John Parker (Jacobite)

John Parker (c.1651 – in or after 1719) was an English army officer and Jacobite conspirator.

His father William Parker was excise commissioner in 1652–3, and later a physician at Margate; his mother was Judith, daughter of Roger Beckwith of Aldborough, Yorkshire. Their first known ancestor was John Parker, Master of the Rolls in Ireland (died 1564), a native of Tenterden in Kent, who went to Ireland about 1540 and became both a senior judge and a substantial landowner.

In 1676 he was appointed captain of a company in the Duke of Monmouth's regiment in France, in 1678 he became captain in James, Duke of York's regiment. In 1681 he was brigadier-lieutenant, in 1683 lieutenant in the Guards, in 1685 captain of horse; later in that year he was major of Lord Arran's cavalry regiment, and in 1687 lieutenant-colonel.

Parker followed James II into exile at St. Germain, and to Ireland. He was wounded at the battle of the Boyne in 1690, where his troop of cavalry sustained heavy losses.

Arrested in London in 1693 as a party to an assassination plot against William III, planned to take place in Flanders, Parker escaped. In May 1694 he was again taken, in Bloomsbury, and sent to the Tower of London, where he was kept in close confinement, and denied writing materials. He had been implicated in the Sieur de Grandval's confession, and in June 1694 a true bill was found against him, but the trial was postponed. On 11 August, Sir John Friend having bribed a warder, Parker escaped, and a reward was offered for his apprehension.

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