Robert Parsons

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This article is about the Jesuit priest. For the English composer see Robert Parsons (composer).

Robert Parsons (sometimes spelled Persons) (born June 24, 1546, Nether Stowey, Somerset, England, died April 15, 1610, Rome) was a Jesuit priest of equal contemporary fame with Edmund Campion.

He was associated with Cardinal William Allen in their hopes of a swift conquest of England by the Spanish Armada. With the failure of that enterprise, he spent nine years in Spain. In 1596, in Seville, he wrote Memorial for the Reformation of England, which gave in some detail a blueprint for the kind of society England was to become after its return to the faith.

It is thought by some that Parsons may have been the mastermind, or at least the inspiration, behind the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.

He had hoped to succeed Allen as Cardinal on the latter's death. Unsuccessful, he was rewarded with the rectorship of the English College at Rome.

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