The Water Poet

Most of the information about the life of this agricultural labourer who found fame because of his longevity is recorded in John Taylor's pamphlet printed in l635 entitled The Old, Old, Very Old Man or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr.
Details of Parr’ s life derive from a pamphlet The Old, Old, Very Old Man or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr published in 1635 by John Taylor, also known as the water-poet.
TAYLOR, John. THE OLD, OLD, VERY OLD MAN; Or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr… London: T. Cooper, [ca. 1700]. 8vo, viii, 20pp. Cloth, lettered in gilt. Edges variously cut, bookplate & inscription to Paul Jordan Smith on front endpapers, writing & bookseller’s description on back endpaper, still very good. $1250. ¶ Third and expanded edition of this celebrated poem on the centrarian
The poem, the chief source of information on Parr, is in the typical whimsical, rollicking verse of John Taylor (1578?-1653), the eccentric "water poet" who travelled from London to Queensborough in a brown-paper boat. Cf. STC 23781 for the first edition of 1635; not in Wing.
He spent much of his life as a Thames waterman -- a member of the guild of boatmen that ferried passengers across the River Thames in London, in the days when the London Bridge was the only passage between the banks
The principal authority for the history of Old Parr is John Taylor, the 'Water Poet,' who, while the patriarch was residing in London, about a month before he died, published a pamphlet, entitled The Olde, Olde, very Olde Man; or The Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr. From the period at which this work was issued, we are warranted in placing considerable reliance on its statements, which appear never to have been controverted.