Henry Parker, ninth Baron Morley (d. 1577), eldest son of the first marriage of Sir Henry Parker, and grandson of the courtier and author, was educated at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, was made a knight of the Bath at Queen Mary's coronation on 6 Oct. 1553 (Machyn, p. 334), and on 25 Nov. 1556, on the death of his aged grandfather, succeeded to the barony of Morley. He served as the queen's lieutenant for Hertfordshire, where his mother's property was situated, but soon made himself conspicuous as a recusant. At the close of 1569 he, on the ground of his privilege as a peer, declined to subscribe a declaration in accordance with the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 356). Soon afterwards he left England clandestinely, owing to his attachment to the Roman catholic religion. He never returned. At first he went to Brussels, and introduced himself to the Duke of Alva, but he lived chiefly at Bruges. He made many vain appeals to the queen, to Burghley, and to Leicester for permission to come home, or, as an alternative, for permission to have his wife and children with him abroad. He was regarded as a dangerous traitor by the English government, and his mysterious relations with Spain lent colour to the suspicions. In March 1574 he was at Madrid with his brother Edmund; both were received by Philip II, and accepted a gift of six hundred ducats. At the end of the same year Morley was in Lisbon. On 21 Jan. 1574–5, while at Paris, he asserted in a note to Burghley that his only fault was his leaving England without permission. In 1575 he was again in Spain, and early in 1576 was with his wife at Maestricht. He died on 22 Oct. 1577. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Stanley, earl of Derby, he had a son Edward, who succeeded him in the barony of Morley [see under Parker, William, Lord Monteagle and Morley], and two daughters—Alice, wife of Sir Thomas Barrington; and Mary, wife of Sir Edward Leventhorpe (Cooper, Athenæ Cantabr. i. 378, 566).
Sir Philip Parker (fl. 1580), Sir Henry Parker's son by his second wife, and a younger grandson of the courtier and author, inherited from his mother the manor of Erwarton, Suffolk, was sheriff of Suffolk in 1578, was knighted in 1580 (Nichols, Progresses, ii. 224), and played a large part in the local affairs of the eastern counties (cf. Cal. State Papers, 1547–80, pp. 601, 604, 617, 699). A portrait, engraved by Faber, is in Anderson's ‘House of Yvery’ (1742). He married Catherine, daughter of Sir John Goodwin of Winchendon, Buckinghamshire. His son Sir Calthorpe was father of Sir Philip, M.P. for Suffolk in the Short parliament, whose son Philip was created a baronet on 10 July 1661. With the death of the first baronet's grandson, Sir Philip Parker-a-Morley-Long, on 20 June 1740–1, the male heirs of the Lords Morley of the Parker family became extinct.
[Davy's Suffolk Collections in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 19144; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 560, ii. 307; Brydges's Peerage, ed. Collins, vii. 345 seq.; James Anderson's House of Yvery, 1742; Muilman's Essex, iv. 137; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 114; Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, ed. Park; Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 20768 (a list of Morley's works prepared by John Holmes); Morley's Tryumphs of Petrarcke (Roxburghe Club, 1887), preface by Lord Iddesleigh and J. E. T. Loveday; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Nichols's Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club), pp. ccxl, cclviii; Warton's History of English Poetry; Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Nicolas.]
PARKER, HENRY (1604–1652), political writer, the fourth son of Sir Nicholas Parker of Ratton in the parish of Willington, Sussex, by his third wife, Catharine, daughter of Sir John Temple of Stow, Buckinghamshire, was born in Sussex, probably at Ratton, in 1604. Matriculating from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, on 3 Feb. 1622, he graduated B.A. on 9 Feb. 1625, M.A. on 25 June 1628, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1637. On the outbreak of the civil war he sided with the presbyterians, but he afterwards became an independent (Wood). In 1642 he was appointed secretary to the army under Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex [q. v.] In November 1643 he petitioned the House of Commons for the sequestered registrarship of the prerogative office, but he failed to obtain the office until 1649, when it was conferred upon him jointly with Michael Oldisworth [q. v.] On 26 June 1645 Parker and John Sadler were appointed secretaries to the House of Commons, to prepare a declaration ‘upon the breach of the late treaty at Uxbridge,’ and such other declarations as should be entrusted to their care by the house (Journals of the House of Commons, iv. 187). Transcripts of the letters and papers taken at Naseby were sent to them on 30 June (ib. p. 190). On 7 July they were joined by Thomas May [q. v.] (ib. p. 200). They published shortly afterwards ‘The King's Cabinet opened.’ On 23 Jan. 1645–6 Parker was voted the sum of 100l. for the pains he had taken ‘in the service and by the command of the parliament,’ and on 7 Feb. following 50l. for bringing the news of the surrender of Chester (Journals of the House of Lords, viii. 121, 147).
