Our MP’s career was remarkably similar to that of his father, Walter Parles, who represented Northamptonshire in at least six Parliaments, and also held office in the county as both escheator and sheriff. At the time of his death, in the summer of 1361, Parles owned the manors of Watford and Byfield, together with rents worth over 20 marks p.a., and these passed almost immediately to Ralph, who was then about 25 years old. It was in 1381 that Simon Daventry conveyed a substantial amount of property in Morecote near Buckby (Northamptonshire) to Ralph and his second wife, Elizabeth, possibly as part of their marriage settlement. We do not, however, know when he acquired the estates in Shutlanger, Helmdon, Wappenham and Yelvertoft (also Northamptonshire) which he eventually left to his young grandson, but most of them appear to have been in his hands by 1412, when his annual landed income was assessed at £40. He ended his days at Shutlanger, where he was licensed, in October 1420, by the bishop of Lincoln, to employ a chaplain of his own to celebrate mass privately.
There is a strong possibility that Parles spent much of his early life abroad, since hardly any information about his career has survived before he began taking an interest in local government during the 1380S. His first marriage, to Joan, the daughter of John Talbot of Richard’s Castle and grand daughter of the 1st Lord Grey of Ruthin, shows, even so, that he was not without influence among the upper ranks of land-owning society; and their only surviving child, Margery, was herself regarded as a valuable commodity on the marriage market. She became the wife of the distinguished Bedfordshire lawyer, John Hervy, but although she survived her father, his remarriage and the subsequent birth of her two half-brothers dashed her expectations as an heiress. Parles witnessed two Northamptonshire deeds in the summer of 1371 and October 1376 respectively, but otherwise disappears from the records until May 1380, when he obtained royal letters of protection pending his departure overseas in the retinue of Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham. The connexion between the two men may well have continued; and it is possible that Parles felt it expedient to buy a pardon from Richard II in June 1398 because of his former association with one of the King’s enemies.
Parles and his son, Walter, were involved in an unsuccessful attempt, staged at the Northampton assizes in February 1417, to establish rights of common on Thomas Wydeville’s manor of Grafton Regis (Northamptonshire). Walter’s death shortly afterwards led Parles to make a general settlement of his estates upon a group of trustees, including John Mortimer and Thomas Wake, who continued to act during the minority of Parles’s young grandson and heir, Ralph. On 16 Nov. 1420, barely a few weeks after the MP’s death, the wardship and marriage of the boy (who was then just II years old) were farmed out to three Northamptonshire gentlemen for a lump sum of £100, payable at the Exchequer. Parles had a second son, named William, whose descendants eventually succeeded to the family property.