Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Parkhurst, Thomas
PARKHURST, THOMAS (1629?–1707?), bookseller, was bound apprentice to John Clarke, bookseller in London in 1645. He was made a freeman of the Stationers' Company on 3 July 1654, was admitted to the livery of the company on 2 May 1664, served as underwarden in 1689, and elected master in 1703, when he gave the company 37l. to purchase annually twenty-five bibles with psalms. Hence arose the custom of giving a bible to each apprentice bound at Stationers' Hall.
He was in business in 1667 at the Golden Bible on London Bridge, and in 1685, and later, at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside. John Dunton was apprenticed to him in 1674, and in his ‘Life and Errors’ characterises his ‘honoured master’ as the ‘most eminent presbyterian bookseller in the three kingdoms,’ ‘a religious and a just man,’ and as ‘scrupulously honest in all his dealings, a good master, and very kind to all his relations.’ He was on friendly terms with the chief presbyterian divines of his day, particularly with John Howe and Matthew Henry, and published some of their works.
Among other books he issued N. Billingsley's ‘Treasury of Divine Raptures,’ 1667; ‘The History of Moderation,’ ascribed to R. Braithwait, 1669; H. Newcome's ‘Help in Sickness,’ 1685, and ‘Discourse on Anger,’ 1693; R. Baxter's ‘Poetical Fragments,’ 3rd edit., 1699; and the first edition of Matthew Henry's ‘Exposition.’
The last notice of his name in the books of the Stationers' Company is in October 1707, when he bound apprentice Parkhurst Smith.
[Dunton's Life and Errors, 1818, i. 39, 205; Rivington's Records of the Stationers' Company (in Arber's Transcripts, vol. v.); Corser's Collect. Anglo-Poetica (Chetham Soc.), i. 225, 280, 452; Williams's Mem. of Matthew Henry, 1828, p. 303; information kindly supplied by Mr. C. R. Rivington, clerk to the Stationers' Company.]