Old Tom Parr

Thomas Parr was an English man who supposedly lived for 152 years.

He was said to have been born in 1483 near Shrewsbury, and did not marry until he was 80 years old. He attributed his long life to his vegetarian diet and moral temperance, although when he was around 100 years old he had an affair and an illegitimate child.

In 1635 Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, visited Parr and brought him to London to meet Charles I. Charles asked what Parr had done that was greater than any other man, and Parr replied that he was the oldest man to have performed penance (for his affair). In London he was treated as a spectacle, but the change in food and environment apparently caused his death. Charles I arranged for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

The poet John Taylor wrote about Parr in his 1635 poem The Old, Old, Very Old Man or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr.

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Another Thomas Parr was also the father of Catherine Parr, a wife of Henry VIII.