Matthew Parker

Matthew Parker (6 August 1504 – 17 May 1575) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was also an influential theologian and arguably the co-founder (with Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker) of a distinctive tradition of Anglican theological thought.
Parker was one of the primary architects of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the defining statements of Anglican doctrine. The Parker collection of early English manuscripts, including the book of St. Augustine Gospels and Version A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was created as part of his efforts to demonstrate that the English Church was historically independent from Rome, creating one of the world's most important collections of ancient manuscripts.

The eldest son of William Parker, he was born in Norwich, in St Saviour's parish. His mother's maiden name was Alice Monins and she may have been related by marriage to Thomas Cranmer. When William Parker died, in about 1516, his widow married John Baker. Parker was sent in 1522 to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1525. He was ordained deacon in April 1527 and priest in June the same year. In September 1527 he was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi and began his Master of Arts degree in 1528. He was one of the Cambridge scholars who Thomas Wolsey wished to transplant to his newly founded "Cardinal College" at Oxford.

Parker, like Cranmer, declined Wolsey's 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. Hugh Latimer wrote to him in that year urging him not to fall short of the expectations which had been formed of his ability. Shortly before Anne Boleyn's death in 1536, she commended to his care her daughter Elizabeth. In 1537 he was appointed chaplain to King Henry VIII. In 1538 he was threatened with prosecution, but Richard Yngworth, the Bishop of Dover, reported to Thomas 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 DD in that year, and in 1541 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, Stephen Gardiner, over a ribald play, Pammachius, performed by the students, which derided the old ecclesiastical system.

Rise to power

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 may have saved its colleges from destruction. Stoke, however, was dissolved in the following reign, and Parker received a generous pension. 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. They had initially planned to marry since about 1540 but had waited until it was not a felony for priests to marry. The marriage was a happy one, although Queen Elizabeth's dislike of Margaret was later to cause Parker much distress. During Kett's Rebellion, he preached in the rebels' camp on Mousehold Hill, without much effect, and later encouraged his secretary, Alexander Neville, to write his history of the rising.

Parker's association with Protestantism advanced with the times, and he received higher promotion under John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, than under the moderate Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. At Cambridge, he was a friend of Martin Bucer and 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 the accession of Mary Tudor. As a supporter of Northumberland and a married man, under the new regime Parker was deprived of his deanery, his mastership of Corpus Christi, and his other preferments. However, he survived Mary's reign without leaving the country – a fact that would not have endeared him to the more ardent Protestants who went into exile and idealized those who were martyred by Queen Mary. Parker respected authority, and when his time came he could consistently impose authority on others. He was not eager to assume this task, and made great efforts to avoid promotion to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which Elizabeth designed for him as soon as she had succeeded to the throne.

He was elected on 1 August 1559 but, given the turbulence and executions that had preceded Elizabeth's accession, it was difficult to find the requisite four bishops willing and qualified to consecrate Parker, and not until December 19 was that ceremony performed at Lambeth by William Barlow, formerly Bishop of Bath and Wells, John Scory, formerly Bishop of Chichester, Miles Coverdale, formerly Bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins, Bishop of Bedford. The allegation of an indecent consecration in the Nag's Head Fable seems first to have been made by the Jesuit Christopher Holywood in 1604, and has since been discredited. Parker's consecration was, however, legally valid only by the plenitude of the royal supremacy; the Edwardine Ordinal, which was used, had been repealed by Mary Tudor and not re-enacted by the parliament of 1559. Although the Papal Commission which pronounced Anglican Orders "null and void" in 1896 could not dispute that the 'manual' succession, that is, the actual laying on of hands and prayer, had not been broken in as much as two of the four consecrators of Parker, Barlow and Hodgkins, had been ordained with the Roman Pontifical in the Latin Rite in the 1530s, and all of them had been made bishops by bishops who were consecrated with the Roman Pontifical, the Roman Catholic Church asserted in the condemnation of 1896 that "defect of form and intent" of consecration were insufficient to make a bishop, and therefore represented a break in the apostolic succession, but the Church of England has rejected this, arguing that the form of words used made no difference to the substance or validity of the act, and that the words in the Rite itself gave plenty of evidence as to the intent. The Roman Catholic viewpoint stated that the Rite to be valid had to include the intent to make a sacrificing priest. The Anglicans retorted that the only things that ordination rites had in common throughout the history of the Church was the laying on of hands and prayer. In any case Parker was already a 'sacrificing' priest as he had been ordained as such in 1527 in the Latin Rite and before the break with Rome. Elizabeth wanted a moderate man, so she chose Parker. There was also an emotional attachment. Parker had been the favourite chaplain of Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn. Before Anne was arrested in 1536, she had entrusted Elizabeth's spiritual well-being to Parker. A few days after this, Anne had been executed following charges of adultery, incest and treason. Parker also possessed all the qualifications Elizabeth expected from an archbishop, except celibacy. Elizabeth had a strong prejudice against married clergy, and in addition she seems to have disliked Margaret Parker personally, often treating her so rudely that her husband was "in horror to hear it." After a visit to Lambeth, the Queen duly thanked her hostess but maliciously asked how she should address her, "For Madam I may not call you, mistress I should be ashamed to call you".

Parker mistrusted popular enthusiasm, and he wrote in horror of the idea that "the people" should be the reformers of the Church. He was convinced that if ever Protestantism was to be firmly established in England at all, some definite ecclesiastical forms and methods must be sanctioned to secure the triumph of order over anarchy, and he vigorously set about the repression of what he thought a mutinous individualism incompatible with a catholic spirit.

He was not an inspiring leader and no dogma or prayer-book is associated with his name, however, the English composer Thomas Tallis contributed Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter which bears his name. The 55 volumes published by the Parker Society include only one by its eponymous hero, and that is a volume of correspondence. He was a disciplinarian, a scholar, a modest and moderate man of genuine piety and irreproachable morals.

Probably his most famous saying, prompted by the arrival of Mary Queen of Scots in England, was "I fear our good Queen has the wolf by the ears"

Later years

Parker avoided involvement in secular politics and was never admitted to Elizabeth's privy council. Ecclesiastical politics gave him considerable trouble. Some of the evangelical reformers wanted liturgical changes and at least the option not to wear certain clerical vestments, if not their complete prohibition. Early presbyterians wanted no bishops, and the conservatives opposed all these changes, often preferring to move in the opposite direction toward the practices of the Henrician church. The queen herself begrudged episcopal privilege until she eventually recognised it as one of the chief bulwarks of the royal supremacy. To Parker's consternation, the queen refused to add her imprimatur to his attempts to secure conformity, though she insisted that he achieve this goal. Thus Parker was left to stem the rising tide of Puritan feeling with little support from parliament, convocation or the Crown.

The bishops' Interpretations and Further Considerations, issued in 1560, tolerated a lower vestiarian standard than was prescribed by the rubric of 1559, but it fell short of the desires of the anti-vestiarian clergy like Coverdale (one of the bishops who had consecrated Parker) who made a public display of their nonconformity in London.

The Book of Advertisements, which Parker published in 1566, to check the anti-vestiarian faction, had to appear without specific royal sanction; and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, which John Foxe published with Parker's approval, received neither royal, parliamentary nor synodical authorization. Parliament even contested the claim of the bishops to determine matters of faith. "Surely," said Parker to Peter Wentworth, "you will refer yourselves wholly to us therein." "No, by the faith I bear to God," retorted Wentworth, "we will pass nothing before we understand what it is; for that were but to make you popes. Make you popes who list, for we will make you none."

Disputes about vestments had expanded into a controversy over the whole field of Church government and authority, and Parker died on 17 May 1575, lamenting that Puritan ideas of "governance" would "in conclusion undo the queen and all others that depended upon her." By his personal conduct, he had set an ideal example for Anglican priests. He is buried in the chapel of Lambeth Palace.

Parker's historical research was exemplified in his De antiquitate Britannicæ ecclesiae, and his editions of Asser, Matthew Paris (1571), Thomas Walsingham, and the compiler known as Matthew of Westminster (1571). De antiquitate Britannieæ ecclesiæ was probably printed at Lambeth in 1572, where the archbishop is said to have had an establishment of printers, engravers, and illuminators.

Parker gave the English people the “Bishops' Bible,” which was undertaken at his request, prepared under his supervision, and published at his expense in 1572. Much of his time and labor from 1563 to 1568 was given to this work. He had also the principal share in drawing up the Book of Common Prayer, for which his skill in ancient liturgies peculiarly fitted him. His liturgical skill was also shown in his version of the psalter. It was under his presidency that the Thirty-nine Articles were finally reviewed and subscribed by the clergy (1562).

Parker published in 1567 an old Saxon Homily on the Sacrament, by Ælfric of Eynsham. He published A Testimonie of Antiquitie Showing the Ancient Fayth in the Church of England Touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lord to prove that transubstantiation was not the doctrine of the ancient English Church. Parker collaborated with his secretary John Joscelyn in his manuscript studies. He also founded the Society of Antiquaries, and was its first president.

Manuscript collection

Parker left a priceless collection of manuscripts, largely collected from former monastic libraries, to his college at Cambridge. The Parker Library at Corpus Christi bears his name and houses most of his collection, with some volumes in the Cambridge University Library. The Parker Library on the Web project has made digital images of all of these manuscripts available online.

Parker's inquisitiveness about Church matters is sometimes said to have led to his being called "nosey Parker" and this to have been the source of the common English term describing someone who pokes their nose into other people's business. This has, however, no basis in fact.