John Parker (Irish judge)

His appointment as Master of the Rolls in 1552 is more surprising; while not as important a judicial office as it later became, it nonetheless required a qualified lawyer, and Parker, as far as is known, had no legal training.

[2] The following year he was summoned to London to answer charges of wasteful management of Government revenues, and was deprived of his seat on the council and briefly imprisoned; again his fortunes were tied to those of St. Leger, who was once more in disgrace.

Initial relations between the two men seem to have been friendly enough: Parker entertained Sussex at Holmpatrick Abbey soon after the latter's arrival in Ireland, and they went together on an expedition against Shane O'Neill the next year.

Parker, despite being English himself, emerged as one of the leaders of "the gentlemen of the Pale" and used his judicial authority to declare that Sussex had exceeded his legal powers.

[4] Another source of contention was religion: Sussex, who had originally been appointed Lord Deputy by the devoutly Catholic Queen Mary I, was a very lukewarm Protestant: his first royal commission from Mary had included an injunction to suppress all Irish heretics and Lollards, and Parker, as an extreme Protestant reformer, had been obliged to seek a royal pardon for his recusancy.

[2] After the accession of Elizabeth I, with the Protestant reformers once more dominant, Parker, in turn, accused Sussex of a lack of religious zeal.

[4] Initially, the inquiry went badly for Parker, who was deprived in the short term of some of his lands, and censured by the Irish Privy Council, of which he was himself a member, with the Queen's full approval.

[5] Elrington Ball describes Parker as an extraordinary individual who from his modest beginning as a merchant in a small English town, despite having no legal training, rose to become a senior Irish statesman and judge,[1] powerful enough to challenge the Earl of Sussex and able to win the respect of other leading figures in the Irish administration, such as Sussex's successor Nicholas Arnold.