PARKER, MATTHEW

Scholar and archbishop of Canterbury who helped shape the Elizabethan religious settlement; b. Norwich, Aug. 6, 1504; d. London, May 17, 1575. Parker entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1522 and took his B.A. degree in 1525. In 1527 he was ordained, and in 1528 he became associated with the Cambridge Reformers, a student group with Lutheran sympathies. When Anne Boleyn became queen, Parker was made her chaplain, and in 1537 he became chaplain to Henry VIII. In 1544, on the king's recommendation, he became master of his old college and in 1545, vice chancellor of Cambridge. At the accession of Edward VI in 1547 Parker married Margaret Harlestone of Norfolk. Parker's Protestant sympathies were avowed with increasing openness as the successive regencies of Somerset and Northumberland drew England steadily in a Protestant direction. Upon Edward's death in 1553 Parker espoused the cause of Northumberland's unfortunate pawn, Lady Jane Grey. For this and for his marriage he was deprived of his offices by Catholic Queen Mary. Having no taste for martyrdom, he spent the five years of her reign in hiding, devoting his time to translating the Psalms and writing in defense of the marriage of priests.

Following the accession of Elizabeth I, Parker was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559 and was consecrated by four Henrician and Edwardian bishops. Since the Ordinal employed had been repealed in the reign of Mary, the consecration was valid only if royal supremacy was also accepted. Parker's consecration thus became a key problem in the later controversy over Anglican Orders. The most important among Archbishop Parker's hundreds of appointments were to ten sees that Mary and Cardinal Pole had left vacant. He furthered the English Reformation by filling them with Protestants.

Parker, a modest, pious, reserved man, was always a moderate. In 1545 he saved Cambridge's colleges from dissolution during the Henrician confiscations. Years later, he strove to limit further spoliation of the church by Elizabethan courtiers. Always interested in scholarship and antiquities, Parker tried to revive the Saxon language, founded the Society of Antiquaries, and collected ancient manuscripts at a time when learning was being plundered. His magnificent manuscript collection was the most important of many gifts he bequeathed to Cambridge. As archbishop, Parker sought a middle way between Catholics and Puritans. Significantly, the worst Elizabethan persecution of Catholics commenced only after his death. With the Puritans, Parker ordered an end to "prophesyings" and enforced a compromise between the queen's desire for elaborate vestments and the Puritans' insistence upon none at all, depriving those Puritans who refused to comply.

Bibliography: j. strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, 3 v. (Oxford 1821). h. gee, The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion, 1558–1564 (Oxford 1898). h. n. birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement (London 1907). b. m. h. thompson, The Consecration of Archbishop Parker (London 1934). j. b. mullinger, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900) 15:254–264. v. j. k. brook, A Life of Archbishop Parker (Oxford 1962). e. w. perry, Under Four Tudors (London 1940). p. hughes, The Reformation of England (New York 1963).

[b. norling]