was admitted Mus. Bac. and Mus. Doc. at Oxford. On his visiting Ireland, in 1795, he attended the lord-lieutenant, Earl Camden, who knighted him. In 1796 Parsons was appointed instructor to the princesses royal. His name was on the commission of the peace, and for many years Parsons attended Bow Street police-court as a kind of subsidiary magistrate, and was afterwards promoted to be stipendiary magistrate at Worship Street. Some authorities give Marlborough Street as the scene of his labours. He died of apoplexy, at Somerset Street, Portman Square, on 19 July 1817, in his seventy-first year.
Parsons was a professional member of the Catch Club and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He was an early patron of Michael Kelly and of Horn.
Parsons published:
- ‘Court Minuets for His Majesty's Birthday,’ for the pianoforte and in orchestral parts, 1794.
- ‘Six English Ballads,’ dedicated to the Princess Mary, 1790?
He also issued other ballads, besides arrangements. The ‘European Magazine’ published a portrait, engraved by Ridley and Blood, from a watercolour-painting by Wilkins, jun. (August 1808).
[Dictionary of Musicians, 1827, ii. 268; Georgian Era, iv. 521; Busby's Anecdotes, i. 265; Grove's Dictionary of Music, ii. 652; Morning Chronicle, 1 and 4 Jan. 1787; Mrs. Papendieck's Journal, ii. 165, 190, 272; Annual Biography, 1818, ii. 463; Kelly's Reminiscences, i. 12; Pohl's Haydn in London, p. 285; Gent. Mag. 1817 pt. ii. p. 92; authorities cited.]
PARSONS, WILLIAM, third Earl of Rosse (1800–1867), astronomer, born at York on 17 June 1800, was eldest son of Sir Lawrence Parsons, second earl of Rosse [q. v.] whom he succeeded in the title and estates on 24 Feb. 1841, having previously, from 1807, borne the title of Lord Oxmantown. His education was conducted at home until 1818, when he entered Trinity College, Dublin. Thence, by his father's desire, he passed to Oxford, matriculated from Magdalen College on 1 Feb. 1821, and graduated first class in mathematics on 7 Dec. 1822. From 1823 till 1834 he was four times elected to represent the King's County in parliament, but resigned his seat in 1834 in order to secure leisure for philosophical pursuits. His experiments towards improving the reflecting telescope were begun in 1827 at his father's seat, Birr Castle, Parsonstown, King's County, their earlier results being communicated in 1828 and 1830 to Brewster's ‘Edinburgh Journal of Science’ (ix. 25, ii. 136, new ser.). There was as yet no established mode of procedure in the matter; the processes of the Herschels had not been made public, and everything had to be freshly contrived. Lord Oxmantown took his workmen from the immediate locality; the requisite tools and machinery, furnaces and ovens, were constructed on the spot. He invented in 1828 an engine for grinding and polishing specula by steam power, and, after laborious trials, decided upon an alloy of four atoms (126.4 parts) of copper with one atom (58.9 parts) of tin as their material; but the difficulties connected with large castings of an eminently brittle and refractory substance were overcome only by the exercise of inexhaustible patience and ingenuity.
At last, in 1839, a 3-ft. speculum was successfully cast and mounted as a Newtonian. The details of its construction were communicated to the Royal Society on 9 May 1840 (Phil. Trans. cxxx. 503), and the results of observations made with it upon some of the nebulæ, on 19 June 1844 (ib. cxxxiv. 321). The methods of work being now well under control, two specula, each six feet in diameter, four tons in weight, and of fifty-four feet focus, were cast, after various failures, in 1842 and 1843. The tube in which one of these was mounted was fifty-eight feet long, and seven in diameter. Dean Peacock walked through it with uplifted umbrella, and it was compared by Dr. Robinson, when erect, to one of the round towers of Ireland. It was slung in chains between two piers of masonry twenty-three feet apart, seventy long, and fifty high. Its horizontal movement was limited to about ten degrees on either side of the meridian; but it had a vertical range of nearly one hundred and ten degrees. The speculum was supported in this vast tube by a complex system of cast-iron platforms, triangles, and levers, skilfully adapted for the equable distribution of pressure. The cost of the entire machine was estimated at 20,000l. Observations with it were begun in February 1845, and Rosse showed his tact by employing its unprecedented light-gathering powers chiefly in the examination of nebulæ. Among the more immediate results of its application were the
