urpose which perpetually haunted his mind, he always left his dagger at
home when he went to wait upon her. On these occasions he apprized her
majesty of the existence of many designs against her life, and
endeavoured, with great earnestness and plainness of speech, to convince
her of the cruelty and impolicy of those laws against the papists which
had rendered them her deadly foes: but finding his arguments thrown away
upon the queen, he afterwards procured a seat in parliament, where he
was the sole opponent of a severe act passed against the Jesuits. On
account of the freedom with which he expressed himself on this occasion,
he was for a few days imprisoned.

Soon after a gentleman of the family of Nevil, induced it is said by the
hope of obtaining as his reward the honors and lands of the rebel earl
of Westmorland lately dead, disclosed to the government a plot for
assassinating the queen, in which he affirmed that Parry had engaged his
concurrence. Parry confessed in prison that he had long deliberated on
the means of effectually serving his church, and it appeared that he
had come to the decision that the assassination of the queen's greatest
subject might be lawful: a letter was also found upon him from cardinal
Como, expressing approbation of some design which he had communicated to
him. On this evidence he was capitally condemned; but to the last he
strongly denied that the cardinal's letter, couched in general terms,
referred to any attempt on the queen's person, or that he had ever
entertained the design charged upon him. Unlike all the other martyrs of
popery at this time, he died,--not avowing and glorying in the crime
charged upon him,--but earnestly protesting his innocence, his loyalty,
his warm attachment to her majesty. An account of his life was published
immediately afterwards by the queen's printer, written in a style of the
utmost virulence, and filled with tales of his monstrous wickedness
which have much the air of violent calumnies.

Parry was well known to lord Burleigh, with whom he had corresponded for
several years; and the circumstance of his being brought by him to the
presence of the queen, proves that this minister was far from regarding
him either as the low, the infamous, or the desperate wretch that he is
here represented. That he had sometimes _imagined_ the death of the
queen, he seems to have acknowledged; but most probably he had never so
far conquered the dictates of loyalty and