He was the son and heir of Thomas Dingley, controller of customs at Southampton; he was born about the middle of the seventeenth century, and, on his own account educated by James Shirley, the dramatist, who for some years kept a school in Whitefriars, London.
Dingley left in manuscript a journal of his Travails through the Low Countreys, Anno Domini 1674, illustrated by sketches in pen and ink.
A facsimile edition of the whole work, The Account of the Official Progress of His Grace Henry, the First Duke of Beaufort through Wales in 1684 was sponsored by the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1888.
[1][2] The History from Marble, a collection of epitaphs, church notes, and sketches of domestic and other buildings (published by the Camden Society 1867–1868), ranges over most of the midland and western counties in England.
Dingley's notes and sketches were known to Treadway Russell Nash and Theophilus Jones, who made use of them in their histories of Worcestershire and Brecon.