Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Parker, Thomas (fl.1581)
PARKER, THOMAS (fl. 1581), Roman catholic divine, educated at Cambridge, graduated B.A. 1535–6, commenced M.A. 1541, and in 1541 was named a fellow of Trinity College in the foundation charter. He proceeded B.D. in 1548. Being a theologian of considerable learning, he took part, on the Roman catholic side, in 1549 in the disputation on the sacrament before King Edward's visitors (Cooper, Annals, ii. 31). In July 1555 he signed the articles of religion imposed by Queen Mary's visitors, and in October of the same year was present at the trial for heresy of Wolsey and Pigot. On 26 Feb. 1555–6 he was made one of Lady Margaret's preachers, and in 1558 was re-elected. In the records of Cardinal Pole's visitation of the university in 1556–7 his name frequently appears. In April 1556 he was presented by the crown to the vicarage of Mildenhall, Suffolk. After Elizabeth's accession he went abroad, where he obtained the degree of D.D., and was alive at Milan in 1581.
Henry Mason, an English spy, who had taken the oath of allegiance to the king of Spain, refers in January 1576 to a ‘Dr. Parker and the other English Louvainists,’ whose secrets he undertook to discover and report to Burghley; but it is not possible to establish his identity with certainty; his name does not appear in the published records of Louvain (cf. Andreas, Fasti Acad. Lov. 1635).
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 452; Lamb's Collection of Letters, Statutes, and other Documents … illustrative of the History of the University of Cambridge, xxvii. 114, 116, 175, 205, 216, 226.]