Samuel Parker

Samuel Parker (1681–1730) was an English writer and nonjuror. Ancestors Parker was the younger son of the English theologian and clergyman Samuel Parker (1640–1688), who served as Bishop of Oxford and President of Magdalen College during the tumultuous reign of James II. Early years After early schooling in Kent, Parker attended Trinity College, Oxford, but left after several years, c. 1700, without taking a degree, evidently because he was unwilling to take the oath of allegiance, which was required of all who stood for degrees. Political and religious views Parker joined in the nonjuring schism and worshiped separately until 1711. He was, however, persuaded by his friend Henry Dodwell's argument, in The Case in View, that the schism would end with the death of the last invalidly deprived bishop who continued to insist on his right, and he therefore returned to his parish church—St Peter in the East, Oxford—after the death of William Lloyd (bishop of Norwich). However, Parker persisted in his Jacobitism. Although he attended services at St. Peter in the East, he thought the prayers for the ruling monarch sinful, and signalized his objections to these prayers by standing up or making various gestures when they were recited. Parker refused to take orders in the Church of England or accept any position that would have required him to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and he taught his sons his nonjuring and Jacobite principles.