In treating of the Parkers, it will be necessary to bear in mind the essential fact that there were two distinct families of that name, both engaged in the publication of religious books, and both interested in the “Bible Press”--the one at Oxford and the other at Cambridge; and though its chief interest, as regards later years, will be centred in the younger (publishing) family, who began life in London, it will be necessary, according to our general plan, to give a preliminary glance at the elder family, whose name is more intimately connected with the University of Oxford. The first of the Parkers with whom we need concern ourselves was Dr. Samuel Parker, sometime Bishop of Oxford. The product of a changeable age, he was a very Vicar of Bray. While at the University of Oxford, he affected to lead a strictly religious life, and entered a weekly society then called the “Gruellers,” because their chief diet was water gruel; and it was observed “that he put more graves into his porridge than all the rest.” Formerly a nonconformist, having once taken orders, he became chaplain to a nobleman in London, whom he amused with his humorous sallies at the expense of his old comrades the Puritans. During Charles’s reign, his writings were distinguished by the bitterness of his attacks upon the dissenting party; and on the accession of James he was installed in the bishopric of Oxford, upon the death of Dr. Fell--the famous subject of inexplicable dislike. He now embraced the Romish religion, “though,” writes Father Peter, a Jesuit, “he hath not yet declared himself openly; the great obstacle is his wife, whom he cannot rid himself of.” Finding the cause growing desperate, he sent a discourse to James, urging him to embrace the Protestant religion. His authority in the diocese became contemptible, and he died unlamented in 1687. He left, however, a son of his own name, an excellent scholar and a man of singular modesty, who married a bookseller’s daughter, of Oxford, and had a numerous family, to support whom he not only wrote, but published, and himself sold, books of a learned class--the most important of which was the “Bibliotheca Biblica.” He died in 1730, and his son, Sackville Parker, was an eminent bookseller in the Turl, his shop being chiefly frequented by the High Church and non-juring clergy. He was one of the four octogenarian Oxford booksellers who all died between 1795 and 1796, and whose united years amounted to 342. He was succeeded by Joseph Parker, his nephew.