Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/374

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

those whom the queen consulted respecting the prayer-book. He became once more Marquis of Northampton on 13 Jan. 1558–9. When the trial of Wentworth for the loss of Calais took place on 20 April 1559, Northampton acted as high steward. He was again made a knight of the Garter on 24 April 1559; on 22 July 1559 he was one of the commissioners to visit the dioceses of Oxford, Lincoln, Peterborough, and Coventry and Lichfield, and in October of the same year received the Prince of Sweden, then on a visit to England. He is mentioned as a member of Gray's Inn in 1562. On 18 March 1570–1 he was created M.A. by the university of Cambridge. Elizabeth seems to have liked him. She stopped to inquire about his health, when he was ill with an ague, on her way into London both in November 1558 and on 6 July 1561. When he died, on 28 Oct. 1571, at Warwick, she paid for his funeral at St. Mary's Church there. In spite of considerable traffic in abbey lands and of grants made to him at his sister's marriage and later, he did not die rich.

Northampton had a most unfortunate matrimonial history. He married, first, in 1541, Anne, daughter of Henry Bourchier, second earl of Essex. In 1547 he divorced her, and, apparently before the proceedings were properly completed, he married Elizabeth Brook, daughter of Lord Cobham. He had to separate from her for a time in order to get an act of parliament passed, in 1548, to make any children of his first wife illegitimate (a printed copy of this act is in the British Museum). In 1552 he procured another act to secure the legality of his second marriage. The second marchioness was influential at court, and helped to bring about the marriage of Lord Guilford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey. One of the earliest acts of parliament in Queen Mary's reign repealed the act of 1552, so that the position of the marchioness was one of some uncertainty. On her death in 1565, Northampton married, thirdly, Helena, daughter of Wolfgang Suavenberg, who was either a German or a Swede. He left no issue, and what property he had passed to his nephew Henry Herbert, second earl of Pembroke [q. v.], son of his sister Anne.

[Letters and Papers of Hen. VIII, 1537 and 1538; Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, v. 1, &c.; Strype's Works, passim (see Index vol. pp. 126 and 127); Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 299; Lloyd's State Worthies, p. 187; Ordinances of the Privy Council, vii. 223, &c., and Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, 1542–7, p. 121, 1552–1554; Rogers's Records of Yarlington, p. 20; Dep.-Keeper of Publ. Records, 10th Rep. App. ii. p. 206; Burke's Extinct Baronage; Nichols's Leicestershire, iv. 725; Dugdale's Warwickshire, p. 320; Doyle's Official Baronage; Nicholson's Annals of Kendal, pp. 330–3; Ferguson's Hist. of Westmoreland, p. 120; information kindly furnished by Chancellor Ferguson; Froude's Hist. of Engl. iii. 211, vii. 26; Sir George Duckett's Parrs of Kendal Castle.]

W. A. J. A.

PARRIS, EDMUND THOMAS (1793–1873), painter, son of Edward and Grace Parris, was born in the parish of St. Marylebone, London, on 3 June 1793. Giving early indications of artistic talent, he was placed with Messrs. Ray & Montague, the jewellers, to learn enamel-painting and metal-chasing, and during his apprenticeship his leisure time was given to the study of mechanics, which subsequently proved of great service to him. In 1816 he entered the schools of the Royal Academy, and commenced the study of anatomy under Dr. Carpue. His first important picture, ‘Christ blessing little Children,’ which is now in St. George's Church, Sheffield, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824. In that year, when the proposal was first made to undertake the restoration of Sir J. Thornhill's paintings in the cupola of St. Paul's Cathedral, Parris devised an ingenious apparatus for gaining access to them which attracted much attention, and led to his engagement by Mr. Hornor to assist him in the production of his panorama of London at the Colosseum, for which he had been collecting materials since 1820. Upon this immense work, which covered nearly an acre of canvas and presented most formidable artistic and mechanical difficulties, Parris laboured incessantly for four years, completing it in November 1829. Soon after he painted, in conjunction with W. Daniell, R.A., a panorama of Madras, for which he also constructed a building. A wholly different class of art, in which Parris gained a great temporary reputation, was the portrayal of female beauty, and he was for some years a fashionable portrait-painter. His picture ‘The Bridesmaid,’ which was exhibited at the British Institution in 1830, and purchased by Sir Robert Peel, became very popular through the engraving by J. Bromley; and many of his single figures and groups, composed in the same weak, sentimental style, were engraved in the ‘Keepsake’ and similar publications. In 1836 and 1838 were published three sets of plates from his drawings, entitled respectively, ‘Flowers of Loveliness,’ ‘Gems of Beauty,’ and ‘The Passions,’ with illustrative verses by Lady Blessington; and the plates to that