PARKER, MATTHEW archbishop of Can terbury, was born at Norwich, on Aug. 6, 1504. Matthew was sent in 1522 to Corpus Christi college, 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 Sep tember. He commenced M.A. in 1528, and was one of the Cam bridge scholars whom Wolsey wished to transplant to his newly founded Cardinal College at Oxford. Parker, like Cranmer, de clined 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. In 1537 he was appointed chaplain to Henry VIII., and in 1538 he was threatened with prosecution by the reactionary party. But in 1541 he was appointed to the second prebend in the recon stituted cathedral church of Ely. In 1544 on Henry VIII.'s rec ommendation 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, "Pam machius," performed by the students, deriding the old ecclesias tical system, though Bonner wrote to Parker of the assured affection he bore him. On the passing of the act of parliament in 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 Har lestone, 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 he encouraged his chaplain, Alexander Neville, to write his history of the rising. His Protestantism ad vanced 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 campaign against Mary.
As a supporter of Northumberland and a married man, Parker was naturally deprived of his preferments. But he was not cast in a heroic mould, and he had no desire to figure at the stake ; he lived quietly in retirement throughout Mary's reign. He was elected archbishop of Canterbury on Aug. 1, 1559; but it was not until Dec. 17 that four bishops were found willing and qualified to consecrate him. Parker's consecration was, however, only made legally valid by the royal supremacy ; for the Edwardine Ordinal, which was used, had been repealed by Mary and not re-enacted by the parliament of 1559. Parker was a modest and moderate man of genuine piety and irreproachable morals. His historical research was exemplified in his De antiquitate ecclesiae, and his editions of Asser, Matthew Paris, Walsingham and the compiler known as Matthew of Westminster ; his liturgical skill was shown in his version of the psalter and in the occasional prayers and thanksgivings which he was called upon to compose ; and he left a priceless collection of manuscripts to his college at Cambridge.
He was happier in these pursuits than in the exercise of his jurisdiction. He 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 156o, tolerated a lower vestiarian standard than was prescribed by the rubric of 1559; the Advertisements, which Parker pub lished in 1566, to check the Puritan descent, had to appear with out specific royal sanction; and the Reformatio legum ecclesias ticarum, which Foxe published with Parker's approval, received neither royal, parliamentary nor synodical authorization. Parker died on May 17, 1575, lamenting that Puritan ideas of "gov ernance" would "undo the queen and all others that depended upon her." John Strype's Life of Parker, originally published in 1711, and re-ed ited for the Clarendon Press in 1821 (3 vols.), is the principal source for Parker's life. See also J. Bass Mullinger's scholarly life in Dict. Nat. Biog.; W. H. Frere's volume in Stephens and Hunt's Church His tory; Strype's Works (General Index) ; Gough's Index to Parker Soc. Publ. Fuller, Burnet, Collier and R. W. Dixon's Histories of the Church ; Birt's Elizabethan Settlement; H. Gee, Elizabethan Clergy (1898) ; W. M. Kennedy, Archbishop Parker (1938).