John St. Aubyn Parker, 6th Earl of Morley (29 May 1923 – 20 September 2015) was a British peer, a professional soldier, and county dignitary. Morley was a staunch monarchist and royal servant. John Parker was born at Saltram House on 29 May 1923, the son of John Holford Parker (1886–1955) by his wife Marjory Katherine Elizabeth St. Aubyn (b.1893), a daughter of the 2nd Baron St Levan. His grandfather was Albert Parker, 3rd Earl of Morley (1843–1905), who was succeeded in turn by his sons Edmund, the 4th Earl of Morley (1877-1951) and Montagu, the 5th Earl (1878-1962), who both died without issue. Military John's military forebears were intrepid courtiers, and one of the foremost families on the isthmus in the south-west, connected so closely with the sea. Parker was educated at Sunningdale School, Berkshire before attending Eton. In 1941 he enlisted in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, initially as a private soldier. He was soon recognised and promoted to a commission as a lieutenant in the infantry. His aristocratic lineage attracted him to the call of royal service. In 1944 he was drafted onto the royal protection squad at Buckingham Palace. Then in April 1944 he was invited to Sandringham House to celebrate Princess Elizabeth's 18th birthday party. His fellow officers invited the heir presumptive to the officer's mess, situated in the extensive Norfolk parklands. Newly promoted Lieutenant Parker was sent to Germany with an anti-tank platoon. After the war he travelled across France and witnessed the scuttled French fleet at Toulon. With imperial decline still far from his mind, he was in Gaza as part of the British Mandate forces occupying Palestine during the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. The infantry weapons training school employed Parker as an instructor, spending his free time duck shooting on the shores of Lake Huleh near Beersheba. In 1948, with India in abeyance, he was transferred with the Rifles into the Suez Canal Zone, where unrest threatened the security of the vital commercial ports. Already a Captain he was posted to Germany with the Royal Fusiliers, and thence to the Regimental depot in the Tower of London. After war broke out in Korea he was sent in 1952 attached to an Australian battalion. Four days before the conclusion of the ceasefire, Parker departed for Suez again to command a company at Gebelt in the hills behind the Red Sea in the