John Parker (archbishop)

John Parker DD (died 28 December 1681) was a Church of Ireland clergyman who came to prominence after the English Restoration, first as Bishop of Elphin, then as Archbishop of Tuam and finally as Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland.

Born in Dublin, Parker was the son of another Rev. John Parker (d. 1643), also a Church of Ireland clergyman, dean of Leighlin (1618–37) and then of Killaloe, County Clare until his death. A John Parker is recorded as a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1636.

Parker was ordained a deacon in 1638 and in 1642 became a minor canon of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He was prebendary of Rathangan, in the diocese of Kildare, and in 1643 prebendary of Maynooth at St Patrick's and of St Michan's at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, both benefices previously held by his father. When his father died in 1643 he succeeded him as dean of Killaloe.

During the early years of the Irish Confederate Wars, Parker was in Dublin as chaplain to the Earl of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1649, the Cromwellian authorities deprived him of all his offices and imprisoned him as a suspected Royalist spy, although his patron Ormond was able to get his release after only a few months in an exchange of prisoners. In 1650, Parker went to England. He stayed there until the Restoration, when he was one of the Irish Royalist clergymen who secured new preferments. Appointed Bishop of Elphin on 6 August 1660, he was consecrated in Dublin on 27 January 1661, the day after he was made a Doctor of Divinity by the University of Dublin.

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