THOMAS PARR
The Olde, Old, very Olde Man or Thomas Par, the Sonne of John Parr of Winnington in the Parish of Alberbury. In the County of Shropshire who was Borne in 1483 in The Raigne of King Edward the 4th and is now living in The Strand, being aged 152 yeares and odd Monethes 1635 He dyed November the 15th And is now buryed in Westminster 1635
This story Tennyson has immortalised, and its memory is still perpetuated in the pageants which are held from time to time in the city. Coventry was described in 1642 by Jeremiah Wharton, an officer under the Earl of Essex in the Parliamentary Army, as "a City environed with a wall, co-equal with, if not exceeding, that of London, for breadth and height, and with gates and battlements, and magnificent churches and stately streets, and abundant fountains of water, altogether a place very sweetly situated, and where there was no lack of venison." The walls of Coventry, begun in the year 1355, were very formidable, being six yards high and three yards thick, and having thirty-two towers and twelve principal gates. They defied both Edward IV and Charles I when with their armies they appeared before them and demanded admission, but they were demolished after the Civil War by order of Charles II, because the people of Coventry had refused admission to his father, King Charles I. Coventry possessed a greater number of archives than almost any other town in England, covering eight centuries and numbering over eleven thousand. My brother was delighted to find that one of them related to a very old man named Thomas Parr, recording the fact that he passed through the town on his way to London in 1635, at the age of 152 years. It reminded him of a family medicine known as Old Parr's Pills, which at one time was highly prized; they had been used by our grandfather, who died in his ninety-seventh year, and he often wondered whether his longevity was in any way due to those pills. They were supposed to have been made from the same kind of herbs as old Parr was known to have used in his efforts to keep himself alive, and during supper my brother talked about nothing else but that old man; if he was an authority on anything, it was certainly on old Thomas Parr. This man was born on the Montgomery border of Shropshire, where a tablet to his memory in Great Wollaston Church bore the following inscription:
The old, old, very old man
THOMAS PARR
was born at Wynn in the Township of Winnington
within the Chapelry of Great Wollaston, and Parish of
Alberbury, in the County of Salop, in the year of our
Lord 1483. He lived in the reigns of 10 Kings and
Queens of England, King Edward IV. and V. Richard III.
Henry VII. VIII. Edward VI. Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth.
King James I. King Charles I.
He died the thirteenth and was buried at
Westminster Abbey on the fifteenth November 1635
Age 152 years and 9 months.
John Taylor, known as the Water Poet because he was a Thames waterman, who was born in 1580, and died in 1656, was a contemporary of Parr, and wrote a book in 1635, the same year that old Parr died, entitled The Olde, Olde, very Olde Man, in which he described Thomas Parr as an early riser, sober, and industrious:
Though old age his face with wrinkles fill.
He hath been handsome and is comely still;
Well-faced, and though his Beard not oft corrected
Yet neate it grows, not like a Beard neglected.
Earl Arundel told King Charles I about this very old man, and he expressed a desire to see him; so the earl arranged to have him carried to London. When the men reached old Parr's cottage, which is still standing, they found an old man sitting under a tree, apparently quite done. Feeling sure that he was the man they wanted, they roused him up, and one said, "We have come for you to take you to the King!" The old man looked up at the person who spoke to him, and replied, "Hey, mon! it's not me ye want! it's me feyther!" "Your father!" they said, in astonishment; "where is he?" "Oh, he's cuttin' th' hedges!" So they went as directed, and found a still older man cutting away at a hedge in the small field adjoining the cottage, and him they took, together with his daughter, for whom the earl had provided a horse. Musicians also went with him, and it was supposed that he was exhibited at the different towns they called at on their way to London, and such was the crush to see him in Coventry that the old man narrowly escaped being killed. When he was taken into the presence of King Charles, the king said, "Well, Parr, you've lived a long time," and Parr answered, "Yes I have, your Majesty." "What do you consider the principal event in your long life?" asked the king, to which Parr replied that he hardly knew, but mentioned some offence which he had committed when he was a hundred years old, and for which he had to do penance in Alberbury Church, with the young woman sitting beside him barefooted, and dressed in white clothing! Whereupon King Charles said, "Oh, fie, fie, Parr, telling us of your faults and not your virtues!"
