The Parkers Of Willingdon
Apr. 14th, 2022 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI asked the Internet to tell me all it could about the Parkers of Willingdon (see previous post) and it said, "Actually there's not much to tell". They were members of parliament, magistrates, sherrifs- members of the ruling class who never got to fill any of the great offices of state- and in the words of W.S. Gilbert "Did nothing in particular/ and did it very well." My Parker with the broken nose is Sir Nicholas- and his verse epitaphs are extraordinarily, preposterously fulsome. The second of them goes like this.
In Philopaemon (who he?) Greece did teem her last
In Cassins (surely the poet meant Cassius and the engraver slipped up) her vigour did exhaust
Then blame not aged Britain's feeble womb
For in her Parker's birth she did comsume
Her utmost strength. Ye world shall not be strong
For such another brave conception.
Or in other words Nature has done it's utmost in producing the paragon that was Sir Nicholas and we can't expect it to rise to such heights again.
An earlier Parker- Possibly our man's father or uncle- earned himself the nickname Thomas Parker the Wild but I can't tell you why. There's a story out there, something to do with his capture of a Sussex heretic- but I'm not enough of an antiquarian to know how and where to track it down...
In Philopaemon (who he?) Greece did teem her last
In Cassins (surely the poet meant Cassius and the engraver slipped up) her vigour did exhaust
Then blame not aged Britain's feeble womb
For in her Parker's birth she did comsume
Her utmost strength. Ye world shall not be strong
For such another brave conception.
Or in other words Nature has done it's utmost in producing the paragon that was Sir Nicholas and we can't expect it to rise to such heights again.
An earlier Parker- Possibly our man's father or uncle- earned himself the nickname Thomas Parker the Wild but I can't tell you why. There's a story out there, something to do with his capture of a Sussex heretic- but I'm not enough of an antiquarian to know how and where to track it down...
