Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/231

 ‘Notes and Queries,’ 1st ser. xi. 217, 2nd ser xii. 221–2; and many more addressed to Sir Egerton Brydges, Thomas Hill, and Litchfield of the ‘Monthly Mirror,’ are in the British Museum Additional MSS. 18916 and 20083. Cowper's letters to him, originally printed in the ‘Monthly Mirror,’ were inserted by Southey (who entertained a very high respect for Park) in his edition of the ‘Life and Correspondence of Cowper,’ vii. 322–3.

[Gent. Mag. 1813 pt. i. p. 596, 1833 pt. ii. p. 84, 1835 pt. i. pp. 663–4; Annual Biogr. xx. 257–263; Wright's Cowper, pp. 548–9; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. vii. 95; Southey's Life and Corresp.iii. 108; and see also a little volume published in 1885 by the Rev. R. C. Jenkins, rector and vicar of Lyminge, Kent, called ‘The Last Gleanings of a Christian Life. An Outline of the Life of Thomas Park, F.S.A., of Hampstead. The friend of the poets Cowper, Hayley, and Southey; of Sir Walter Scott, of Haydn, and of Miss Seward.’] 

PARKE, DANIEL (1669–1710), governor of the Leeward Islands, served in the English army under Marlborough, became one of that general's aides-de-camp, and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was despatched in August 1704 to announce the victory of Blenheim to the queen, the duchess, and the English government. His fine appearance and handsome bearing commended him to Anne, and, being patronised by the Churchills, he was, by letters patent dated 25 April 1706, appointed chief governor of the Leeward Islands. The government of these islands had been very lax, the settlers were inclined to be rebellious, and the appointment of Parke was unpopular from the first. Having repulsed the French, who had plundered the islands of St. Christopher and Nevis, Parke endeavoured to carry out some much-needed internal reforms, and, being sure of support at home, he both disregarded the articles of a formal complaint against him drawn up by the colonists, and made a somewhat ostentatious display of the small military force placed at his command. The speedy result was that in December 1710 a violent insurrection broke out at Antigua, the seat of the government. Parke made a gallant resistance to the insurgents, and killed one of their leaders, Captain John Pigott, with his own hand; but he was soon overpowered by numbers, and, having been dragged from his house, was barbarously maltreated, and finally murdered (7 Dec.) His death being synchronous with the substitution of the tory for the whig government, which took place in the autumn of 1710, no steps were taken to bring his assassins to justice until 28 June 1715, when a test case, that of one Henry Smith, was tried at the king's bench, but was dismissed for want of sufficient proof.

[French's Account of Colonel Parke's Administration of the Leeward Islands, with an Account of the Rebellion in Antegoa, 1717, with a portrait of Parke engraved by G. Vertue, after Kneller; Some Instances of the Oppression of Colonel Parke, London, 1710; Duke of Marlborough's Letters and Despatches, ed. Murray, v. 630; Boyer's Annals of Queen Anne, 1735, p. 154; Noble's Continuation of Granger, 1806, ii. 179.] 

PARKE, HENRY (1792?–1835), architect, born about 1792, was a son of John Parke [q. v.], the oboist. Henry was intended for the bar, and studied under a special pleader; but, owing to his indistinct utterance, he abandoned law, and, after vaguely considering many other pursuits, studied architecture. His father placed him with Sir John Soane, R.A. [q. v.]; and some of the finest drawings exhibited during Soane's lectures on architecture at the Royal Academy were made by Parke. These are still in the Soane Museum, along with many others of his drawings while a pupil. He became well versed in mathematics, geometry, mechanics, and drawing, both architectural and landscape.

Between 1820 and 1824 he visited Italy, Sicily, Genoa, Greece, and Egypt, ascending the Nile in 1824 with a fellow-student, John Joseph Scoles. In 1829 he published a ‘Map of Nubia, comprising the Country between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile,’ and gave a plan of the island of Philæ, with its several measurements. This map is now rare, and is very valuable, as it indicates the positions of all the temples, rock-cut tombs, and other buildings on the banks of the river.

At Rome and elsewhere he worked with Catherwood, T. L. Donaldson, and others, laboriously measuring antique remains, as well as more modern works by the best architects. On returning to England, at the end of 1824, he worked out his sketches. He continued making drawings and views of buildings and ruins, and a valuable collection of between five and six hundred, including a few near Dover, was presented to the Royal Institute of British Architects by his widow (Report, 1836, p. xxviii). The institute also possesses a sketch by him of a sextant capable of taking an angle of 18° (dated 1826); and another of an instrument to measure angles, internal and external, for purposes of taking architectural plans, dated 1833. Some drawings of Pompeii are in the library at South Kensington. He exhibited at the Royal Academy drawings of an ‘Interior of a Sepulchral