After some delay, satisfactory concessions were made to them by Government, and the men returned to their duty. But the spirit of insubordination had spread among other squadrons in the service, and about the middle of May, immediately after the Portsmouth fleet had sailed peaceably for the Bay of Biscay, the seamen of the large fleet lying at the Nore broke out also into open mutiny. The most conspicuous personage in the insurrection was one Richard Parker, a native of Exeter, privately baptized, in St. Mary Major parish, 24 April, 1767. His father was a baker in that parish, and had his shop near the turnstile. It was afterwards burnt down. He rented it of the dean and chapter, from 1761 to 1793, and acquired a little land near to Exeter as his own. Young Parker received a good education, and at the age of twelve went to sea. He served in the Royal Navy as midshipman and master’s mate. But he threw up his profession on his marriage with Anne McHardy, a young woman resident in Exeter, but of Scottish origin, a member of a respectable family in Aberdeen. This connexion led Parker to remove to Scotland, where he embarked in some mercantile speculations that proved unsuccessful. The issue was that before long he found himself in embarrassed circumstances, and unable to maintain his wife and two children. In Edinburgh, where these difficulties arose, he had no friends to whom he could apply for assistance, and in a moment of desperation he took the King’s bounty, and became a common sailor on board a tender at Leith. When he announced to his wife the steps he had taken, she hastened to Aberdeen in great distress to procure from her brother the means of hiring two seamen as substitutes for her husband. But when she returned with the money from Aberdeen it was too late, for the tender had just sailed with her husband on board. Her grief was aggravated at this time by the loss of one of her children. Parker’s sufferings were shown to be equally acute by his conduct when the vessel sailed, crying out that he saw the body of his child floating upon the waves; he leaped overboard, and was with difficulty rescued and restored to life. [Illustration: /Richard Parker/ _Who was executed on board the Sandwich off Sheerness on Friday Jun 30^{th} 1797 pursuant to the sentence of a Court Martial for having been the Principal in a most daring Mutiny on board several of his Majesty’s Ships at the Nore & which created a dreadful alarm through the whole Nation_]