Robert Parsons

Parsons, Robert (1546-1610). Jesuit missionary. Born in Somerset to protestant parents, he resigned his Balliol fellowship and was received into the Roman church at Louvain, before offering himself to the Society of Jesus (1575). He was sent to England with Campion in 1580, and stayed a year in great danger. For nearly 20 years he was one of the most ardent promoters of the Spanish invasion. After failure of the Armada, he concentrated on his order's internal affairs. His missionary zeal combined with political intrigue have contributed much to the popular image of Jesuitry.

Parsons, John Robert (c. 1862-1909), Irish portrait painter and photographer. Parsons exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1850 to 1868, by which time he had taken up photography, and was employed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to make copies of his paintings. His series of portrait photographs of Rossetti's lover Janey Morris, made under Rossetti's supervision in the garden of his Chelsea home, are among the most original and powerful of the 19th century. His more conventional portrait photographs include those of two Rossetti models, Elizabeth Siddal and Alexa Wilding, the Pre-Raphaelite patron and shipowner Frederick Leyland, and Janey's husband William Morris.

— Colin Ford