Sir Edmund Robert Bartley Bartley-Denniss KC (born Denniss, 9 April 1854 – 20 March 1931) was an English barrister, prominent Freemason and Conservative Party Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom.
George Hamson Denniss (1758–1821) 43rd Light Infantry, and his 2nd wife Harriet Matilda Pickersgill) and Caroline Bartley (1826–1877), da.
Digby's father was Johnathan Denniss (1700–1736) (or Dennis) a factor of the South Sea Company, later of Kingston, Jamaica, born in the parish of St. Helens, Bishopsgate, London.
The family is likely to have descended from Sir Gilbert Denys (d.1422), of Siston, Gloucestershire, probably via Thomas Dennis (d.post 1603) of the City of Gloucester, 2nd.
son of Sir Walter Denys (1501–1571) of Dyrham, Gloucestershire, whose extensive property holdings in that city (inherited from his wife's uncle Sir Thomas Bell the Elder (1486–1566), thrice mayor of Gloucester) were destroyed during the Civil War.
He was elected Scholar in Natural Science at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and compiled later in life Flora of Middlesex.
He was a pioneer of British cycling, being an original member of the Dark Blue Bicycle Club at Oxford.
Under his chairmanship a new main drainage system was installed in Hendon, which works he officially opened in presence of William Gladstone, who had taken an interest in the scheme.
At the start of World War I he assisted the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the "Courts (Emergency Powers) Bill", and helped to set up the "Foreign Debts Scheme", which allowed British companies with debts due by enemy nations to obtain compensatory government financing.
He was Treasurer of the Air League of the British Empire,[11] and a member of the Carlton, Conservative, 1900, Cecil, Unionist and Yorick Clubs.
His career began with his initiation in the Thames Valley Lodge, no.1460, Hampton Court in 1888, where he was installed Master in 1893.
Denniss resided c.1890 at Langton Lodge, Hendon,[12] latterly at Belmont, Uxbridge, Middx., where he died on 20 March 1931.