Sir Edward Dering, 1st Baronet - Religious Belief and Controversy

Religious Belief and Controversy

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. Dering was one of a numerous class which was distinctly protestant without being puritan.

Since his father's death in 1636 he was owner of the family property, and a person of consequence in Kent. Sir Edward served as Member of Parliament for Hythe in 1629. He was chosen to represent Kent in the Long Parliament.

He took an active part in all measures of church reform, and became chairman of the committee on religion. On 13 January 1641, having had a petition from 2500 of his constituents sent to him for presentation, in which complained about the government of archbishops, &c. and which asked the House of Commons 'that the said government, with all its dependencies, root and branch, may be abolished', he altered the petition, and made it ask 'that this hierarchical power may be totally abrogated', so as to avoid committing himself to an approval of divine-right presbyterianism. During Strafford's trial he took the popular side, "and wrote to his wife how he heard people say 'God bless your worship'" as he passed.

On 27 May Dering moved the first reading of the Root and Branch Bill, which is said to have been drawn up by Oliver St John, apparently not because he thoroughly sympathised with its prayer, but because he thought its introduction would terrify the lords into passing a bill for the exclusion of bishops from their seats in parliament which was then before them. 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 insuring 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.

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. In the discussion on the Grand Remonstrance he assailed the doctrine that bishops had brought popery and idolatry into the church, and he subsequently defended the retention of bishops on the ground that, if the prizes of the lottery were taken away, few would care to acquire learning. By his final vote on the Grand Remonstrance he threw in his lot with the episcopal royalist party. It was the vote, not of a statesman, but of a student, anxious to find some middle term between the rule of Laud and the rule of a Scottish presbytery, and attacking the party which at any moment seemed likely to acquire undue predominance.

He began to overestimate the amount of consistency which lies at the bottom of almost all changes of opinion honestly made. He prepared for publication an edition of his speeches with explanatory comments of his own. On 4 February the House of Commons ordered the book to be burnt and himself to be sent to the Tower. He remained a prisoner till the llth.

Dering's imprisonment probably threw him more decidedly on the king's side than he had intended. On 25 March he took a leading part in the Maidstone assizes in getting up a petition from the grand jury in favour of episcopy and the prayer-book. On this he was impeached by the commons, but he contrived to escape.