Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/353

313 AND JAMES NISBET. 313 to a nobleman in London, whom he amused with his humorous sallies at the expense of his old comrades the Puritans. During Charles's reign, his writings were distinguished by the bitterness of his attacks upon the dissenting party ; and on the accession of James he' was installed in the bishopric of Oxford, upon the death of Dr. Fell the famous subject of inexplicable dislike. He now embraced the Romish religion, "though," writes Father Peter, a Jesuit, "he hath not yet declared himself openly; the great obstacle is his wife, whom he cannot rid himself of." Finding the cause growing desperate, he sent a dis- course to James, urging him to embrace the Protestant religion. His authority in the diocese became con- temptible, and he died unlamented in 1687. He left, however, a son of his own name, an excellent scholar and a man of singular modesty, who married a book- seller's daughter, of Oxford, and had a numerous family, to support whom he not only wrote, but published, and himself sold, books of a learned class the most important of which was the "Bibliotheca Biblica." He died in 1730, and his son, Sackville Parker, was an eminent bookseller in the Turl, his shop being chiefly frequented by the High Church and non-juring clergy. He was one of the four octogenarian Oxford booksellers who all died between 1795 and 1796, and whose united years amounted to 342. He was succeeded by Joseph Parker, his nephew. About the year 1790, Joseph Parker was apprenticed to Daniel Prince, whose successor, Joshua Cooke, was agent to the University Press, and thus he was able to become acquainted with the management of its publi- cations. The Bible Press was at this period in debt, 20