Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/173

PARSONS 129 PAKSONS PAHSONS, a city of Kansas, in La- bette CO. It is on the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas and the St. Louis and San Francisco railroads. Its industries in- clude flour and feed mills, grain eleva- tors, chicken-feed factories, clothing fac- tories, etc. It has the State hospital for epileptics, a high school, a public library, a Federal building, Masonic Temple, etc. Pop. (1910) 12,463; (1920) 16,028. PARSONS, FRANK ALVAH, an American lecturer on art subjects, born at Chesterfield, Mass., in 1868. He was educated at Wesleyan Seminary and afterward studied art in Italy, Fi-ance, England and Austria. He graduated from the department of Fine Arts at Columbia, in 1905. He was lecturer on art in Columbia and other colleges and was president and director of the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, from 1905 to 1914. He also lectured on interior decoration for women's clubs and other bodies. He carried on yearly a course of lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and conducted summer study classes in Europe yearly. He wrote several books on interior decora- tion and other subjects relating to art. PARSONS, HERBERT, an American lawyer and politician, born in New York in 1869. He graduated from Yale in 1890 and afterward studied at several law schools. He was admitted to the bar in 1895. After serving as alderman in New York City he was elected a mem- ber of Congress, serving from 1905 until 1911. For many years he was chairman of the Republican County Committee and was^ also a member of the Republican National Committee, and was a member of the Seventh Regiment and for a time served as major and as judge-advocate on the staff of the 1st Brigade of the New York National Guard. In 1917 he was commissioned major in the Aviation Service. He was one of the most promi- nent Republican supporters of Gov. J. M. Cox for president in 1920. PARSONS, FATHER ROBERT, the chief of the English Jesuits in their golden age; born in Somersetshire, Eng- land, in 1546. When 18 he passed from the free school at Taunton to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and after two years to Balliol College, where he took his degrees of bachelor and master, and became a fellow and tutor. Here he twice took the oath abjuring the papal supremacy, but he never received orders in the Eng- lish Church. His enemies in college brought charges against him which led to his forced retirement from Oxford in 1574. He shortLv afterward became a Roman Catholic and set out on foot to Rome, and offered himself to the So- ciety of Jesus. He was ordained priest in 1578. When in the following year Dr. (afterward Cardinal) Allen, superior of the Douay seminary, succeeded in per- suading the Jesuits to join with the semi- nary priests in the work of the English mission, Parsons and Campion were se- lected. Parsons in 1580 landed at Dover, disguised as a merchant of jewels. He employed six printers on a secret press, and for 12 months baffled all the at- tempts of the government to catch him. But after the apprehension of his com- panion. Campion, in July, 1581, Parsons escaped to the Continent, where he schemed for the subjection of England to the Pope by force of arms. He con- spired in France with the Duke de Guise, the Provincial of the French Jesuits, the Papal Nuncio and others for an invasion of England. Now began his intimacy and influence with the Spanish king, and the series of political enterprises which cul- minated in the Armada of 1588. At Rouen in 1582 he had finished his book, the "Christian Directory," which has found favor with Protestant divines; and, with the aid of the Duke of Guise, he founded at Eu a seminary for youth. After the failure of the Armada he or- ganized seminaries or clerical establish- emnts for his countrymen at Valladolid in 1589, St. Lucar in 1591, Seville and Lisbon in 1592, and at St. Omer in 1593. Parsons, who went from Madrid to Rome to again assume the rectorship of the English college, now persuaded the Pope to appoint George Blackwell, a partisan of the Jesuits, an archpriest over the secular clergy, with the view of keep- ing the chief direction of affairs in his own hands. The appointment was re- sisted by the leaders of the seculars. Parsons, upon whom the odium of the appointment chiefly fell, was accused of deceiving the Pope, of tyranny over the clergy, and of continued treason against his country. An appeal carried to Rome by four delegates of the secular clergy led to a diminution of the Jesuits' power. His industry and power of work were extraordinary. His domineering spirit and political partisanship created for him bitter enemies, while his mode of prosecuting his ends justly exposed him to charges of double dealing, equivoca- tion, and reckless slander of his oppo- nents. Among the best known of his voluminous publications is "The Con- ference on the next Succession to the Crown," written with the assistance of Allen and Sir Francis Englefield in fa- vor of the infanta of Spain. He here in- sists on the right of the people to set