Sir Edward Dering, 1st Baronet

[4] On 20 November 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.

[4] Antiquarian studies could, in the days of William Laud's power, hardly fail to connect themselves with reflections on the existing state of the church.

I did not dream... at that time of extirpation and abolition of any more than his achiepiscopacy: our professed rooters themselves (many of them) at that hour had, I persuade myself, more moderate hopes than since are entertained.

[6]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 ensuring 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.

[4] In the debate on 12 October on the second Bishops Exclusion Bill, Dering proposed that a national synod should be called to remove the distractions of the church.

On 25 March he took a leading part in the Maidstone assizes in getting up a petition from the grand jury in favour of episcopacy and the prayer book.

On 30 January 1644 parliament issued a declaration offering pardon to those who had taken up arms against them if they would take the covenant and pay a composition for the restoration of their sequestered estates.

Dering's position at the end of his life may be best illustrated by a Discourse on Sacrifice, which was published by him in June 1644, though it was written in the summer of 1640.

"In the meantime," he adds, "I dare wish that he would make less value of such men both lay and clergy who, by running on the Canterbury pace, have made our breaches so wide and take less delight in the specious way of cathedral devotions".

These words exhibit Dering as a fair representative of that important part of the nation which set itself against extreme courses, though it was unable to embody its desires in any practically working scheme.

[4] Dering's antiquarian interests led him to amass a great library; his name is still associated with: He concocted an ancient Saxon pedigree for himself, inserting details into various authentic documents and installing fake monuments in the church.