was finished ‘the xvi day of Octobre in the yere of our lorde, 1536.’ Wood (Athenæ Oxon. i. 115) mentions editions of 1538 and 1586, but these cannot be identified.
[Authorities quoted; Works in Brit. Mus. Libr.; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 5; Pits, De Scriptt. Angliæ, p. 660; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 574; Simler's Epitome Bibl. Gesnerianæ, 1574, p. 280; Possevino's Apparatus Sacer, 1608, i. 730; Alegre de Casanate's Paradisus Carmelitici Decoris, 1639, p. 358; Fabricius's Bibl. Medii Ævi, 1736, v. 578; Chevalier's Repertorium; Panzer's Annales Typogr. i. 507; Maittaire's Annales Typogr. i. 318; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. ed. Herbert, i. 125, 242–3, ed. Dibdin, ii. 67–8, 401–403; Maitland's Early Printed Books in Lambeth Library, p. 20; Cat. of Huth and Chatsworth Libraries; Dibdin's Bibl. Spencer. iv. 417–419; Hunter's South Yorkshire, i. 18; Halkett and Laing's Dict. of Anon. and Pseudon. Lit. col. 449.]
PARKER, HENRY, eighth Baron Morley (1476–1556), courtier and author, was eldest son of Sir William Parker (d. 1510). The latter was privy councillor, standard-bearer to Richard III, and hereditary marshal of Ireland; he was knighted on 24 July 1482, when he was described as of London. His mother, Alice, was daughter of William Lovel, lord Morley (d. 1475), and sister and heiress of Henry Lovel, who was slain at Dixmude in 1489. She married, after Sir William Parker's death, Sir Edward Howard [q. v.], the admiral, and, dying in 1518, directed that she should be buried at Hingham, Norfolk. She brought to her first husband the manor of Hallingbury-Morley or Great Hallingbury, Essex, and other property in Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, and Herefordshire (Dugdale, i. 560). William Lovel, her father, was from 1469 to 1471 summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Morley in right of his wife Eleanora or Alienora, daughter and heiress of Robert Morley, sixth lord Morley (d. 1443) [cf. Morley, Robert de, Baron Morley]. The summons was not issued to Alice Lovel's brother or to either of her two husbands, although all were occasionally known by the courtesy title of Lord Morley.
Henry was, according to Wood, educated at Oxford, and acquired there a taste for literature. Through life his time was mainly occupied with translations and other literary work. After Henry VIII's accession he came to court, and he attracted the king's favourable attention by gifts of translations in his autograph. In 1516 he was a gentleman usher to the king, while his infant son Henry became a page of the royal chamber (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ii. pt. i. p. 893). He was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Morley in the right of his maternal grandmother on 15 April 1523. Five months later he went on an embassy through the Low Countries and Germany to Archduke Ferdinand, and in letters to Wolsey and Henry VIII regretfully warned them of the progress that Lutheranism was making in Europe (ib. iii. pt. ii. pp. 1404, 1417). On 13 July 1530 he signed the letter from the peers to Clement VII praying for the pope's immediate assent to the king's divorce from Catherine of Arragon (ib. iv. pt. iii. p. 2929). He was on good terms with Anne Boleyn, whose brother George, lord Rochford, married his daughter Jane. To Anne, while Marchioness of Wiltshire, he presented a religious work in 1532. In 1534 he quarrelled with Lord Dacre of Gillingham on a point of precedence, and judgment was given by the council in his favour. Subsequently he sought the favour of Cromwell. In 1535 he sent the minister a greyhound (ib. viii. p. 375), and on 13 Feb. 1536–7 a copy of Machiavelli's ‘Florentine History’ and ‘Prince’—doubtless the edition of 1532. The book was accompanied by an interesting letter recommending Machiavelli's views to Cromwell's notice, and directing his attention to passages, which Morley had marked, dealing with the position of the papacy in Europe (Ellis, Orig. Letters, 3rd ser. iii. 63–8). In the same year (1537) Morley helped to carry Princess Elizabeth at the christening of Prince Edward, and in 1547 he attended the funeral of Henry VIII. In 1550 he took part, in the crown's behalf, in the prosecution of the Duke of Somerset. A staunch catholic, he maintained very friendly relations with Princess Mary, giving her each new year a book, which was often of his own composition. Among his gifts to her was a copy of Hampole's ‘Commentary upon Seven of the First Penitential Psalms’ [see Rolle, Richard], which, with his letter of presentation, is now in the British Museum (Royal MS. 18 B. xxi).
Morley died at his house at Great Hallingbury, Essex, on 25 Nov. 1556, and was buried in the church there on 3 Dec. (Machyn, Diary, pp. 120, 354; Miulman, Essex, iv. 137). An inscription on his monument describes him as ‘in cœtu nobilium gemma veluti preciosissima, bonarum literarum splendore omnique virtutum genere refulgens.’
Morley's career illustrates the favour extended to literary aspirations at the court of Henry VIII. His writings display both his robust faith as a catholic and his appreciation of classical and modern Italian literature. But his style is rugged: his verse shows no trace of an ear for metre, nor is accurate scholarship a conspicuous feature
