PARKER, Sir Thomas (1596-1663), of Ratton, Willingdon, Sussex

The Parkers were one of the ancient county families in Sussex, whose wealth and influence had improved steadily since the thirteenth century, and one of the few who despatched Members to Westminster in almost every generation between 1417 and 1713.34HP Commons 1386-1421; HP Commons 1509-1558; HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629; House of Commons 1660-1690. As was the case with the Pelhams, with whom they were closely associated, the marriages of the Parker family brought them close to noble status during the sixteenth century; that of John Parker (d. 1558) forged links with the Sackvilles, earls of Dorset, which remained close into the next century.35HP Commons 1558-1603; Egerton Papers (Cam. Soc. xii), 198, 199, 201. Sir Nicholas Parker†, this MP’s father, represented the county in 1597 (with Robert Sackville†), and was both sheriff of the county and a long-serving justice of the peace; he is not to be confused with his cousin and namesake, an active soldier and lieutenant of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, who was knighted three years earlier.36Shaw, Knights of Eng., ii. 87-8.

Sir Nicholas Parker’s marriages allied him to numerous important families, reflecting the high status of his own. His first wife, Jane Courtenay, was the widow of Francis Browne, brother of Anthony Browne†, the Catholic 1st Viscount Montagu. His second marriage, to Elizabeth Baker, brought an acknowledged kinship connection to the quite separate family of the early Elizabethan archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker (who was his wife’s uncle).37J. Strype, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (1821), iii. 1; Suss. Arch. Coll., lix. 122. Parker’s third and last marriage was to Katherine, daughter of Sir John Temple of Stowe, from one of the most important gentry families of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through his mother, Thomas Parker could claim to be a cousin of Sir Edmund Verney*, James Fiennes* and Nathaniel Fiennes I*, and with Rouses and Lenthalls.38Clutterbuck, Herts., ii. 9-11; E. F. Gay, ‘The Temples of Stowe and their Debts’, HLQ ii. 399-438, ‘The Rise of an English Country Family’, HLQ i. 367-90.

Little is known of Thomas Parker’s early life prior to his entry to Oxford in 1613, and his subsequent admission to Gray’s Inn. His friends during this period are known to have included Henry Lennard†, 12th Baron Dacre, Robert Rich†, 2nd earl of Warwick, Dudley North* (later 4th Baron North), Sir Henry Vane I*, and Edward Sackville†, Lord Buckhurst, the future 4th earl of Dorset.39The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford, ed. V. Sackville-West (1923), 82. His friends were by no means confined to the godly, however: Sir Robert More mentioned ‘a course run in Guildford Park between Sir Thomas Parker and Sir John Gage’. Gage, a kinsman, was one of the county’s leading, and wealthiest, Catholics; the maintenance of long-standing associations with this family were to cost Parker some credibility during the civil war.40HMC 7th Rep., 674; NRA, Firle Place MSS (1964), i. 332, ii. 5/11; Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 12; E101/629/5, ff. 7, 22. Parker’s standing in the county is confirmed by his knighthood at Theobalds in November 1617,41Shaw, Knights of Eng., ii. 167. shortly after which he inherited the estates of both his father and his uncle, Sir John Parker†, a gentleman pensioner to both Elizabeth I and James I.42PROB11/130/491 (Sir John Parker); C142/380/124 (Sir Nicholas Parker); PROB11/135/311 (Sir Nicholas Parker). He also inherited from his father a stake in the Virginia Company.43Recs. of the Virginia Co., ed. S. M. Kingsbury (1906–1935), iii. 86, 88, 334; iv. 365.

Parker’s association with the Lennard family resulted in his marriage to Philadelphia Lennard on 1 December 1618, at St Giles, Cripplegate, London.44Suss. N. and Q., xiv. 162. In 1624 his brother-in-law, Richard Lennard, 13th Baron Dacre (d. 1630), appointed him trustee of his lands, the profits of which were used for the education of Dacre’s heir Francis Lennard* (14th baron), until being released to him when he came of age in 1641.45Kent AO, U1590/T23/22–23, 27–28; WARD7/79/166; Essex RO, D/DL/C43/4/27; D/DL/F65, pp. 1–23; D/DL/L25. The connection between the two families proved enduring, and Sir Thomas became a regular guest at Herstmonceux Castle, his nephew’s family seat.46Essex RO, D/DL/E22, ff. 3–258. Dacre’s accounts reveal that he bought produce from Parker’s estates, and borrowed £500 from him in 1645.47Essex RO, D/DL/E22, ff. 66v, 97v, 99v, 142v, 150v, 159v, 165v, 200v, 204v, 211v, 220v, 241v, 245v. Parker would become a trustee of his nephew’s lands in 1647, and in 1655 was named as an executor of the latter’s estate, and guardian of his son, Thomas Lennard, 15th Baron Dacre. By the time Francis died in 1662, however, Sir Thomas Parker’s ‘infirmities’ disabled him from fulfilling the latter role.48C10/69/42; Essex RO, D/DL/F92/2; D/DL/F72.

Parker’s involvement in local and national politics began after the death of his father in 1620. He was active as a justice of the peace in Sussex from 1621, and in 1624 was a commissioner for raising the tax for maimed soldiers.49Cal. Assize Recs. Suss. Indictments Jas. I ed. Cockburn, 94, 100, 105, 111, 118, 124, 134, 144; E. Suss. RO, QI/EW1, f. 15; QAF/1/E1. He was added to the county’s deputy lieutenants in July 1624 and there is evidence of his work organising trained bands in February 1625.50CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 300; E. Suss. RO, Dunn 51/1. Sir Henry Compton’s* record of his correspondence between 1624 and 1631 reveals how Parker helped levy men for the king’s press, and organised musters, beacons, billeting, and money for the ordnance at Eastbourne.51ESRO, LCD/EW1, ff. 5-28v, 44-54, 67-74v; Suss. Arch. Coll. xl. 4-5, 7, 22. In 1628 he and Sir Thomas Pelham* were ordered to raise a ‘benevolence’ for the repair of Rye harbour, following a certificate sent from them to London.52E. Suss. RO, Rye Corporation 99/14.

Parker’s attitude towards the government in the 1620s was complex and hard to fathom. A warning was issued (Feb. 1622) for him to attend the privy council ‘with all convenient expedition’, regarding his failure to contribute to the Palatinate benevolence. The following year Parker was reported to have been £30 in arrears.53SP14/127, f. 113; SP14/148, f. 37v. A privy seal was directed to him for raising a loan of £300, and he signed the return as a commissioner of the 1625 loan.54E401/2586, pp. 40, 459. In 1627 he was appointed a commissioner to use martial law in the punishment of offences committed by soldiers billeted in Sussex.55CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 461; E. Suss. RO, LCD/EW1, ff. 56-56v. Tension clearly existed between the deputy lieutenants and the lord lieutenants over the collection of the loan that year, and it is perhaps significant that Parker’s name does not appear in the transactions during this period.56E. Suss RO, LCD/EW1, ff. 31-41.

The impression that Parker was ambivalent regarding the opposition to royal administration in Parliament emerges in his return as a burgess for Hastings on 31 May 1626. This election was necessitated by the removal of Dudley Carleton† to the Lords on 22 May. On the one hand, it seems clear that Parker was not the candidate supported by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports (Theophilus Howard†, 2nd earl of Suffolk). The ‘court’ candidate, who received letters of recommendation from Suffolk, was Walter Montagu, younger son of Henry Montagu†, 1st earl of Manchester, president of the privy council. Walter Montagu was a papist, and a close friend of Queen Henrietta Maria. Parker’s status as an ‘opposition’ candidate seems clear from the involvement of Nicholas Eversfield† in securing his election. However, Parker seems to have been reluctant to act out the role written for him by Eversfield. The freemen refused Montagu, ‘by means made to some of them by Mr Eversfield for this knight, he never requesting it’.57Hastings Museum, C/A(a) 2, f. 31. Parker was elected on 31 May, but it is not clear whether he was able to take his seat before Parliament was dissolved on 15 June.58HP Commons 1604-1629.

Evidence of Parker’s activity during the 1630s is limited to work relating to the enforcement of the Book of Orders. Following the collapse of the cloth trade and the failure of the harvest in 1629, and in the face of popular suffering and possible insurrection, efforts were made to gather from local magistrates reports regarding unemployment and grain prices. Acting upon information from the earl of Dorset regarding grain shortages in Hastings, the privy council wrote to Parker in February 1631, ordering him to remedy the situation by permitting farmers to sell corn there.59APC (June 1630-June 1631), 242. The following May, Parker informed the council of ‘unwanted scarcity’ in the county, and detailing the measures taken to abate the price of corn and for the relief of the poor. Parker’s reports over the next six years showed his zeal in establishing apprenticeships, prosecuting vagabonds, and closing alehouses.60Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi. 31-2; SP16/192, f. 146; SP16/220, f. 112; SP16/266, f. 1; SP16/276, f. 191; SP16/328, f. 163; SP16/351, f. 106; SP16/364, f. 16; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 152.

Parker’s reluctance to engage in affairs at Westminster is reflected in the fact that he did not stand in either of the elections of 1640. Nevertheless, he played some part in the spring contest at Hastings, in opposition to the court candidate Robert Reade*, the nominee of the lord warden, and secretary to Sir Francis Windebanke*. The opposition to Reade, which centred on Thomas Eversfield* (son of Nicholas), involved allegations of bribery, and became very vociferous.61Suss. Arch. Coll. cv. 49-55. Parker supported the stance taken by the freemen of the borough; John Ashburnham* recounted to Secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas that, ‘Sir Thomas Parker and some others were minded to question’ Reade’s election.62CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 606-7.

Parker entered Parliament in 1641 for Seaford, a ‘limb’ Cinque Port, attached to Hastings, which on 4 February that year regained its ancient privilege of sending two burgesses to Westminster. An election writ was directed to the lord warden a week later.63CJ ii. 78a; C231/5, p. 428; C219/43iii/148. It is possible that the restoration of the franchise, promoted by John Maynard* and John Selden*, and opposed by Sir Walter Erle* (who argued that ‘the inhabitants were rude and some of them papists’), was intended to boost the ranks of critics of crown policy in the Commons.64D’Ewes (N)., 284n, 321-2; M.A. Lower, Mems. of the Town, Parish and Cinque Port of Seaford (1885), 17, 38; F.W. Steer, Recs. of the Corporation of Seaford, (Lewes, 1959), 27. It is noteworthy that Parker’s fellow burgess was Francis Gerard*, whose father, Sir Gilbert Gerard*, was one of the most active friends of John Pym* and Oliver St John* at Westminster.65‘Sir Gilbert Gerard’, supra. While it seems unlikely that the new lord warden (James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond and Lennox) would have supported Parker or Gerard, little evidence of the actual election survives.

If it had been intended that Parker should bolster the support for the ‘fiery spirits’, he must have proved a disappointment: by mid-August he had been nominated to only four committees. Added on 16 March to the committee for the ‘popish hierarchy’ (originally established 9 Nov. 1640), three days later he was named to discuss the bill curbing usury.66CJ ii. 24b, 108a. He took the Protestation on 7 May, was appointed to a committee on a private settlement (1 June) and presented a petition from the inhabitants of Eastbourne, regarding their minister’s practice of holding feasts three times a year (14 Aug.).67CJ ii. 137b; Harl. 164, f. 29; Harl. 479, f. 153. In the aftermath of revelations of the second ‘army plot’, he received his most important appointment – to the committee to prepare heads for a conference regarding placing the kingdom in a posture of defence (also 14 Aug.).68CJ ii. 164a, 257a.

Thereafter, Parker’s name is absent from the Commons’ Journal for more than a year. In this, his parliamentary profile mirrored that of his friend Sir Thomas Pelham, probably the single most important figure in Parker’s career. The relationship between the two men went back to the business deals in the early 1630s; Parker undertook to prosecute Herbert Lunsford – whose long-running disputes with Pelham escalated to the point of the attempted assassination of the latter – for having shot one of Pelham’s hounds on a hunting trip in 1632.69Add. Ch. 30038; SP16/223, f. 1. Parker and Pelham were the two most prominent godly gentlemen of the Eastern rapes of Sussex during the 1630s and early 1640s, but both were to face opposition from radicals within their own county community and county committee; and both failed to sit after Pride’s Purge. In this respect, Sir Thomas Parker could not have been more different from his younger brother, Henry Parker, the most important parliamentary propagandist of the 1640s.

When he resurfaced in the Journal on 20 September 1642, Parker delayed over pledging money to the army of Parliament’s commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, although he expressed his support.70CJ ii. 774a. As a deputy lieutenant he was ordered to prepare a commission for raising forces in Sussex (21 Nov.).71CJ ii. 857b; Thomas-Stanford, Suss. in Great Civil War, 42. His wife’s name, but not his, was recorded in the lists of those in Sussex who contributed to the relief of distressed Protestants in Ireland in 1642.72E179/191/390/3. An impression of somewhat half-hearted engagement with public affairs and the unfolding conflicts of the three kingdoms is strengthened by the fact that he made just six appearances in the Journal in 1643. Added to the committee considering which prisoners might be freed upon taking the Protestation (21 Jan.), it was nearly three months before he was mentioned again.73CJ ii. 937a.

At first, even Parker’s involvement in Sussex was qualified. He seems to have been far happier to sit on the county bench than on the county committee.74Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 23, 27, 33, 45, 50, 72, 76, 85, 96. At Westminster he was added on 14 April to the committee for weekly assessments and for sequestering delinquents’ estates in Sussex, but both he and Pelham were initially omitted from the county committee when it was named on 18 July 1643; this was remedied three days later.75CJ iii. 173a, 177a. However, he had taken the vow and covenant on 12 June in the aftermath of the revelation of the plot of Edmund Waller*, and against the backdrop of the summer’s military reversals for parliamentarian forces, in July he joined those pressing for an association of the southern counties. 76CJ iii. 125b; Bodl. Nalson XI, 290; III, 21. If his support for war had previously been merely lukewarm, he seems to have been galvanised into further action by the news of the Cessation with the Irish. He endorsed the solemn league and covenant on 2 November, and two days later was named to the commission for the defence of southern counties.77CJ iii. 299a; A. and O. On the 30th he was ordered to seek a warrant from Lord General Essex for raising 850 infantry in Sussex, and to write to Sir William Waller* to receive them.78CJ iii. 324a. He took action to alleviate hardship in the army and to hasten the collection of provision money.79HMC 13th Rep. IV, 213-14.

At a call of the House on 5 February 1644, Parker was described as being absent ‘in service’, which both suggests a formal military role and accounts for his continuing low profile in the Commons.80CJ iii. 390a. On 15 June he was again appointed to the southern association and on 23 July he was employed by the Committee of Both Kingdoms to relay their instructions for the conduct of war in Sussex to Colonel Anthony Stapley I*, governor of Chichester.81A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 371. On 16 October, however, Parker and his friend Pelham faced what appears to have been an attempt to discredit them. A petition of ‘well-affected’ local ministers and freeholders complaining that these two and others on the committee for Sussex were ‘backward’ in their support of Parliament was referred to the Committee for Examinations.82CJ iii. 666b; Add. 31116, p. 333. The accusations – attributed by one of the Committee’s members, Sir Simonds D’Ewes* to ‘some violent, hot-headed men’ – may have originated in an attempted usurpation of the county committee by men like William Cawley* and Harbert Morley*, two of its prominent radical members, and may have reflected wider moves by those of lesser rank to challenge the domination of the greater gentry.83Harl. 166, f. 149v. In addition to his continuing association with the Catholic Gages, suspicion regarding Parker may have sprung from the fact that he was thought, in October 1643, to have made a conveyance with his sister, Anne, Lady Smith (wife of Sir John Smith, one of the most prominent recusants in the county), and subsequently to have been receiving the rents from her lands in order to protect her estates from the sequestrators.84SP20/1, pp. 91, 111-12; E101/629/5, ff. 7, 22; W. Suss. RO, Lytton 38, 136-7, 138-9, 147.

Ultimately, no action seems to have been taken. Pelham and Parker probably both enjoyed the friendship and support of too many powerful men in London to have been seriously threatened by this move against them. Perhaps the most important among these friends was Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, chairman of the CBK. He had chosen both Pelham and Parker as deputy lieutenants, while he had opposed the inclusion of men like Morley on the county committee on the ground they were ‘of so base a condition as renders them unworthy of such trust’; he complained of their ‘unnecessary oppression and insolent behaviour’ towards men of substance.85Add. 33058, f. 71; HMC Portland, i. 314. What little role Parker played in the activities of the Sussex committee does seem to have tended towards the protection of landed property. It was perhaps Northumberland who, the day before the petition surfaced, instigated an order that Parker – rather than potentially less sympathetic agents – should undertake a survey of the woodland of the exiled Thomas Howard, 21st or 14th earl of Arundel.86LJ vii. 25a. In 1646 Parker was to be involved in the move to allow Richard Sackville*, Lord Buckhurst, to gain control of the estates of his father, thus preventing £1500 owing to him in fee farm rents being forfeit to Parliament because of the earl of Dorset’s royalism.87Kent AO, U269/O8/3.

Having survived the attempt to unseat him, in January 1645 Parker – who was evidently once more present in Westminster – was ordered to go to Sussex to take care of the preservation of the county.88CJ iv. 14a. Appointed an assessment commissioner (21 Feb.), he was twice instructed to bring in the Sussex arrears of money for paying off the occupying forces of the Scots under the earl of Leven (4 Feb.; 11 Mar.).89A. and O; CJ iv. 41a, 75b. Significantly, he was also named a commissioner for raising money for the New Model army (17 Feb.) – not usually a sign of perceived lukewarmness.90A. and O.

During the succeeding summer there was at least one indication that Parker had earned the trust of the Independent leadership at Westminster, in that he appeared as a minor player in what came to be called the ‘Saville affair’, and the controversial negotiations instigated by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and a sub-committee of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, to secure the surrender of royalist garrisons. Parker appeared as a signatory of the safe-conduct granted to Sir William Campion, the royalist governor of Boarstall House in Oxfordshire. Yet this may not quite be what it seems: Parker was possibly acting specifically to protect Campion, his son-in-law since 1639, and his daughter, Grace.91E Suss. RO, Danny MSS 114, 147. The Parkers and Campions were close, dining together as guests of Lord Dacre during 1646, and Parker acted (along with Herbert Springet*) as executor of Campion’s much sequestered estate after his death at Colchester in 1648.92Essex RO, D/DL/E22, ff. 143, 156, 167-8; Newman, Royalist Officers, 57; C7/279/42; E. Suss. RO, Danny MSS 170, 368, 1661, 1664.

Alongside Parker’s apparent willingness to defend members of the greater gentry, whatever their political alignment, may be placed the conservatism suggested by the part he played in September 1645 in drawing the attention of Speaker William Lenthall* to the grievances of the Sussex Clubmen, whose demands were fairly moderate, particularly regarding church government.93Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-255v. Further indication of Parker’s moderation springs from his clerical patronage, the most notable recipient of which was George Hall, from 1662 bishop of Chester and a chaplain of Charles II. The son of the celebrated bishop Joseph Hall, he was appointed to Willingdon in 1647 despite having been ejected from Menheniot (Corn.) in 1644, and sequestered from the living of Wickhambrook (Suff.) the following year.94Add. 5697, f. 335v; IND1/17004, Suss., f. 55; Add. 39349, f. 266; Al. Cant.; Al. Ox.; Wood, Athenae Oxon. iii. 812-4; Walker Revised, 97. Hall’s writings display little of his religious position, other than opposition to both papists and sectaries, and a search for a via media between ‘those ill-invented differential terms’.95G. Hall, Two Sermons (1641); The Triumphs of Rome (1655); God’s Appearing for the Tribe of Levi (1655), 20, 27; A Fast Sermon (1666). In 1641 Hall apparently helped his father draft A Short Answer to the Tedious Vindication of Smectymnuus, as part of the debate following Bishop Hall’s advocacy of divine right episcopacy in the previous year.96J. Hall, A Short Answer (1641, E.169.2). About Parker’s other appointments to the living of Willingdon active in this period – James Pell (1626-49) and Benjamin Naylor (1656-61) – rather less is known.97Add. 5697, f. 335v; Add. 39349, f. 266; Add. 39530, f. 24; IND1/17004, Suss., f. 55; Al. Ox; Al. Cant.

Parker surfaced in the Commons Journal only three times between March 1645 and December 1648. His two committee appointments related to provincial concerns: a petition of Edward Scott of Kent (1 Sept. 1646) and an investigation of disagreements between the administrations of Coventry and of Warwickshire (24 Mar. 1647), while his final appearance in the record was when he was again ordered to go to Sussex to fulfill obligations as an assessment commissioner (23 Dec. 1647).98CJ iv. 658b; v. 122b, 400b. This sparse service did not betoken outright disaffection, however. He did not sign the Sussex petition in 1648 and did not join the royalists who planned an uprising at Horsham, and about whose activities he informed Lenthall in June.99PA, Parchment coll. box 11; E. Suss. RO, SAS/SM/147; SAS/DM/263-75; HMC Portland, i. 719. He continued to act as a commissioner for the assessment, and he was named a militia commissioner in December 1648.100A. and O.; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 146; SP28/246; Add. 33058, f. 75. On 14 October, he informed Lenthall that he was ‘so ill with the stone, and a pain with a great rheum in one of my eyes that I fear I shall not be able to attend the house on Tuesday next as I desired’. If indeed he failed to appear at the call of the House, he requested that the Speaker ‘make my just excuse’, but assured him that he would do his best to be there, ‘according to my duty’.101HMC Portland, i. 501; Bodl. Nalson VII, 112. Whether or not he was excused on grounds of ill health, he seems to have been secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December, and is not known to have returned to the Commons.102A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

Parker continued to fulfil his duties as a justice of the peace into early 1649, and although he was removed (along with others in Sussex) before 12 March 1649, he evidently came to terms with the regime, since he was readmitted to the bench in March 1650, and served on this and other commissions until the Restoration.103Suss. QSOB 1642-1649 165; Salzman, Town Bk. of Lewes, 74, 77; E. Suss. RO, QI/EW2, f. 31v; QO/EW2, ff. 10v, 19v, 23v, 31v, 38, 43, 52v, 61, 65v, 70; QO/EW3, ff. 4v, 8v, 12v, 17, 34v, 51; Dunn 52/12; ASSI35/89/2; ASSI35/90/2; ASSI35/90/5; ASSI35/91/6. During the early years of the commonwealth and protectorate Parker also occupied himself with personal business. John Taylor commented that on his 1653 tour of Sussex he found ‘unlooked for welcome, and good Sussex cheer’ from Parker and Sir Thomas Dyke† at Eastbourne.104Suss. Arch. Coll. lxxxi. 25. The marriage of his eldest son, George Parker*, to Mary, daughter of lawyer Richard Newdigate†, prompted him towards various land deals and led him to draw up his will, dated 28 March 1653. Newdigate – another man who held public office in this period without obvious sympathy for the regime and who supported many former royalist friends and kin – was named an executor, as well as a trustee for much of his property.105Suss. Manors, i. 53, 142, 217; ii. 493; Acts Dean and Chapter Chichester, 1545-1642, 247; Abstracts Suss. Deeds and Docs., 39, 141; Godfrey, Bk. of John Rowe, 111; PROB11/311/501; V. Larminie, Wealth, Kinship and Culture (1995); ‘Richard Newdigate’, HP Commons 1660-1690.

The 1656 elections in Sussex provided an opportunity to protest against Major-general William Goffe* and the decimation tax, and moderates like Parker found themselves once more returned to Westminster.106Fletcher, Suss., 310. His involvement, however, was slight, and on one occasion he was recorded as having been absent without excuse.107Burton, Diary, i. 287. He was named to no committees, but acted as a teller on two occasions: with Sir Richard Pigott* against an abatement of the assessment for Pembrokeshire, and with Cumberland MP Charles Howard* against a bill concerning vagrants.108CJ vii. 559b; Burton, Diary, ii. 114. Once more his major concerns were revealed to have been provincial, and he was made a commissioner for the assessment in June 1657.109A. and O. Although largely inactive, Parker seems to have gained the favour of both Oliver Cromwell* and Richard Cromwell*, who sought to support his efforts to gain admission to Winchester College for one of his sons.110CSP Dom. 1658–1659, p. 133.

Parker sat in none of the remaining Parliaments of the 1650s. His public profile increased as the Restoration approached, however: he contributed money towards raising horse in August 1659 and became a commissioner for the assessment in January 1660, and for the militia in March.111SP28/335/82; A. and O. He seems to have played no part in the royalist plot of John Stapley*, unlike his son George and his son-in-law Thomas Nutt.112TSP vii. 78, 89, 94, 99. There is no evidence, however, that he returned to Westminster after the readmission of the secluded members.113The Grand Memorandum (1660).

Knowledge of his activity in the first years of the Restoration and the last years of his life is limited to minor litigation.114C5/423/194; C6/147/161. He died in May 1663, and was buried in Willingdon church on 3 June.115Add. 5697, f. 336. His will had left orders for his monument, carrying the Parker and Lennard arms, and an inscription giving his life dates, ‘not for any cause of superstition, but as a monument for memorial to be left to my posterity for the better deciding of any controversies’. Two of his younger sons, John and William, were each to receive £1000; while his remaining unmarried daughter Margaret (later wife of Thomas Howard*, from 1679 3rd earl of Berkshire), received £1500. Aside from gifts to the local poor, most of his estate passed to his son George.116PROB11/311/501. The latter, who was much in the mould of Sir Thomas, sat for Seaford in the last protectorate Parliament and was re-elected to the Convention.117‘George Parker’; HP Commons 1660-1690.