a charge of heresy from being brought against her. Henry, however, would not permit her arrest, and she became a widow for the third time on his death in January 1547. In the same year she married a former lover, Sir Thomas Seymour, now Lord Seymour of Sudeley. Soon after this event, on the 7th of September 1548, she died at Sudeley castle. Catherine was a pious and charitable woman and a friend of learning; she wrote The Lamentation or Complaint of a Sinner, which was published after her death.
See A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. iii. (1877).
PARR, SAMUEL (1747–1825), English schoolmaster, son of Samuel Parr, surgeon at Harrow-on-the-Hill, was born there on the 26th of January 1747. At Easter 1752 he was sent to Harrow School as a free scholar, and when he left in 1761 he began to help his father in his practice, but the old surgeon realized that his son’s talents lay elsewhere, and Samuel was sent (1765) to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From February 1767 to the close of 1771 he served under Robert Sumner as head assistant at Harrow, where he had Sheridan among his pupils. When the head master died in September 1771 Parr, after vainly applying for the position, started a school at Stanmore, which he conducted for five years. Then he became head master of Colchester Grammar School (1776–1778) and subsequently of Norwich School (1778–1786). He had taken priest’s orders at Colchester, and in 1780 was presented to the small rectory of Asterby in Lincolnshire, and three years later to the vicarage of Hatton near Warwick. He exchanged this latter benefice for Wadenhoe, Northamptonshire, in 1789, stipulating to be allowed to reside, as assistant curate, in the parsonage of Hatton, where he took a limited number of pupils. Here he spent the rest of his days, enjoying his excellent library, described by H. G. Bohn in Bibliotheca Parriana (1827), and here his friends, Porson and E. H. Barker, passed many months in his company. The degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the university of Cambridge in 1781. Parr died at Hatton vicarage on the 6th of March 1825.
Dr Parr’s writings fill several volumes, but they are all beneath the reputation which he acquired through the variety of his knowledge and dogmatism of his conversation. The chief of them are his Characters of Charles James Fox (1809); and his unjustifiable reprint of the Tracts of Warburton and a Warburtonian, not admitted into their works, a scathing exposure of Warburton and Hurd. Even amid the terrors of the French Revolution he adhered to Whiggism, and his correspondence included every man of eminence, either literary or political, who adopted the same creed. In private life his model was Johnson. He succeeded in copying his uncouthness and pompous manner, but had neither his humour nor his real authority. He was famous as a writer of epitaphs and wrote inscriptions for the tombs of Burke, Charles Burney, Johnson, Fox and Gibbon.
There are two memoirs of his life, one by the Rev. William Field (7828), the other, with his works and his letters, by John Johnstone (1828); and E. H. Barker published in 1828–1829 two volumes of Parriana, a confused mass of information on Parr and his friends. An essay on his life is included in De Quincey’s works, vol. v., and a little volume of the Aphorisms, Opinions and Reflections of the late Dr Parr appeared in 1826.
PARR, THOMAS (c. 1483–1635), English centenarian, known as “Old Parr,” is reputed to have been born in 1483, at Winnington, Shropshire, the son of a farmer. In 1500 he is said to have left his home and entered domestic service, and in 1518 to have returned to Winnington to occupy the small holding he then inherited on the death of his father. In 1563, at the age of eighty, he married his first wife, by whom he had a son and a daughter, both of whom died in infancy. At the age of 122, his first wife having died, he married again. His vigour seems to have been unimpaired, and when 130 years old he is said to have threshed corn. In 1635 his fame reached the ears of Thomas Howard, 2nd earl of Arundel, who resolved to exhibit him at court, and had him conveyed to London in a specially constructed litter. Here he was presented to King Charles I., but the change of air and diet soon affected him, and the old man died at Lord Arundel’s house in London, on the 14th of November 1635. He was buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey where the inscription over his grave reads: “Tho: Parr of ye county of Salopp Born in Ao 1483. He lived in ye reignes of Ten Princes viz. K. Edw. 4, K. Ed. V. K. Rich. 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen. 8. K. Edw. 6. Q. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. Ja. and K. Charles, aged 152 yeares and was buried here Nov. 15. 1635.” A post-mortem examination made by the king’s orders by Dr William Harvey, revealed the fact that his internal organs were in an unusually perfect state, and his cartilages unossified.
PARR, a name originally applied to the small Salmonoids abundant in British rivers, which were for a long time considered to constitute a distinct species of fish (Salmo salmulus). They possess the broad head, short snout and large eye characteristic of young Salmonoids, and are ornamented on the sides of the body and tail with about eleven or more broad dark cross-bars, the so-called parr-marks. However, John Shaw proved, by experiment, that these fishes represent merely the first stage of growth of the salmon, before it assumes, at an age of one or two years, and when about six inches long, the silvery smolt-dress preparatory to its first migration to the sea. The parr-marks are produced by a deposit of black pigment in the skin, and appear very soon after the exclusion of the fish from the egg; they are still visible for some time below the new coat of scales of the smolt-stage, but have entirely disappeared on the first return of the young salmon from the sea. Although the juvenile condition of the parr is now universally admitted, it is a remarkable fact that many male parr, from 7 to 8 inches long, have their sexual organs fully developed, and that their milt has all the fertilizing properties of the seminal fluid of a full-grown and sexually matured salmon. On the other hand, no female parr has ever been obtained with mature ova. Not only the salmon, but also the other species of Salmo, the grayling, and probably also the Coregoni, pass through a parr-stage of growth. The young of all these fishes are barred, the salmon having generally eleven or more bars, and the parr of the migratory trout from nine to ten, or two or three more than the river-trout. In some of the small races or species of river-trout the parr-marks are retained throughout life, but subject to changes in intensity of colour.
PARRAMATTA, a town of Cumberland county, New South Wales, Australia, 14 m. by rail N.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 12,568. It is situated on the Parramatta River, an arm of Port Jackson, and was one of the earliest inland settlements (1788), the seat of many of the public establishments connected with the working of the convict system. Many of these still remain in another form (the district hospital, the lunatic asylum, the gaol, two asylums for the infirm and destitute, the Protestant and Catholic orphan schools), involving a government expenditure which partly sustains the business of the town. Parramatta was one of the earliest seats of the tweed manufacture, but its principal industrial dependence has been on the fruit trade. With the exception of Prospect and Pennant Hills, where there is an outburst of trap rock, the surface soil is the disintegration of the Wainamatta shale, which is well suited for orangeries and orchards. The first grain grown in the colony was harvested at Parramatta, then called Rosehill. The earlier governors had their country residence near the town, but the domain is now a public park in the hands of the municipality. An early observatory, where in 1822 were made the observations for the Parramatta Catalogue, numbering 7385 stars, has long been abandoned. Parramatta was incorporated in 1861. It has one of the finest race-courses in Australia, and in the King’s School, founded in 1832, the oldest grammar school in the colony.
PARRHASIUS, of Ephesus, one of the greatest painters of Greece. He settled in Athens, and may be ranked among the Attic artists. The period of his activity is fixed by the anecdote which Xenophon records of the conversation between him and Socrates on the subject of art; he was therefore distinguished
