Richard Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse

An Irish peer, he was born at Twickenham, Middlesex, the son of Richard Parsons, 1st Viscount Rosse (c. 1657-1703) and Elizabeth Hamilton, niece of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough.

On 25 June 1714, he married Mary Paulet, the eldest daughter of Lord William Powlett and a granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Bolton and the marquis de Montpouillon.

On his deathbed he received a letter from the vicar of St Anne, the dean of Kilmore "to remind him of his past life, the particulars of which he mentioned, such as profligacy, gaming, drinking, rioting, turning day into night, blaspheming his Maker, and, in short, all manner of wickedness; and exhorting him in the tenderest manner to employ the few moments that remained to him, in penitently confessing his manifold transgressions, and soliciting his pardon from an offended Deity, before whom he was shortly to appear."

Parsons ordered the letter, addressed only to My Lord, to be put into a fresh cover and carried by the dean's own servant to an unusually pious gentleman, the Earl of Kildare.

On reading it the very angry Kildare sent the letter to John Hoadly, Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland, who immediately summoned the dean for his explanation.