Parker, Matthew

(1504–75)

   Archbishop and Historian.

   Parker was educated at the University of Cambridge. He was known as a moderate Protestant and when Queen Elizabeth I inherited the English throne in 1559, she chose him to be her Archbishop of Canterbury. He was consecrated by four of King Edward vi’s Bishops (Queen mary’s, being Roman Catholic, had been deprived of their sees) and he dedicated the rest of his life to the setting up of a moderately reformed established Church. He aroused the opposition of the Puritans because he allowed the retention of several Catholic rituals, and the Thirty- Nine Articles, published in 1563 during his Archiepiscopate, are remarkable for their mediating tone. A gentle, scholarly man, Parker was interested in the history of the English Church and he edited the work of several mediaeval chroniclers.

   W. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation (1968).