To this point, we have seen Parker twice entering the nurseries of royalist thought. Both times he stepped gingerly, lest he crush the flowers as he trampled the weeds. In The Case of Shipmony, Parker deployed the royalist judges' own logic to damn the promoters of ship money, and to proffer the parliament as the repository of conciliar wisdom as well as the common good, against the individual interest of evil counsellors. In his religious pamphlets Parker used the Tudor royal supremacy to disarm the clerics' formidable arsenal, advancing the king's cause as the layman's. Parker's use of imperialist political idolatry drove him to clarify parliament's role with respect to the king. Yet it is surprising to see the extent to which Parker committed himself to such a dangerously double-edged weapon as Tudor imperialism.

Had Parker gone no further with these royalist idioms, he might be seen as a mainstream thinker, clever in his use of traditional and, at least by some reckonings, conservative arguments to make damning but ideologically modest points against the seeming proprietors of those arguments. This evaluation corresponds to Parker's ostentatious parade of his gentility (even when it was that oxymoron, anonymous gentility), which served to reinforce the appearance of moderation. Of course, this was a pose – not a falsehood but a staged representation, psychologically as well as rhetorically useful.