people stifling the old man in an attempt to touch him and hear him speak. By the time he finally arrived in the capital, Parr was reportedly blind and feeble. King Charles I was reported to have asked Parr: "Master Parr, you have lived longer than other men. What have you done more than other men?" He replied that he had performed penance for an affair with Catherine Milton, a village maiden. The King was stern, stating: "Fie, fie old man. Can you remember nothing but your vices?" Parr was treated as a spectacle in London, but the food and environment caused him to die within only a few weeks, on 13 November 1635. The King arranged for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey on . The inscription of his gravestone reads: Doubts of his age William Harvey (1578–1657), the physician who discovered the circulation of the blood, performed an autopsy on Parr's body. The results were published in the book De ortu et natura sanguinis by John Betts as an attachment. Harvey examined Parr's body and found all his internal organs to be in a perfect state. No apparent cause of death could be determined, and it was assumed that Parr had simply died of overexposure because he had been too well fed. A modern interpretation of the results of the autopsy suggests that Parr was probably less than 70 years of age. It is possible that Parr's birth records were confused with those of his grandfather. Parr did not claim to be able to remember specific events from the 15th century. Cultural references John Taylor wrote about Parr in his 1635 poem The Old, Old, Very Old Man, or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr, drawing the moral that longevity comes from a simple country lifestyle. A portrait of Parr hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Parr is mentioned in two books by Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop and Dombey and Son. Parr's old age is mentioned in the 1854 book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. In 1871, Mark Twain considered writing An Autobiography of Old Parr where he would debunk the longevity claim. In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula Abraham Van Helsing cites Parr's age as an example of "inexplicable" phenomena that are nevertheless real. A Scotch whisky brand, Grand Old Parr, launched 1909, is named after Parr. Parr is mentioned at