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!”