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.
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