PARKE, Robert (aft. 1609-1671), of Newtown Castle, co. Leitrim, Ire.

Robert Parke’s father, Roger, was a native of Kent who had travelled to Connaught in 1601 as a business partner of Sir Roger Jones, a Welshman who was to become a leading figure in the town of Sligo. In 1609, Roger married Jones’s sister, and thereafter shared the latter’s social contacts with the Catholic gentry and burgesses of Sligo, especially the O’Haras and Creans.13O’Dowd, Power, Politics and Land, 100-1; Lyons, African Journey, 15, 27-8. In 1634 Roger Parke was returned as a Member of the Irish Parliament. During the Sligo plantation of the 1620s, the family had increased its land holdings, and built Newtown Castle on the eastern shore of Lough Gill, on the site of an ancient O’Rourke stronghold.14W.G. Wood-Martin, Hist. of Sligo, County and Town (2 vols. Dublin, 1889), i. 302; Cal. Chancery and Patent Rolls of Ireland ed. J. Morrin (Dublin, 1863), 393. This castle, which still stands, is typical of those built by the early settlers, having a defensive manor house and a bawn (or enclosure) to shelter cattle during periods of unrest. Robert Parke was probably brought up at Newtown, and as a young man was involved in commercial dealings with his uncle, Sir Roger Jones, and held minor local offices. His success in business is suggested by his ability to lend money by means of statute staple, particularly in the late 1630s.15McGrath, Biographical Dict. Parke was returned for a local seat – probably Roscommon – in a by-election for the Irish Parliament, and had taken his seat by 28 July 1641.16Irish Statute Staple Bks. 131.

At the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641, Parke seems to have tried to avoid provoking unrest, and in early 1642 proved extremely reluctant to join an expeditionary force against the Catholics led by the controversial Sir Frederick Hamilton of Manorhamilton. Hamilton, increasingly suspicious of rebel inactivity during his march west, asked Parke to reinforce him with 30 men from Newtown, but Parke flatly refused, saying ‘it was well for him if he could defend himself and his, till aid come, without provoking or doing anything to draw the country upon him’.17Wood-Martin, Hist. of Sligo, ii. 60-2. A surprise attack by the Irish rebels on Hamilton’s forces, soon after he left Newtown, led him to suspect Parke was ‘a traitor in correspondency with them [the Irish]’, and when Parke resisted another request for aid – this time endorsed by the lords justices in Dublin – Hamilton threatened to attack Newtown, forcing its surrender, and arresting Parke ‘upon strong presumption of his loyalty’.18Wood-Martin, Hist. of Sligo, ii. 63-4. Hamilton went on to publish a lengthy justification of his activities in the region, which denounced Parke as a friend of the rebels, although the truth of his claims cannot be verified.19The Information of Sir Frederick Hamilton (1645), 7-12, 35, 38-9, 63-71 (E.284.18).

Despite Hamilton’s accusations, Parke seems to have joined Sir Charles Coote’s defection to Parliament in 1644-5, and he subsequently served in the Protestant army in Connaught, as a captain in Coote’s foot regiment. In 1646 Newtown Castle was one of the ‘holds’ secured by Coote for Parliament, and it was deemed sufficiently safe for Parke’s wife and daughter to return to the castle from Dublin in April of that year.20Irish Rebellion ed. Hogan, 195; Bodl. Carte 164, p. 113. Newtown continued as a ‘place of good strength, regularly fortified’, under the command of Ensign William Parke (Robert’s younger brother), until it was taken by the royalist forces under the marquess of Clanricarde in July 1649. 21Hist. of the Irish Confederation ed. J.T. Gilbert (7 vols, Dublin, 1882-91), vii. 120. In the early 1650s Robert Parke continued to serve in Coote’s regiment in the Laggan region of western Ulster and in Connaught.22SP28/76/3, f. 376. He may therefore have been present at the recapture of Newtown by Coote’s forces, when Irish resistance in Connaught was finally quashed in the summer of 1652.23Bodl. Firth c.5, f. 52v. He lost his military command in June 1653, when Coote’s regiments were disbanded by the lord deputy, Charles Fleetwood*.24SP28/93/1, ff. 98-9.

By the mid-1650s, Parke was becoming an increasingly important figure in Connaught. He took an examination in Roscommon and Sligo in 1653, and was a commissioner for assessments in Sligo and Leitrim from October 1654.25McGrath, Biographical Dict.; An Assessment for Ire. In August 1655 he gained a pass from the protector and council to return to Ireland after a period in England; in the same year he became sheriff of Leitrim and in 1656 was also sheriff of Sligo.26CSP Dom. 1655, p. 595; McGrath, Biographical Dict.; NAI, Ferguson MS 9, p. 269, MS 10, p. 164. Parke increased his holdings in Sligo – a county largely reserved for Coote’s veterans – in the land allotments to ex-soldiers in the following years.27Wood-Martin, Hist. of Sligo, ii. 90-1; O’Dowd, Power, Politics and Land, 132-4. By February 1657 Parke was acting as justice of the peace in Sligo, and consulted the Irish council, ‘signifying that he hath lately secured two tories’.28Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 651. This return to local activity, and his continuing support for Lord President Coote, almost certainly explains Parke’s election for the combined counties of Sligo, Roscommon and Leitrim in January 1659, ‘by the unanimous consent of the freeholders of the several counties’.29TSP vii. 593. Although it is possible that Parke attended at Westminster, he made no recorded contribution to proceedings. He had returned to Ireland by early 1660, and was elected as member for co. Sligo in the Irish Convention that met at Dublin in March 1660.30Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 224.

Parke’s position after the restoration was again secured through the interest of Sir Charles Coote, now earl of Mountrath. He was included in the general pardon granted on Coote’s petition in January 1661, and two months later he was named to the new council for Connaught.31CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 188, 266; NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 63. In the elections for the Irish Parliament which met in May 1661, Parke was returned as MP for co. Leitrim with another Coote associate, Sir George St George, and he used his position to influence the distribution of the tax burden within Connaught in the summer of 1662.32CJI i. 591; ii. 78-80, 89, 118. After 1665 Parke claimed a right of pre-emption in his lands in Sligo and Leitrim, and gained re-grants of his earlier acquisitions - which in Sligo alone amounted to nearly 2,000 acres - under patents of 1666 and 1667.33Wood-Martin, Hist. of Sligo, ii. 93, 277, 280. Parke died in 1671.34McGrath, Biographical Dict. App. His daughter married Sir Francis Gore – another client of the Coote family – and the estate may have passed to his brother, William, who was the ancestor of the Victorian explorer and friend of Henry Morton Stanley, Surgeon-major Thomas Parke.35Lyons, African Journey, 15.