More than fifty years have passed since Wilbur Jordan yoked Henry Parker and Henry Robinson in Men of Substance. Since then Parker has not been the focus of a book, not even a large part of one. To be sure, Parker has not been forgotten. Margaret Judson continued her remarkable readings of Parker across six decades. 1 have attempted some preliminary studies of my own. Recently Robert Zaller has added an overview. Many writers have looked at Parker's most famous tract, Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses, and some have read more widely. Now there are signs of a renewal of serious interest. Parker figures significantly in John Sanderson's “But the People's Creatures” and Richard Tuck's Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 brings his great learning in continental ideas to bear on a central aspect of Parker's thought, the twinned notions of necessity and the public good.

All things considered, however, the simultaneous neglect and interest is perplexing. By general concession, Parker was the most aggressive, thoughtful, and provocative parliamentarian writer in the early years of the Long Parliament and civil war era. While his later writings are less celebrated, theyare hardly a secret. In a crowded scholarly world, where the great minds and happenings are studied continuously, the near-great repeatedly, and the rest more often and more intensely than anyone would have imagined when Professors Judson and Jordan first shared their Parkerian labors, one would have supposed that Parker would have generated at least a small cadre of publishing students.