he conducted the business with great success, the most important of the firm’s publications being perhaps the series of the “Oxford Pocket Classics.” In 1836 he brought out his Glossary of Architecture, which, published in the earlier years of the Gothic revival in England, had considerable influence in extending the movement, and supplied a valuable help to young architects. In 1848 he edited the fifth edition of Rickman’s Gothic Architecture, and in 1849 he published a handbook based on his earlier volume and entitled Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture. The completion of Hudson Turner’s Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages next engaged his attention, three volumes being published (1853–1860). In 1858 he published Medieval Architecture of Chester. Parker was one of the chief advocates of the “restoration” of ecclesiastical buildings, and published in 1866 Architectural Antiquities of the City of Wells. Latterly he devoted much attention to explorations of the history of Rome by means of excavations, and succeeded in satisfying himself of the historical truth of much usually regarded as legendary. Two volumes of his Archaeology of Rome were published at Oxford in 1874 and 1876. In recognition of his labours he was decorated by the king of Italy, and received a medal from Pope Pius IX. In 1869 he endowed the keepership of the Ashmolean Museum with a sum yielding £250 a year, and under the new arrangement he was appointed the first keeper. In 1871 he was nominated C.B. He died at Oxford on the 31st of January 1884.
PARKER, JOSEPH (1830–1902), English Nonconformist
divine, was born at Hexham-on-Tyne on the 9th of April 1830,
his father being a stonemason. He managed to pick up a fair
education, which in after-life he constantly supplemented.
In the revolutionary years from 1845 to 1850 young Parker
as a local preacher and temperance orator gained a reputation
for vigorous utterance. He was influenced by Thomas Cooper,
the Chartist, and Edward Miall, the Liberationist, and was much
associated with Joseph Cowen, afterwards M. P. for Newcastle.
In the spring of 1852 he wrote to Dr John Campbell, minister
of Whitefield Tabernacle, Moorfields, London, for advice
as to entering the Congregational ministry, and after a short
probation he became Campbell’s assistant. He also attended
lectures in logic and philosophy at University College, London.
From 1853 to 1858 he was pastor at Banbury. His next charge
was at Cavendish Street, Manchester, where he rapidly made
himself felt as a power in English Nonconformity. While here
he published a volume of lectures entitled Church Questions,
and, anonymously, Ecce Deus (1868), a work provoked by Seeley’s
Ecce Homo. The university of Chicago conferred on him the
degree of D.D. In 1869 he returned to London as minister of
the Poultry church, founded by Thomas Goodwin. Almost at
once he began the scheme which resulted in the erection of the
great City Temple in Holborn Viaduct. It cost £70,000, and was
opened on the 19th of May 1874. From this centre his influence
spread far and wide. His stimulating and original sermons,
with their notable leaning towards the use of a racy vernacular,
made him one of the best known personalities of his time.
Dr Parker was twice chairman of the London Congregational
Board and twice of the Congregational Union of England and
Wales. The death of his second wife in 1899 was a blow from
which he never fully recovered, and he died on the 28th of
November 1902.
Parker was pre-eminently a preacher, and his published works are chiefly sermons and expositions, chief among them being City Temple Sermons (1869–1870) and The People’s Bible, in 25 vols. (1885–1895). Other volumes include the autobiographical Springdale Abbey (1869), The Inner Life of Christ (1881), Apostolic Life (1884), Tyne Chylde: My Life and Teaching (1883; new ed., 1889), A Preacher’s Life (1899).
See E. C. Pike, Dr Parker and his Friends (1905); Congregational Year-Book (1904).
PARKER, MARTIN (c. 1600–c. 1656), English ballad writer, was probably a London tavern-keeper. About 1625 he seems to have begun publishing ballads, a large number of which bearing his signature or his initials, “M.P.,” are preserved in the British Museum. Dryden considered him the best ballad writer of his time. His sympathies were with the Royalist
cause during the Civil War, and it was in support of the declining fortunes of Charles I. that he wrote the best known of his ballads, “When the King enjoys his own again,” which he first published in 1643, and which, after enjoying great popularity at the Restoration, became a favourite Jacobite song in the 18th century. Parker also wrote a nautical ballad, “Sailors for my Money,” which in a revised version survives as “When the stormy winds do blow.” It is not known when he died, but the appearance in 1656 of a “funeral elegy,” in which the ballad writer was satirically celebrated is perhaps a correct indication of the date of his death.
See The Roxburghe Ballads, vol. iii. (Ballad Soc., 9 vols., 1871–1899) ; Joseph Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica (London, 1802); Ancient Songs and Ballads from Henry II. to the Revolution, ed. by W. C. Hazlitt (London, 1877); Sir S. E. Brydges and J. Haslewood, The British Bibliographer, vol. ii. (London, 1810); Thomas Corser, Collectanea Anglo-poetica (London, 1860–1883).
PARKER, MATTHEW (1504–1575), archbishop of Canterbury, was the eldest son of William Parker, a citizen of Norwich, where he was born, in St Saviour’s parish, on the 6th of August 1504. His mother’s maiden name was Alice Monins, and a John Monins married Cranmer’s sister Jane, but no definite relationship between the two archbishops has been traced. William Parker died about 1516, and his widow married a certain John Baker. Matthew was sent in 1522 to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he is said by most of his biographers, including the latest, to have been contemporary with Cecil; but Cecil was only two years old when Parker went to Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1525, was ordained deacon in April and priest in June 1527, and was elected fellow of Corpus in the following September. He commenced M.A. in 1528, and was one of the Cambridge scholars whom Wolsey wished to transplant to his newly founded Cardinal College at Oxford. Parker, like Cranmer, declined the invitation. He had come under the influence of the Cambridge reformers, and after Anne Boleyn’s recognition as queen he was made her chaplain. Through her he was appointed dean of the college of secular canons at Stoke-by-Clare in 1535. Latimer wrote to him in that year urging him not to fall short of the expectations which had been formed of his ability. In 1537 he was appointed chaplain to Henry VIII., and in 1538 he was threatened with prosecution by the reactionary party. The bishop of Dover, however, reported to Cromwell that Parker “hath ever been of a good judgment and set forth the Word of God after a good manner. For this he suffers some grudge.” He graduated D.D. in that year, and in 1541 he was appointed to the second prebend in the reconstituted cathedral church of Ely. In 1544 on Henry VIII.’s recommendation he was elected master of Corpus Christi College, and in 1545 vice-chancellor of the university. He got into some trouble with the chancellor, Gardiner, over a ribald play, “Pammachius,” performed by the students, deriding the old ecclesiastical system, though Bonner wrote to Parker of the assured affection he bore him. On the passing of the act of parliament in 1545 enabling the king to dissolve chantries and colleges, Parker was appointed one of the commissioners for Cambridge, and their report saved its colleges, if there had ever been any intention to destroy them. Stoke, however, was dissolved in the following reign, and Parker received a pension equivalent to £400 a year in modern currency. He took advantage of the new reign to marry in June, 1547, before clerical marriages had been legalized by parliament and convocation, Margaret, daughter of Robert Harlestone, a Norfolk squire. During Kett’s rebellion he was allowed to preach in the rebels’ camp on Mousehold Hill, but without much effect; and later on he encouraged his chaplain, Alexander Neville, to write his history of the rising. His Protestantism advanced with the times, and he received higher promotion under Northumberland than under the moderate Somerset. Bucer was his friend at Cambridge, and he preached Bucer’s funeral sermon in 1551. In 1552 he was promoted to the rich deanery of Lincoln, and in July 1553 he supped with Northumberland at Cambridge, when the duke marched north on his hopeless campaign against Mary.
