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 at the Nore there was no reason, except the falsehood and deceit of the leaders; but by what motives these were actuated has never been known. Possibly they had been won over by Irish or French intrigues; but an unusually small proportion of the ringleaders had Irish names. It was believed by many of the senior officers of the fleet that the mutiny was a political job, got up by the opposition to convince the nation of the impossibility of continuing the war. It was positively affirmed that influential members of the opposition were seen prowling about Sheerness, and it was certain that the delegates, but more especially Parker, who had just escaped from a debtor's prison, were amply supplied with funds.

Meantime the terror in London was extreme. The number and value of the merchant ships stopped at the Nore were very great, and the three per cents went down to forty-seven and a half. The rebel fleet numbered thirteen sail of the line, besides frigates, sloops, and gunboats. The first blow to the mutiny was the desertion of the frigate Clyde, by the influence of her captain, Charles Cunningham [q. v.], followed shortly after by the San Fiorenzo and Serapis. The mutineers began to doubt, but Parker and his principal officers stood firm, and proposed to take the fleet to sea and deliver it to the enemy, or sell the ships for what they could get. On 9 June Parker made the signal to prepare for sailing; all the ships answered, but none obeyed. On the 10th the first lieutenant of the Leopard, with the officers and a few faithful seamen, cowed the mutineers, cut the cables, and took the ship out of the fleet. On the 13th the red flag on board the Sandwich was hauled down, the ship was surrendered, and Parker was put in irons. The next day the ship was taken into harbour, and Parker, with about thirty of the most active of the mutineers, sent on shore and confined in the gaol. On the 23rd Parker was tried by court-martial, and after a trial extending over four days was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on board the Sandwich on 30 June. The body was buried in the naval burial-ground at Sheerness, but his wife had it secretly removed and brought to London, intending, she said, to take it either to Exeter or to Scotland. After an attempt to bury the remains in Aldgate churchyard was frustrated by the mob, they were put into the vault of Whitechapel church. Parker left one child. Another had died just before he left Leith. He is described by Captain Brenton, who appears to have been present at the trial, and to have seen him afterwards, as ‘thirty years of age, of a robust make, dark complexion, black eyes, about five feet eight inches high, and might have been considered a very good-looking person.’ A cast of his face taken after death, the property of Mr. C. D. Sherburn, was lent to the Naval Exhibition of 1891. A portrait by Drummond was in 1861 in the possession of Mr. J. B. Dalrymple.

[Cunningham's Narrative of Occurrences that took place during the Mutiny at the Nore in the months of May and June 1797; Pay-book of the Sandwich; Minutes of Courts-Martial, vols. lxxviii. and lxxix., in the Public Record Office; An Impartial and Authentic Account of the Life of Richard Parker … by a Schoolfellow and an intimate Acquaintance, London, 1797; Trial, Life, and Anecdotes, Manchester, 1797; Brenton's Naval Hist. of Great Britain, i. 427–56.]

 PARKER, ROBERT (1564?–1614), puritan divine, born about 1564, became a chorister of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1575, demy 1580-3, graduated B.A. 3 Nov. 1582, was elected fellow 1585-93, and proceeded M.A. 22 June 1587. On 9 April 1588 he and a certain Edmund Gilliland were 'again punished quod habitu sacro et scholastico in templo non uterentur' (, Magd. Coll. Reg. . lxxx). Parker was presented in 1591 to the rectory of Patney, Devizes, being instituted on 24 Jan. 1591-2, and resigning in 1593. From 1594 to 1605 he held the vicarage of Stanton St. Bernard. It appears from the preface to his treatise 'De Descensu Christi' that Parker was a protégé of Henry Herbert, second earl of Pembroke [q. v.] In 1607 he was forced to leave the country to avoid prosecution before the high commission, in consequence of his 'scholastic discourse against symbolizing.' The episcopal party 'got the king to put forth a proclamation with an offer of an award for taking him.' He lay 'hid for some time a little way out of London, where a treacherous servant in his family endeavoured to betray him, and brought officers to his house to search for him. He was then actually in the house, in the only room which they neglected to search ' (, Vindication, i. 170-1). He was assisted in his flight to Gravesend by a certain Richard Brown, a waterman, who subsequently became a separatist elder in the congregation of Watertown, New England (cf. Massachusetts Hist. Soc. 3rd ser. v. 187;, Lives, i. 22-3). Parker crossed to Holland, and subsequently settled in Leyden. Henry Jacob [q. v.] arrived there in 1610,