Alias Robert Parsons Jesuit; born Nether Stowey, England, 1546; died Rome, Italy, 1610. Famous on the English missIon (1580), which he maintained at the greatest risk. Unable to keep his printing-press in England, he transferred it to Belgium and commenced his unsuccessful work for armed intervention in behalf of the English Catholics. He was rector of the English College at Douai, and endeavored to reorganize the Catholic affairs of England, but in appointing Blackwell as arch-priest, subject to Jesuit authority, he started a controversy which Pope Clement VIII settled to his disadvantage. His greatest work, the Christian Directory, was conceived during his English mission; his later works are controversial.