[1] At Easter 1752 Parr was sent to Harrow School as a free scholar,[2]: 12–13  and when he left in the spring 1761, he began to assist his father in his medical practice.

[1][2]: 42–3  Even with financial support from Harrow, money now became a problem,[1] and Parr, unable to continue his studies without going into debt, was forced to leave Cambridge.

Harrow demanded every applicant had a Master of Arts degree; an honorary one was swiftly granted to him from Cambridge, where all of his previous teachers spoke highly of him.

[2]: 60 He was ordained deacon by Richard Terrick, Bishop of London, on Christmas Eve 1769, and for a short time he served curacies at the nearby parishes of Willesden and Kingsbury.

[2]: 85 In 1776 he was elected to the post of head master of Colchester Royal Grammar School, and moved his family to the town during the spring of 1777.

[4] Though his stay at the school was short – he left after only twelve or fourteen months,[2]: 119  having quarrelled with the trustees[1] – he made two friendships he would keep for life: that of Thomas Twining, curate of Fordham, and of the Rev.

[2]: 119 On 1 August 1778, at a full court of mayoralty, Parr was elected master of the grammar school of Norwich and early in the following year moved to the city to start work.

[2]: 128 Towards the close of 1785, he decided to leave Norwich – principally because his post as headmaster did not pay well but required a great deal of his time.

William Pitt the Younger had been in power on the authority of George III, but, as the King's health worsened, parliament came close (by a matter of weeks) to instating the Prince of Wales as regent.

Even amid the terrors of the French Revolution, Parr adhered to Whiggism, and his correspondence included every man of eminence, either literary or political, who adopted the same creed.

He was famous as a writer of epitaphs and wrote inscriptions for the tombs of Burke, Charles Burney, Johnson, Fox and Gibbon.

[6] As for Parr's religious views:[2]: 323 My principles, I am sure, will never endanger the church [of England] – my studies, I hope, are such as do not disgrace it – and my actions, I can say with confidence, have ever tended to preserve it from open, and what I conceive to be unjust attacks.

[8] There are two memoirs of his life, one by William Field (1828),[2] the other, with his works and his letters, by John Johnstone (1828);[7] and Edmund Henry Barker published in 1828–1829 two volumes of Parriana, a confused mass of information on Parr and his friends.

An essay on his life, Dr. Samuel Parr: or, Whiggism in its relations to literature, is included in Thomas de Quincey's works, vol.