Parsons, FATHER ROBERT, the chief of the English Jesuits in their golden age, and a man of remarkable talents and achievements, was born of respectable parents in Somersetshire in 1546. When eighteen years of age he passed from the free school at Taunton to St Mary's Hall, Oxford, and after two years migrated 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 English Church. His enemies in college brought charges against him which led to his forced retirement from Oxford in 1574. He shortly afterwards became a Roman Catholic, and went to Padua with a view of there studying medicine, but, soon changing his mind, he set out on foot to Rome, and offered himself to the Society of Jesus, which he entered July 1575. He was ordained priest in 1578. When in the following year Dr (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, superior of the Douay seminary, succeeded in persuading the Jesuits to join with the seminary priests in the work of the English mission, Parsons and Campion (q.v.) were selected for the new venture. They left Rome in April 1580, with strict injunctions to meddle neither directly nor indirectly in affairs of state. Parsons landed at Dover, June 11, disguised as a merchant of jewels, in a coat of 'buff laid with gold-lace, with hat and feather.' His activity and success took both Catholics and Protestants by surprise. He employed six printers on a secret press, and by the rapidity of his movements for twelve months baffled all the attempts of the government to catch him. But soon after the apprehension of his companion, Campion, in July 1581, Parsons found it prudent to escape to the Continent, from which he never again returned to England.
Meanwhile, following the natural bent of his mind, and ignoring or evading his original instructions, he had busied himself with state intrigues, sounded the political dispositions of influential Catholic laymen when treating with them of their consciences, and thought out schemes for the subjection of England to the pope by force of arms. In Normandy, whither he at first retired, he had conferences with the Duke of Guise and with Father Creighton, who had been despatched by the pope into Scotland to negotiate with the Duke of Lennox for the liberation of the Queen of Scots; and a little later, during April and May 1582, he was at Paris conferring with the Provincial of the French Jesuits, the Archbishop of Glasgow, the papal nuncio, and the agent of the king of Spain, concerning a project for the invasion of England. The plan, which was chiefly the offspring of Parsons' brain, was carried by Creighton to the pope, and by Parsons himself to King Philip at Madrid. Now began his intimacy and influence with the Spanish king, and the series of political enterprises which culminated in the Armada of 1588. Affairs of state did not, however, exclusively occupy the Jesuit's active mind. At Rouen in 1582 he had finished his book, the Christian Directory, which has found favour with Protestant divines; and, with the aid of the Duke of Guise, he founded at Eu a seminary for youths in preparation for the colleges of Douay and Rome. For a short time in 1588 he was rector of the college at Rome; and after the failure of the Armada he organised seminaries or clerical establishments for his countrymen at Valladolid in 1589, St Lucar in 1591, Seville and Lisbon in 1592, and at St Omer in 1593. In the reaction which followed on the death of Allen (1595) the jealousy and suspicion with which the more loyal section of the clergy had for some time regarded the ambitious schemes of the Jesuits and the Spanish party developed into a scandalous quarrel. Disturbances broke out among the prisoners at Wisbeach and in the English college at Rome. Parsons, who went from Madrid to Rome to again assume the rectorship of the English college, now persuaded the pope to appoint George Blackwell (q.v.), a partisan of the Jesuits, as archpriest over the secular clergy, with the view of keeping the chief direction of affairs, political and ecclesiastical, in his own hands. The appointment was resisted by the leaders of the seculars with an animosity which threatened to create a schism. 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. The stringency of the penal laws against Catholics was laid at his door. An appeal carried to Rome by four delegates of the secular clergy led to a diminution of the Jesuits' power, though Parsons persisted to the end in resisting the en- deavours of his opponents to obtain an episcopal government. He died at Rome, as rector of the English college, April 15, 1610.
His industry and power of work were extraordinary. He wrote English forcibly and lucidly, and was a master in the arts of controversy. 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. He was otherwise irreproachable in his private morals. His ambition was for his order and not for himself, and he modestly avoided the cardinal's hat. He knew how on occasions to exercise tact and prudence, and, when it was his purpose to do so, no one could write with more persuasive piety. Among the best known of his voluminous publications is The Conference on the next Succession to the Crown, written with the assistance of Allen and Sir Francis Englefield in favour 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 afterwards obtained for him the title of the first English Whig. Parliament (35 Eliz.) 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, for some time disseminated in manuscript only, 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. The book was read at dinner-time in the English college at Valladolid when Philip was preparing another Armada. The Jesuit's power of invective may be seen in his Responsio ad Elizabethæ edictum—a bitter libel on the queen's ministers in reply to the royal proclamation of November 1591. His Apology for the government of the archpriest (1601) is historically 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.
An impartial biography of this many-sided personality is still a desideratum. A brief sketch of his life and works will be found in Wood's Athenæ (ii. 83), and from other points of view in Dodd's Church History and Oliver's Collections. The best estimate of his character as a Jesuit missionary is that by Richard Simpson in his Life of Campion, where Parsons' career in England is fully traced. For his political intrigues between 1582 and 1595 the Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, published by the Fathers of the Oratory, must be consulted. An account of his quarrels with the secular clergy will be found in the Conflicts of Jesuits and Seculars in the Reign of Elizabeth, by the present writer; and a number of letters and documents, with much miscellaneous information illustrating the whole period of his activity, are scattered through the volumes of Tierney's Dodd and Mr Foley's Records of the English Province of the S. J.