Richard Parkinson

Richard Parkinson was an English clergyman, known as a canon of Manchester Cathedral, college principal, theologian and antiquarian.

The son of John Parkinson, by his wife Margaret Blackburne, he was born at Woodgates, Admarsh, near Lancaster, on 17 September 1797. He was educated at the grammar schools of Chipping, Hawkstead, and Sedbergh, and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in December 1815. At Sedbergh he was the last pupil who studied mathematics under John Dawson, and at Cambridge his tutor was Thomas Calvert. He graduated B.A. in 1820, proceeding M.A. in 1824, B.D. in 1838, and D.D. on 10 December 1851.

On leaving Cambridge in 1820, Parkinson was for a short time master of Lea School, near Preston. He edited the Preston Sentinel, a conservative newspaper, during its one year's existence (1821), and contributed to its successor, the Preston Pilot. In 1823 he was ordained, and became curate of St. Michael's-on-Wyre, Lancashire. Three years later he was appointed theological lecturer or tutor at St Bees Theological College, Cumberland; twenty years later he was its principal.

In 1830 he was appointed perpetual curate of Whitworth, near Rochdale This living he resigned in 1841, in favour of his curate. In 1833 he preached at Bishop Charles Sumner's visitation at Manchester; and he was elected (on 20 May 1833) as fellow of the collegiate chapter. In 1837, and again in 1838, he was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge. His retention of the fellowship (and then canonry) of the collegiate church after his appointment in September 1846 as principal of St Bees Theological College, and incumbent of St Bees Priory, led to some bad feeling. He was a liberal donor to church objects, and gave towards the cost of rebuilding the vicarage-house and the old conventual abbey of St Bees.

Parkinson married, in 1831, Catherine, daughter of Thomas Hartley of Gill Foot, Cumberland (she died in 1860), and had two sons and two daughters.