founder. He soon after changed his religion, and retired to Douay, where he took his bachelor of divinity's degrees. In 1573 he travelled to Rome, where he became a Jesuit, and was soon after sent by his superiors, as a missionary, into Germany, where he composed his Latin tragedy, called " Nectar and Ambrosia," which was acted with great ap plause, in the presence of the Emperor. The last scene of his life was in England, where he was regarded as a dangerous adversary of the established church. In his way to London, the council appointed a paper to be set upon his hat, with great capital letters "CAMPION THE SEDITIOUS "JESUIT;" and gave orders he should be brought through all the market-towns that lay in the way, to gratify the people with the sight of a man who had made so much noise: after much cruel torture on the rack, he was executed at Tyburn, December the first, 1581. His writings shew him to have been a man of various and polite learning. Decem Rationes, written against the Protestant religion, have been solidly answered by several of our best divines. The original manuscript of his " His66 tory of Ireland" is in the British Museum. His ROBERT ROBERT PARSONS. ROBERT PARSONS (or Persons, in both which ways he wrote his name) was the son of a blacksmith, at Nether-stoway, near Bridgwater in Somersetshire, where he was born in 1546; and, appearing to be a boy of extraordinary parts, was taught Latin by the Vicar of the parish, who conceiving a great affection for him, contributed to his support at Oxford, where he was admitted of Baliol College in 1563, and became remarkable as an acute disputant in Scholastic exercise, then much in vogue: he continued at Oxford, until the year 1574, when he was obliged to resign his situation of Dean in the College, under the charge of incontinency, and embezzling the College money. He had till this time openly professed himself a Protestant, and was the first who introduced books of that religion into the College Library; but soon after his disgrace at Oxford, he went to London, and from thence through Antwerp to Louvain; where, meeting with father William Good, his country |