Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/401

 Cooper (Athenæ Cant. i. 356-7). The best collected edition is that of 1614, London, 4to. This contains (1) 'A Sermon preached before the Queenes Maiestie.' (2) 'A Sermon preached at the Tower of London.' (3) 'Twenty-seven Lectures or Readings upon the Epistle to the Hebrews.' (4) ' Certain godly and comfortable Letters,' &c. (5) ' A briefe and necessary Catechisme for Christian Housholders.' (6) 'Godly private Prayers for Christian Families, the whole, the which (greater part of them) were wanting in the former works in octavo. Also certain godly Speeches uttered by Maister Dering,' &c. Dering's eldest brother, Richard, was the grandfather of Sir Edward Dering.



DERING, EDWARD (1598–1644), antiquary and politician, was the eldest son of Sir Anthony Dering of Surrenden, Kent. His mother, Sir Anthony's second wife, was Frances, daughter of Chief Baron (d. 1577) [q. v.] He was born in the Tower of London on 28 Jan. 1598, his father being the deputy-lieutenant. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. After leaving the university he devoted himself to antiquarian studies and to the collection of manuscripts. On 22 Jan. 1619 he was knighted, and in November in the same year married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Tufton, who died on 24 Jan. 1622. He subsequently married Anne, daughter of Sir John Ashburnham. Lady Ashburnham, his new mother-in-law, being of the Beaumont family, was a connection of the favourite Buckingham. Through her he strove for court favour, and was created a baronet on 1 Feb. 1627. Buckingham's assassination in 1628 cut short his efforts in that direction. He lost his second wife in the same year that he lost his patron.

On 20 Nov. in the year of his wife's death Dering became one of the many suitors of a rich city widow, Mrs. Bennett, and kept a curious journal of his efforts to win her, especially of the bribes which he administered to the lady's servants. Mrs. Bennett, however, married Sir Heneage Finch on 16 April 1629, and shortly afterwards Dering married his third wife, Unton, daughter of Sir Ralph Gibbs, his ‘ever dear Numps,’ as he calls her in the letters which he addressed to her. He had lately been appointed lieutenant of Dover Castle, an office for which he paid the late holder of the post, and which brought him in much less than he expected. When he at last managed to be quit of it, he was able to devote himself more freely to the antiquarian pursuits at which he was most at home.

Antiquarian studies could in the days of Laud's power hardly fail to connect themselves with reflections on the existing state of the church. Dering was one of a numerous class which was distinctly protestant without being puritan. Since his father's death in 1636 he was the influential owner of the family property. He had been M.P. for Hythe in 1625, and represented Kent in the Long parliament, where he took an active part in all measures of church reform, and became chairman of the committee on religion. On 13 Jan. 1641, having had a petition from two thousand five hundred of his constituents sent to him for presentation, in which the government of archbishops, &c., was complained of, and the House of Commons asked ‘that the said government, with all its dependencies, root and branch, may be abolished,’ he altered the petition, and made it ask ‘that this hierarchical power may be totally abrogated,’ so as to avoid committing himself to an approval of divine-right presbyterianism. During Strafford's trial he took the popular side, and wrote to his wife how he heard people say ‘God bless your worship’ as he passed.

On 27 May Dering moved the first reading of the Root and Branch Bill, which is said to have been drawn up by St. John, apparently not because he thoroughly sympathised with its prayer, but because he thought its introduction would terrify the lords into passing a bill for the exclusion of bishops from their seats in parliament which was then before them. Dering's real sentiments were disclosed when the bill was in committee, when he argued in defence of primitive episcopacy, that is to say, of a plan for insuring that bishops should do nothing without the concurrence of their clergy. It was a plan which appealed strongly to students of antiquity; but it is no wonder that he was now treated by the more thoroughgoing opponents of episcopacy as a man who could no longer be trusted.

In the debate on 12 Oct. on the second Bishops Exclusion Bill, Dering proposed that a national synod should be called to remove the distractions of the church. In the discussion on the Grand Remonstrance he assailed the doctrine that bishops had brought popery and idolatry into the church, and he subsequently defended the retention of bishops on