[1] 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.
[1][2] Parker was a member of the committee of the Irish House of Lords which drafted a declaration in 1661 to continue the Anglican basis of the Church of Ireland.
[1] On 25 October 1671, the future Archbishop William King of Dublin was ordained a deacon as Parker's chaplain and became a member of his household at Tuam.
[3] King later recalled that after taking up this place he found a great contrast between the humble fare he had eaten as an undergraduate at Trinity and the abundance of the food and drink served in the Archbishop's palace.