Parsons
Parsons names 7 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Parsons FATHER ROBERT, the chief of the English Jesuits in their golden age
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FATHER ROBERT, the chief of the English Jesuits in their golden age; born in Somersetshire, England, 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 deg 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-ference on the next Succession to the lish Church. His enemies in college Crown," written with the assistance of brought charges against him which led forced retirement from Oxford in word became a Roman Catholic and set out on foot to Rome, and offered himself to the Society of Jesus. He was ordained priest in 1578. When in the following year Dr. Cardinal) Allen, superior of Car (afterward the Douay seminary, succeeded in persuading the Jesuits to join with the seminary priests in the work of the English mission, Parsons and Campion were selected. 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 attempts of the government to catch him. But after the apprehension of his companion, 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 conspired 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 culminated 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 organized seminaries or clerical establishemnts 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 sh college, now persuaded the Pope English 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 resisted 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 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, equivocation, and reckless slander of his opponents. Among the best known of his voluminous publications is "The Con- Allen and Sir Francis Englefield in favor of the infanta of Spain. He here insists on the right of the people to set aside, on religious grounds, the natural heir to the throne; and advocates principles which afterward obtained for him the title of the first English Whig. Parliament made it treason to possess a copy of the book, which was reprinted in the interests of Cromwell in 1648. It was again reprinted in 1681, and publicly burned at Oxford in 1683. Another curious work by Parsons, was his "Memorial for the Reformation," in which he lays down rules for the guidance of the government, in the expected event of England's subjection to the Pope. His " "Apology" for the government of the archpriest (1601) is his torically interesting, while his "Manifestation of the Great Folly and Bad Spirit of Certain in England Calling Themselves Secular Priests," a passionate attack upon the conduct and morals of his clerical brethren, exhibits him on his weakest side. He died in Rome, as rector of the English college, April 15, 1610.
Parsons HERBERT, an American lawyer and politician
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
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 member 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 prominent Republican can supporters of Gov. J. M. Cox for president in 1920.
Parsons THEOPHILUS, an American jurist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THEOPHILUS, an American jurist; born in Essex co., Mass., Feb. 24, 1750; was graduated at Harvard College College in 1769, and studied law at Falmouth (now Portland), in Maine, where he was admitted to the bar in 1774. He was a member of the convention which, in 1779, framed the State constitution of Massachusetts and of the convention called to ratify the Constitution of the United States in 1789. In 1800 he removed to Boston. He was appointed in 1806 chief justice of Massachusetts. As a lawyer, "he had," according to Justice Story, "no equal in Massachusetts"; and he probably had few, if any, superiors in the United States.' A collection of his judicial opinions was published; "Commentaries on the Law of the United States." He died in 1813.
Parsons FRANK ALVAH, an American lecturer on art subjects
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
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, France, 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 decoration and other subjects relating to art.
Parsons WILLIAM BARCLAY, civil engineer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM BARCLAY, civil engineer, of New York City; born in 1859, and educated at Columbia University, New York. In 1885 he became consulting engineer of New York City, a position he has held to the present time. From 1894 to 1905 he was the chief engineer for the Rapid Transit Co. of New York and constructed their great subway system. In 1898 he conducted exploration and drew up plans for a proposed railway from Hankow to Canton, China. During During the war with Germany Colonel Parsons largely directed the engineering work of the New York regiments whc were with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
Parsons THOMAS WILLIAM, a poet and translator of Dante
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THOMAS WILLIAM, a poet and translator of Dante. He was born in Boston in 1819, and from 1836 lived in Italy, where, after some years' study of the language of the country he produced his "Dante's Inferno," later adding parts of the Purgatorio and Paradiso. He afterward practiced dentistry in Boston and London, and died in 1892. His other works include: "Ghetto di Roma"; "The Magnolia and Other Poems"; "The Old House at Sudbury"; "The Shadow of the Obelisk, and Other Poems."
Parsons a city of Kansas
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city of Kansas, in Labette co. It is on the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas and the St. Louis and San Francisco railroads. Its industries include flour and feed mills, grain elevators, chicken-feed factories, clothing factories, 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.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Of the Parsonses gathered here, only the Jesuit has grown in stature. Collier's in 1921 wrote of Robert Parsons as a double-dealer guilty of "reckless slander" of his fellow priests, an English Protestant verdict inherited from the archpriest quarrel; modern historians usually spell his name Persons, as he did himself, and treat him as a serious organiser of exile seminaries and of the Catholic press rather than chiefly as a plotter, while his Christian Directory is recognised as one of the most reprinted devotional books of the age. Theophilus Parsons, chief justice of Massachusetts to 1813, survives as a name in citations rather than a reputation, and Justice Story's claim that he had "no equal in Massachusetts" is now a period judgement rather than a live one. Herbert Parsons, the Yale-trained New York congressman and Republican county chairman, has faded almost entirely; the same is true of the remaining minor entries on this page.
Written for this edition, 2026.