Matthew Parker

Parker’s own Latin notes on his life say that he was born at Norwich on 6 August 1504, was sent to Cambridge in 1522 and became master of Corpus Christi College there in 1544. In 1554, under Mary I of England, he was deprived of his church offices, and he writes that he then lived as a private man, content in his studies (Parker, Correspondence pp. 481–484).

Under Elizabeth I he was made archbishop of Canterbury. His note for 17 December 1559 records his consecration and adds a prayer of dismay at the times he had been kept for (Parker, Correspondence pp. 481–484); the London diarist Henry Machyn notes under the same day that the new bishop, Doctor Parker, was “made” at Lambeth (Machyn, Diary 17 December 1559). The printed collection of his letters runs, as its title says, to his death in 1575 (Parker, Correspondence title page). See the Elizabethan Settlement.