the troubled state of affairs, it contains little of personal moment. His actual share in the diplomacy or politics of the period was small; what he had to do was to keep an effective force, and to let it be known all along the coast that the English interests were adequately protected. It was at this time that the Mediterranean fleet, always the standard of naval drill, attained a perfection which had never been equalled, and which for many years afterwards—as long as battleships had masts and yards—was referred to as what ‘was done in old Billy Parker's time.’
In September 1849 Parker moved his flag to the Queen. On 29 April 1851 he attained the rank of admiral, but was continued in the command till March 1852, when he was relieved by Rear-admiral James Whitley Deans Dundas [q. v.], and returned to England. He struck his flag at Spithead on 28 April. In July he was nominated chairman of a committee to inquire into the manning of the navy, which the recent repeal of the navigation laws had made a question of vital importance. It was out of the recommendations of this committee that the existing system of continuous service came into being, though at first, and for many years, only partially and tentatively. From May 1854 to May 1857 Parker was commander-in-chief at Devonport, and during this time was repeatedly consulted confidentially by the successive first lords of the admiralty. Among other points on which he was privately consulted were Lord Dundonald's plan for the destruction of the enemy's fleet, regulations for men professing to be Roman catholics to attend mass, and the conduct of the second China war. After his retirement he lived principally at Shenstone Lodge. On 20 May 1862 he was appointed rear-admiral of the United Kingdom, and on 27 April 1863 was promoted to be admiral of the fleet. He died of a sharp attack of bronchitis on 13 Nov. 1866. He was buried privately in his parish churchyard, but a handsome monument to his memory was erected, by subscription, in Lichfield Cathedral. By his wife, who survived him for five years, he had issue two sons and six daughters. A portrait by Drummond, another by Severn, and a picture of the Amazon engaging the Belle Poule, by Pocock, were lent to the Naval exhibition of 1891 by Sir W. Biddulph Parker, his eldest son.
No officer of Parker's day made so deep an impression on the navy, by reason, not of extraordinary talent, but of exceptional fixity of purpose. In his youth he was considered by St. Vincent and by Nelson as a first-rate officer. As an admiral—in Portugal, in China, in the Mediterranean—his conduct was distinguished by skill and tact. But it was as a disciplinarian that his name was best known, not only in his own time, but to the generation which followed him; strict, but not harsh, with a fervent sense of religion and zeal for the service, ever bearing in mind the example of his great uncle, he made everything bend to his idea of what was right. Some of his ideas appeared capricious. He disliked smoking, for instance, and took care that no officer should remain in the flagship who was guilty of the habit. He liked to see those around him wear the sloping cap-peaks which are now regulation, but were then a fancy of his own; and for many years after he had struck his flag in the Mediterranean these were always spoken of as ‘promotion-peaks.’ A physical and family peculiarity is perhaps of greater interest—the extreme longevity of himself and his lineal ancestors, who for five successive generations attained the average age of eighty-six.
[The life of Parker, with a history of the navy of his time, has been written at great length by Admiral Sir Augustus Phillimore, who was for several years Parker's flag-lieutenant in the Mediterranean, and on terms of intimate friendship with him to the last. An abridged edition, still a bulky volume, has been published under the title of The Last of Nelson's Captains.]
PARKER, WILLIAM KITCHEN (1823–1890), comparative anatomist, born at Dogsthorpe, near Peterborough, Northamptonshire, on 23 June 1823, was second son of Thomas Parker, a yeoman farmer. His father was a Wesleyan of the old school. His mother, Sarah Kitchen, who had literary tastes, was a farmer's daughter. His early education at the parish school was obtained in the intervals of work on the farm, but he was early devoted to reading, and acquired a skill as a draughtsman which never deserted him. As he grew older his delight in literature increased, and he made himself master of the Bible, of Milton, and of Shakespeare. At fifteen he spent about nine months at the Peterborough grammar school, where he learned some Latin and Greek; and during this period he developed a religious fervour which remained with him in after life. On finally leaving school, he was apprenticed to a druggist at Stamford, under conditions which involved fifteen hours' work a day. A love of wild flowers had characterised his boyhood, and during the first years of his apprenticeship he collected, named, and preserved, during the small hours of the morning, some five hundred
