 He served as chaplain to Anne Boleyn, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559–1575.It was during this time that he formed a fine collection of manuscripts, salvaged from the libraries of dissolved monasteries.Parker, one of the architects of the Elizabethan Settlement and the modern Church of England, was keenly interested in collecting and preserving manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England as evidence of an ancient English-speaking church independent of Rome.