Edward Dering (c. 1540–1576) was an English priest and academic, known as a classical scholar, controversialist, supporter of Thomas Cartwright, and fiery preacher against his fellow clergy.
[1] He received his education at Christ's College, Cambridge where he was admitted Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1560 and shortly afterwards was elected a Fellow.
In this poem, he fiercely attacks William Fulke, whose Antiprognosticon, an essay against judicial astrology, which had appeared a few months earlier in September 1560.
He also appears about this time to have been one of the chaplains to the Duke of Norfolk, and to have held a chaplaincy in the Tower of London, where he preached on 11 December 1569, a powerful sermon, afterwards printed.
In November 1570 he addressed a letter to William Cecil, the chancellor of the university, in which he freely criticised the new statutes and their authors with remarkable freedom; and 24 March 1572 he wrote again on behalf of Cartwright, urging that he should be permitted to return to Cambridge and to lecture there.
[1] In 1572 he was appointed divinity reader at St. Paul's Cathedral, and delivered a series of well-attended expositions on the earlier chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
But when an effort was made in 1574 to obtain for Dering the appointment of lecturer at Whittington College as successor to Thomas Sampson, Parker put his veto on the proposal.