Sir Cholmeley Dering, 4th Baronet

On 17 July 1704 he married Mary Fisher, the only child of Edward Fisher, merchant of Mitcham, and of his wife Ellen Norton, daughter of Richard Norton[1] Dering was elected at the top of the poll as Tory MP for Kent at the 1705 English general election.

In the following year, he was arrested at a tavern near the Royal Exchange together with three political colleagues who would later become members of the hard-drinking Tory club, the Band of Brothers.

Their companions broke up the fight, but Thornhill afterwards sent Dering a note challenging him to a duel at Tothill Fields in Westminster on the morning of 9 May.

[4] The incident is recorded by Jonathan Swift in his Journal to Stella[5] and was alluded to by Richard Steele in The Spectator.

[6] Thornhill was murdered on Turnham Green on 20 August the same year, by two men who allegedly invoked Dering's name as they killed him.