In 1833 Henry Brougham appointed Parkes secretary of the commission on municipal corporations; he combined this work with a successful Westminster practice as a parliamentary solicitor.
Born in Warwick on 22 January 1796, he was younger son of John Parkes, manufacturer, and a close friend of Samuel Parr and Basil Montagu, in a circle that included William Field.
[2] The government found it convenient, during the agitation which followed the first rejection of the Reform Bill (8 October 1831), to use Parkes as a means of communication with the avowed leaders of the union in Birmingham.
[2] In 1833 the government made Parkes secretary of the commission on municipal corporations, and he moved to 21 Great George Street, Westminster, where he built up a business as a parliamentary solicitor.
[2] Co-proprietor of the Birmingham Journal from 1832 to 1844, Parkes also wrote anonymous leaders for the Morning Chronicle and The Times.
Their daughter Bessie Rayner Parkes married in 1868 Louis Belloc, and was known as a writer on literary and social subjects.