ally bequeath he left to
his son John, afterwards Sir John Parker.

In addition to the books which Parker gave to Corpus Christi College he
founded several scholarships in connection with it, and bestowed upon it
large sums of money and presents of plate. He also gave various pieces
of plate to Gonville and Caius College and Trinity Hall.

Parker's love for books, and the pains he took to rescue the precious
volumes which, after the dissolution of the abbeys and religious houses,
were being destroyed or sold for common purposes, is so well told by
Strype that his account is worth giving at length: 'His learning, though
it were universal, yet it ran chiefly upon antiquity. Insomuch that he
was one of the greatest antiquarians of the age. And the world is for
ever beholden to him for two things; viz., for retrieving many ancient
authors, Saxon and British, as well as Norman, and for restoring and
enlightening a great deal of the ancient history of this noble island.
He lived in, or soon after, those times, wherein opportunities were
given for searches after these antiquities. For when the abbeys and
religious houses were dissolved, and the books that were contained in
the libraries thereunto belonging underwent the same fate, being
miserably embezzled, and sold away to tradesmen for little or nothing,
for their ordinary shop uses; then did our Parker, and some few more
lovers of ancient learning, procure, both by their money and their
friends, what books soever they could: and having got them into their
possession, esteemed many of them as their greatest treasures, which
other ignorant spoilers esteemed but as trash, and to be burnt, or sold
at easy rates, or converted to any ordinary uses.

'He was therefore a mighty collector of books, to preserve, as much as
could be, the ancient monuments of the learned men of our nation from
perishing. And for that purpose he did employ divers men proper for such
an end, to search all England over, and Wales, (and perhaps Scotland and
Ireland too), for books of all sorts, some modern as well as ancient;
and to buy them up for his use; giving them commission and authority
under his own hand for doing the same. One of these, named Batman,[5] in
the space of no more than four years, procured for our Archbishop to the
number of 6700 books. It seems to be almost incredible, then, what
infinite volumes all the rest of his agents in many more years must have
retrieved for him.

'It was