Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/271

 master of the ordnance for the forces in France under Willoughby; in 1592 he commanded a hundred lances in the Low Countries, and had still the same command in April 1596. In September 1596 he wrote to Cecil, begging that in consideration of his long and faithful service in the wars, and of having had great losses, he might have a regiment, if any forces were sent to Flanders, ‘as a comfort for his latter days.’ In 1597 he had command of a detachment of soldiers in the Islands' voyage under Essex, and in October was appointed to command in Sussex, on threat of invasion. In 1598 he was deputy lieutenant of Cornwall, and governor of Pendennis Castle, in which post he continued apparently till his death, on 9 March 1619. He was also governor of Plymouth in succession to Sir Ferdinando Gorges [q. v.] from 1601 to 1603. In 1602 he was named in the charter of the Virginia Company as one of the adventurers; and another of them, Adrian Moore, married Parker's daughter Anne. After Moore's death she married Sir John Smith, a name whose frequency renders identification difficult.

[Brown's Genesis of the United States; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. and East Indies; Lediard's Naval Hist. pp. 185, 357.] 

PARKER, PETER (1721–1811), admiral of the fleet, son of Rear-admiral Christopher Parker (d. 1765), and said, on very doubtful authority, to be descended from Matthew Parker [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, was born, probably in Ireland, in 1721. As a lad, he is said to have served under his father; afterwards he was probably in the West Indies in the fleet under Vernon; in 1743 he was in the Mediterranean, and in the summer was promoted by Mathews to be lieutenant of the Russell, from which he was moved in November to the Firedrake bomb, and in the following January to the Barfleur, flagship of Rear-admiral William Rowley [q. v.] In her he was present in the action off Toulon on 11 Feb. 1743–4, and on 19 March was appointed to the Neptune, flagship of Vice-admiral Richard Lestock [q. v.] On 6 May 1747 he was promoted to be captain of the Margate, a small frigate of 24 guns fitting out at Kinsale, where his father was then residing. In October he brought her to Plymouth, and for the next six months was employed in convoy duty in the Channel and North Sea. He was then ordered to the Mediterranean, whence he returned in April 1749. The Margate was then paid off, and Parker placed on half-pay. In March 1755 he was appointed regulating captain at Bristol, and in May commissioned the Woolwich at Portsmouth. In the summer he convoyed the trade for the Baltic to the Sound, and, returning to Yarmouth in the end of September, wrote that some men pressed from a Guinea ship just before he sailed had brought on board a malignant fever, which had run through the whole ship's company.

In 1757 the Woolwich went to the West Indies with Commodore John Moore (1718–1779) [q. v.], who in January 1759 moved Parker into the Bristol. In her he took part in the unsuccessful attack on Martinique and in the reduction of Guadeloupe. In May Moore again moved him into the Buckingham, in which he returned to England in the following year, and in 1761 took part in the reduction of Belle-Isle by Commodore Keppel. In August 1762 Parker was appointed to the Terrible, which was paid off at the peace, when Parker was put on half-pay. For the next ten years he lived, apparently, in Queen's Square, Westminster. In 1772 he was knighted; but his repeated applications for employment passed unheeded, till in October 1773 he was appointed to the Barfleur, guardship at Portsmouth, and in October 1775 to command a small squadron going out to North America.

He hoisted his broad pennant on board the Bristol of 50 guns, and sailed from Portsmouth on 26 Dec., and from Cork in the end of January; but trying the direct passage and meeting bad weather, he did not reach Cape Fear till the beginning of May. It was intended to attack Charlestown, but it was a month before the squadron could put to sea, and not till 28 June could it attempt to force the entrance of Charlestown Harbour past the batteries on Sullivan's Island. The channel between this and the mainland was reported to be fordable at low water, and it was arranged that the land forces should take the batteries in the rear while the ships engaged them in front. But the tide, banked up by the wind, did not run out sufficiently to render this possible, while, at the same time, the water in front of the forts was too shallow to permit the ships to come within effective range. The result was disastrous. Three of the frigates took the ground; one could not be got off, was set on fire and abandoned, her flag, by some gross neglect, being left to fall into the hands of the enemy. The bomb was disabled, and the burden of the attack virtually fell on the two 50-gun ships, Bristol and Experiment, which, after maintaining a stubborn fight for nearly ten hours, were obliged to draw off, with a loss of nearly two hundred men killed and wounded.

After this sanguinary repulse Parker joined