Life

The son of William Parkin of London, he was born on 11 January 1689, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Merchant Taylors' School is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire ....

. He went in 1708 to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. 1711, M.A. 1717. Entering holy orders, he became rector of Oxburgh, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, in 1717.

Parkin died on 27 August 1765, and by his will (dated 17 June 1759) bequeathed money to his old college for the foundation of exhibitions to be held by scholars from Merchant Taylors' and from the free school at Bowes, Yorkshire, which had been founded by his uncle, William Hutchinson of Clement's Inn.

Works

He assisted Francis Blomefield

Francis Blomefield

Francis Blomefield was an English antiquary, who projected a county history of Norfolk. During his lifetime, he compiled and published detailed accounts of the city of Norwich, Borough of Thetford and the southern hundreds of the county, but died before the whole work could be completed.-Biography...

, the Norfolk county historian, in describing his own and the adjoining parishes. After the death of Blomefield in 1752, who was about halfway through his third volume, Parkin undertook the completion of his unfinished History of Norfolk, and the fourth and fifth volumes of that work (in the original folio

Folio

Folio may refer to:* Folio , a book size* A particular edition of a book printed on folio pages, such as the First Folio of William Shakespeare's plays* A leaf of a book: see Recto and verso* Folio , a sans-serif typeface...

 edition of five volumes, completed in 1775) are described as from his pen. According to Craven Ord, however, the last sheets were finished by a bookseller's hack, employed by Whittingham of Lynn.

Parkin also wrote:

• ‘An Answer to, or Remarks upon, Dr. Stukeley's “Origines Roystonianæ,”’ London, 1744. He engaged in a controversy with William Stukeley
  William Stukeley
  William Stukeley FRS, FRCP, FSA was an English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as "probably... the most important of the early forerunners of the discipline of archaeology"...
  
   over the antiquity and imagery of the cell at Royston
  Royston
  Royston is the name of several places:* Royston, South Yorkshire, England* Royston, British Columbia, Canada* Royston, Hertfordshire England** Royston Town F.C., an English football club* Royston, Glasgow, a district of Glasgow, Scotland...
  
  , then recently discovered.
• ‘A Reply to the … Objections brought by Dr. Stukeley,’ Norwich, 1748.
• ‘The Topography of Freebridge Hundred and Half in Norfolk, containing the History and Antiquities of the Borough of King's Lynn, and of the Towns, Villages, and Religious Buildings in that Hundred and Half … also an account … of all Rectories and Vicarages,’ London, 1762, (reprinted from vol. iv. of Blomefield and Parkin's ‘History of Norfolk’).