IV.

THE HONORABLE FAMILY OF PARSONS IN ENGLAND AND ITS CONNECTION BY MARRIAGE WITH SIR EDWARD PYNCHON, COUSIN OF WILLIAM PYNCHON, ESQ., FOUNDER OF SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

By ALBERT ROSS PARSONS.

"The honorable family of Parsons have been advanced to the dignity of viscounts and more lately earls of Ross." (Bishop Gibson, A. D. 1725, in 'Camden's Britannia').

"It does not appear that there has ever been any attempt to collect even the materials for a history of the English family of Parsons, notwithstanding there have been many individuals among them of great distinction, as knights, baronets, and noblemen." (New England Gen. Reg., 1847, p. 263.)

We learn from Guppy ("Homes of English Names," 1890) that Parsons is a striking example of a purely south of England name, not to be found north of the Wash. It is represented in most of the southern counties, but its great home is in Wilts, while it is also numerous in most of the counties around this centre, namely in Somerset, Dorset, Hants, Oxford, and Monmouth.

The following diagram represents approximately the relative positions and the latitude and longitude of the English shires in which the Parsons family has resided for 1,000 years or more. The figures in the squares show the number of persons of the name of Parsons to every 10,000 of population.

In order to realize the practical solidarity and near proximity to each other of the various branches of the Parsons family in England, it should be observed that the entire region. represented in the said diagram is included in an area of about 200 miles east and west by 150 miles north and south,

or less than one-half of the area of the New England States. Thus, for instance, the Parsons of Oxfordshire and Devonshire, England, resided nearer to each other than the towns of Springfield and Boston, Mass., in both of which places, A.D. 1675, Cornet Joseph Parsons had residences, warehouses, and wharves, notwithstanding, at that time, outside of scattered towns, New England was yet an unbroken wilderness. Emigrants to such a limited area of country as the lower part of New England might be wholly unrelated to each other, although they bore the same family name; but it would be remarkable, indeed, if emigrants of the same family name from so limited an area as that of the above handful of counties in the South of England were not all more or less related as members of one and the same family of long-established prominence in the region whence they came.

In order to get a bird's-eye view of the ramifications of the ancient family of Parsons in England, we may begin with Herefordshire.

We note in this shire, in the Herald's visitation of 14 Edward I., as the most ancient representative of the family so

far discovered, the name of John Parsons of Cuddington, A.D. 1284. Two centuries later, A.D. 1481, Sir John Parsons was mayor of Hereford. In his armorial bearings is a leopard's head (symbolizing military service in the Orient) between three crosses (designating the crusades). The Parsons to whom this coat armor was originally granted may have gone to the Holy Land with Richard Cœur de Lion and Frederic Barbarossa in 1189, the last crusade that reached Palestine in force. This

crusade, however, was a failure, as Cœur de Lion was only able to get within sight of Jerusalem, twenty miles away, without daring to attack the city, from which he retired, defeated, to imprisonment. Hence, in the light shed by the laws of heraldic symbolism upon the crusader's coat armor of Sir John Parsons, as it is further interpreted by the later arms of Sir Thomas Parsons of Oxfordshire, it is probable either, (a) that the original grantee was a knight who followed Robert of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror (1066), in the successful crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon, who, with one hundred thousand steel-clad knights, set out for the Holy Land in 1096, and, achieving the conquest of Jerusalem, set up in Palestine a Frank kingdom that stood until 1147; Godfrey being elected the first King of Jerusalem: or else (b) that he went with the expedition of Richard, Earl of Cornwall (brother of Henry III., and nephew of Richard the Lion-hearted), who, landing at Acre," accompanied by the flower of the English chivalry,” in 1239, remained in Palestine until the banner of the Cross was once more planted on the ruined walls of Jerusalem.* For,

The crusading barons of England met at Northampton, and bound themselves at the altar, to lead their forces within the year (1238) to Palestine,

the arms of Sir Thomas Parsons of Oxford, which, like those of Sir John Parsons of Hereford, can only refer to the Crusades, place the leopard's head in the crest, surmounted by an eagle's thigh erased, symbolizing victory in the Orient, and display upon the coat armor two chevrons-a combination

signifying that the original grantee was eminent both as ecclesiastic and as warrior *-together with three eagles displayed,

taking a solemn oath " that they would not be hindered from fulfilling their honorable vow by the cavils of the Roman Church (Et ne per cavillationes Romanæ Ecclesiaca honestum votum eorum impeditiretur . . . juraverunt omnes." Matt. Paris, 461-463). The renown of Earl Richard for personal prowess "struck the infidels with terror," and enabled him by their common awe of his name and reputation to extort from them a solemn and absolute cession of Jerusalem and the greater part of the territory of which the Latin kingdom there, in its best days, had ever consisted. Upon the execution of the treaty, Earl Richard quitted the shores of Palestine, and in his homeward progress through the states of Europe, was everywhere welcomed with honor as the deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre.

On his arrival in Palestine, Richard found that the Templars, and the Hospitallers had concluded discordant treaties with the Courts of Damascus and of Cairo, which by a single movement of the Christian host to Jaffa, he compelled the sultans of Damascus and of Cairo to abrogate. He had the satisfaction of receiving from the hands of the infidels all their Christian captives, among whom vere thirty-three nobles, many Templars and Hospitallers, and five hundred knights and other crusaders.-EDITOR.

* The Crusaders' religious Order of the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, owed its origin to a hospice founded in Jerusalem in 1048, by merchants of Memphis, for the accommodation of pilgrims from Europe. An hospital was afterward added, which survived perhaps through the habitual respect of Mohammedans for charitable foundations. When Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Crusaders, A.D. 1099, the house was joyfully opened for the reception of wounded warriors, and many of the cavaliers joined the Order. In 1118, the Order of Knights Hospitallers of the order of St. John became a military order. The Crusaders of knightly rank who had enrolled themselves in the fraternity of the hospital resumed their military, without discarding their religious garb and profession; and thenceforth the banner and the battle-cry of the knights of St. John were seen and heard foremost and loudest in every encounter with the Paynim foe. The government of the Order was vested in the Grand-master and general council of the knights, all of whom were required to be of noble birth. When the

thus placing emphasis upon successive victories won. The arms of the earls of Rosse,* descended from Sir Richard Parsons of Norfolk, subsequently established in Ireland, bear three leopards' heads, while the crosses of the ancient crusader of Hereford reappear in the arms of the Parsons family of

Radnorshire, Wales, whose connections with the Parsons of Essex and Devonshire will presently be shown, a further connection between this Parsons family in Wales, and the Oxfordshire Parsons, being indicated by the repeated appearance of the Welsh name Hugh in the Oxfordshire family.

Thus the heraldic indications of the Parsons arms and crest carry back the family patronymic, in connection with distinguished ecclesiastical and military services, to the time of William the Conqueror.

Adjoining Hereford, on the east, is Worcestershire, where,

Christians were driven from Palestine, the Knights of St. John settled in the island of Cyprus. In 1310 they departed to the island of Rhodes. From thence they went to Malta, which was given to them by Charles V. in 1530. Here their position has been retained to the present day and they bear the name of Knights of Malta. The Christian name, surname, and coat-of-arms of Sir John Parsons of Hereford, A.D. 1481, are all alike indicative of the period of military ecclesiasticism of the Crusade, and of the institution of the Order of Knights of St. John.-EDITOR.

* These earls take their title from Ross, in Wexford, the "e" being added by way of distinction from the Scottish earls of Ross.