[1] Having taken holy orders, he became chaplain to Thomas Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, by whom he was made archdeacon of Stow on 1 March 1575.
Together with Walter Travers, Sparke represented the Puritan positions in a conference held at Lambeth in December 1584 with Archbishop John Whitgift and Cooper as Bishop of Winchester, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and Francis Walsingham being present.
He was summoned by James I to the Hampton Court conference in 1603 as a nonconformist; Anthony à Wood says that he appeared there in 1604 unconventionally dressed, and he reportedly said little.
Sparke, in later writing A Brotherly Persuasion to Unity and Uniformity in Judgment and Practice (1607), adopted an eirenic line.
Of the sons, William Sparke (1587–1641) became chaplain to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and succeeded his father as incumbent of Bletchley, but fell into debt and was forced to quit.