[Illustration] The younger, but I believe now the only remaining,
line of a family formerly seated at Coker in the county of Somerset,
where it can be traced to the time of Edward I. Mapouder in
Dorsetshire, derived from the heiress of Veale in the reign of Henry
V., became afterwards the family seat. In 1554, John Coker, who
appears to have been second son of Thomas Coker, of Mapouder,
purchased the Manor of "Nuns' Place or King's End in Biscester,"
which has since remained the residence of this ancient family.
See Coker's Survey of Dorsetshire, p. 98; Hutchins's History of
Dorsetshire, vol. iii. p. 273; Kennett's Parochial Antiquities, 1st.
ed. p. 109; and Burke's Commoners, 2nd ed. vol. iii. p. 347.
ARMS.--_Argent, on a bend gules three leopard's heads or_. The
Mapouder line bore the arms within a border engrailed sable; but the
elder branch of the family, who are represented by the Seymours
Dukes of Somerset, omitted the border.
Present Representative, Lewis Coker, Esq.
PARKER OF SHIRBURN CASTLE, EARL OF MACCLESFIELD 1721, BARON PARKER
1716.
[Illustration] By the decease of the late Thomas Hawe Parker, Esq.,
of Park Hall, in the county of Stafford, the representation of the
family has devolved upon the Earl of Macclesfield, who represents
the junior line. The Parkers were established at Park Hall, in the
parish of Caverswall, in the seventeenth century, having been
previously seated at Parwich, and before that at Norton-Lees, in the
county of Derby. The first recorded ancestor, Thomas Parker, was of
Bulwell, in Nottinghamshire, in the reign of Richard II. He married
the heiress of Gotham, and from hence, says Lysons, the seat of
Norton-Lees.
See Lysons's Derbyshire, p. cxxxviii.; Brydges's Collins, iv, 190;
and Ward's Stoke-upon-Trent, p. 561.
ARMS.--_Gules, a chevron between three leopard's heads or_.
Present Representative, Thomas Augustus Wolstenholme Parker, 6th
Earl of Macclesfield.