Sir Edward Dering 1st Baronet of Surrendon Dering, was a 6 x great grandfather of Daniel Dering Mathew – see Dering Family Tree page.
He had been a noted Antiquarian – in 2010 some of his Antiquarian collection fetched 6,600 pounds at auction with Bonhams; and another collection gained 5,880 pounds in 2011 at Bonhams. See also the Dering Manuscript, and the Dering Roll, which was obtained during his tenure as Lieutenant of Dover Castle
However it was as an MP, that Sir Edward Dering 1st Baronet of Surrendon Dering became actively involved in Parliamentary matters which would cascade, after his death, onto the Execution of Charles I, the rise of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, and the reinstatement of the Monarchy under Charles II. The whole saga was long and complicated.
There were a number of controversial issues in foment in England by the early 1640’s. Sir Edward Dering seemed to be looking for a middle way through, however in the end he changed sides a number of times, which saw him locked up in the Tower of London and not trusted by the Reformists. However he was but one “actor” on a stage with many players over many years. His son, Sir Edward Dering 2nd Baronet of Surrendon Dering, followed his father onto the political stage from the 1860’s.
Root and Branch Bill
Sir Edward Dering was intimately connected with the Controversial Root and Branch Bill, having moved its First Reading in the House of Commons, during the reign of Charles 1 in England.
The Bill arose from a petition signed by 15,000 Londoners and presented to the Long Parliament by a crowd of 1,500 on December 11, 1640. Prior to Universal Suffrage, Petitions to Parliament were long a means by which the common people could express their political perspectives to their “Betters”. The Root and Branch Petition called on Parliament to abolish episcopacy from the ‘roots’ and in all its ‘branches’. The Bishops in the House of Lords invariably supported the King which delayed or stopped the reforms which the ‘reformers’ wanted. There were 22 bishops in the House of Lords, most of them appointed by the King. There was a strong move in the Commons to have them removed from that House and all other secular offices. The Bishops Exclusion Bill , which intended the expulsion of the Bishops from the House of Lords, was a direct response to the Bishops’ opposition to the Constitutional reforms that had been passed by the lower house. While awaiting the Royal Assent, some MPs, led by John Pym, encouraged the London mob to prevent the Bishops attending on 27–29 December 1641. There were riots in Westminster against bishops, and papists too. On 30 December, John Williams (Archbishop of York) drew up a protest complaining about the legality of laws passed in the House of Lords while they were thus excluded from attending. As well as Williams, eleven other bishops signed the protest. The Commons demanded the arrest and imprisonment of all twelve, who were sent to the Tower as traitors.
Sir Edward Dering had moved the First Reading of the Bill, 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.
Bishops Exclusion Bill
In the debate on 12 Oct.1641 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 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. Dering was later sent to the Tower of London, which probably threw him more decidedly on the king’s side than he had intended. On 25 March 1642 he took a leading part at the Maidstone assizes in getting up a petition from the grand jury in favour of episcopacy and the prayer-book. On this he was impeached by the commons, but he contrived to escape, and at the opening of the civil war raised a regiment of cavalry for the king.
Sruggle Between King and Parliament
Religion, finance, Divine Right of Kings, foreign policy had long been the causes of the struggle between Charles and his Parliament since the 1620’s. The real issue of the struggle between the King and Parliament was where the supreme authority of the State, that is the sovereignty lay, whether in the King or in the Parliament. Imbued with the high notions of royal prerogatives and blind belief in the Divine Right of Kings, Charles would not yield to the Parliament’s demand for greater control over the government of the country and in doing so wanted to make the ministers answerable to it.
Charles I had dissolved his Parliament in 1629, and hoped never to summon the Parliament during his lifetime – believing himself to be at liberty to pursue and practise that form of government that commended itself to him as the most right type. By the exercise of his royal prerogatives Charles I also began to levy Ship-Money, a tax which could only be levied on the coastal towns for their defence. But Charles first levied it on the coastal areas in 1634, extended it over inland areas in the year following and levied it for a third time in 1636 over the whole country. In 1635 the king made his first general demand for ‘ship-money’. And it was true that the defence of the kingdom required a larger and better equipped Royal Navy and the maritime counties were accustomed to having to find ships, or money in lieu of ships, from time to time for the king’s service. It seemed no more than fair that this burden, instead of being limited to the maritime counties, should be spread over the whole country. However, the legality of imposing ship-money on the inland counties was doubtful, the money was certainly not all spent on the navy, and it became almost an annual tax.
To his mind, king was the guardian of the constitution and of the Church and out of that belief he declared in 1629, when he took over the administration entirely in his hands that he would maintain the established doctrine of the Church of England as also the just rights and liberties of his subjects.
Charles I Summoning of Parliament
There was a Bishops’ War and Charles I was advised to summon the Parliament in order to ensure the supply of money for the effective prosecution of a war with Scotland. Charles I summoned his long forgotten Parliament in 1640. However the so-called Short Parliament began to understand the weakness of the Crown sufficiently well, it refused to make any grants unless the grievances of the nation were removed first. Charles I,who had summoned the Parliament in the hope of liberal grants dissolved it in great disgust. However in time Charles I was again in need of funds and summoned the Long Parliament.
The Long Parliament
The Commons of the Long Parliament had also begun to assert powers which they had never pretended to claim before King Charles ascended the throne. The Parliament then busied itself in passing a series of Acts intended to make absolute government impossible for the future. Tonnage and poundage was granted to the king for two months only. Ship-money was declared illegal.
The Bill of Attainder
They introduced a Bill of Attainder by which any person thought dangerous to the state might be condemned to death by an Act of Parliament.
Meanwhile back to the Root and Branch Bill. However the House Commons was reluctant to act on the Root and Branch Petition, though it did ultimately refer the petition to committee in February 1641. The petition formed the basis of the Root and Branch Bill, which was drawn up by Oliver St John and introduced in Parliament by Henry Vane the Younger and Oliver Cromwell in May 1641.
The House of Commons attacked the bishops, in a bill which demanded their removal from the House of Lords and from the Privy Council; and this brought them into collision with the House of Lords, which rejected the bill. The advanced Puritan party in the Commons responded with a bill aiming not at a compromise but at the abolition of Episcopacy, known as the Root and Branch bill. For the first time the Commons themselves were divided, while the majority in the Lords was in direct opposition to the majority in the Commons. On 27th May 1641 Edward Dering presented the bill for “the utter abolishing of Bishops, Deans, Chapters, Archdeacons etc”8. By 139 to 108 votes it was agreed to read it a second time.
The Bishops Exclusion Act
After lengthy debates, the bill was defeated in August 1641. Throughout 1641 and the first half of 1642, moderates on both sides continued in their efforts to devise a modified form of episcopacy and a reformed Book of Common Prayer. Ultimately the Parliament did exclude the bishops from the House of Lords and passed the Bishops Exclusion Act in December 1641, Bishops Exclusion Act becoming effective in February 1642.
It was out of the debate on this Root and Branch Bill, that the germs of the future Roundheads, the extreme Puritans, and Cavaliers, that is, the supporters of King Charles were formed.
How did this conflict, within the Churches which cascaded into the Parliament, and involving Sie Edward Dering First Baronet of Surrendon Dering, come to be ?
The Rise of William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury
Firstly there was William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury who greatly influenced Charles I. He was also keen to restore church lands which had been held by laymen since the Reformation. And Laud sought to reintroduce churchmen into the seats of political power. William Laud was an opponent of Calvinism, part of a group known as as Arminians, who rejected predestination in favour of freewill. They also placed the sacraments above sermons and no longer held the pope to be the Antichrist. Thus it seemed to their antagonists to be about to be re-introducing Catholicism by the back door. They began to flourish under Charles I.
Charles I and the Divine Right of Kings
Believing himself to be God’s anointed Charles I demanded unquestioned obedience of his subjects and at the same time considered it beneath his dignity to be answerable to his people. It was his extremely closed mind about royal dignity that widened the rift between the Crown and Parliament leading to an open struggle. Such was the personality that ascended the English throne.
Controversies over The Book of Common Prayer
Some bishops had gone further than the Book of Common Prayer, and required their clergy to conform to levels of extra ceremonialism. As noted above, the introduction of altar rails to churches had been the most controversial such requirement. Puritans were also dismayed by the re-introduction of images (e.g. stained glass windows) to churches which had been without religious images since the iconoclasm of the Reformation.They also aimed to bring worship in parish churches into harmony with the far more elaborate liturgy celebrated in cathedrals, collegiate churches and royal chapels. Thus Archbishop Laud’s attempts to reform the Church on Anglo-Catholic principles caused grave offence in some quarters
The ejection of non-conforming Puritan ministers from the Church of England in the 1630s provoked a reaction. Puritan laymen spoke out against Charles’s policies, with the bishops the main focus of Puritan ire.
In November 1640, the members of the House of Commons began voicing their grievances over prelacy and the Prayer Book. Some also began to seek a total overhaul of the church’s government, and some Londoners as early as December calling upon Parliament to eradicate episcopacy “root and branch”. Royalists observed it to the letter, while the Parliamentarians were increasingly ready to dispense with it altogether. Parliament entered into the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots, and agreed to their demand that the government and liturgy of the English church should be brought into accord with that of the church in Scotland. This would later lead to the Westminster Directory, and in the first week of January 1645 Parliament passed an ordinance requiring all parish churches to adopt it to ban the Book of Common Prayer.
Laud Impeached and Executed – Star Chamber Abolished
Laud was impeached of treason a week after the Root and Branch petition was presented to the Parliament. Also, in 1641, the High Commission and Star Chamber were abolished. The Star Chamber had been used by Charles I to enforce unpopular political and ecclesiastical policies, it became a symbol of oppression to the parliamentary and Puritan opponents of Charles and Archbishop William Laud.
At that point, Parliament had not wished to define a church system, however with the Scots alliance of 1643, the trial of Laud began in March 12, 1644. Laud successfully proved that he had not committed treason under known law. However, his total conduct of government was held to have subverted the constitution, and Laud was condemned by bill of attainder. He was executed on Jan, 10, 1645.
Charles I Summons Parliament – The Long and Short Parliaments
Along the way, there had been a rebellion north of the border, in part due to Laud’s attempt to impose the Book of Common Prayer upon the Scots. To put down the rebellion Charles I needed funds, and so he called Parliament, the Long Parliament. However events did not work out as Charles I anticipated.
The Triennial Act
The Triennial Act (1641) was passed, mandating the summoning of Parliament every three years. In May the king’s power to dissolve the Long Parliament was removed – An Act was now passed which forbade the dissolution of the existing parliament without its own consent. And the Commons relentlessly investigated the legal basis of the king’s fiscal expedients, amending the laws that Charles had so scrupulously followed.
Ship money and distraints of knighthood were declared illegal, royal forests were defined. In previous years, the Parliament had been reluctant to grant Charles revenue, since they feared that it might be used to support an army that would re-impose Catholicism on England. However back in 1625, Parliament had broken the precedent of centuries and voted to allow Charles to collect Tonnage and Poundage – but only for one year. When Charles wanted to intervene in the Thirty Years’ War by declaring war on Spain (the Anglo-Spanish War (1625), Parliament granted him an insufficient sum of £140,000. The war with Spain went ahead (partially funded by tonnage and poundage collected by Charles after he was no longer authorized to do so). Buckingham had been put in charge of the war effort, but failed.
In June 1942 a series of proposals for a treaty, the Nineteen Propositions (1642), was presented to the king. The proposals called for parliamentary control over the militia, the choice of royal counsellors, and religious reform. Charles rejected them outright, though in his answer he seemed to grant Parliament a coordinate power in government, making the king but one of the three estates. The king, however, had determined to settle the matter by main force. His principal advisers believed that the greatest lords and gentlemen would rally to their king and that Parliament would not have the stomach for rebellion. On August 22, 1642, the king raised his standard bearing the device “Give Caesar His Due.”
Civil War
The War of the Three Kingdoms began in 1642. There was a civil war in Ireland that pitted the Catholic majority against the Protestant minority, buttressed by English and Scottish armies. This war festered nastily throughout the 1640s and was settled only by a devastating use of force and terror by Oliver Cromwell in 1649–50 and his successors in 1651–54. Scotland also was embroiled in civil war, but, at one time or another, all the groups involved demonstrated a willingness to send armies into England. The Anglo-Scottish wars were fought from 1643 to 1646, resumed from 1648 to 1651, and resulted in an English military occupation and complete political subjugation (the incorporation of Scotland into an enhanced English state) that lasted until the Restoration in 1660.
And so the English Civil War that began in 1642, however the Parliament group had mixed objectives until 1643. Charles negotiated a cease-fire with the Catholic rebels in Ireland that allowed him to bring Irish troops to England. Parliament negotiated the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) with the Scots, who brought an army to England in return for guarantees of a presbyterian church establishment. While another round of peace negotiations began, the unsuccessful Uxbridge Proposals (1645), Parliament recast its military establishment and formed the New Model Army.
The New Model Army
The essence of the New Model army was a single command, corporate unity without regard to local interests, regular supply and regular pay for officers and men. The New Model Army was commanded by Thomas Fairfax, Baron Fairfax, and eventually the cavalry was led by Lieut. Gen. Oliver Cromwell. Having put down rebellions there were moves to dismantle the army which were met with resentment by the Army of common soldiers. The army’s intervention transformed civil war into revolution. Parliament, which in 1646 had argued that it was the fundamental authority in the country, by 1647 was but a pawn in a new game of power politics. The perceived corruption of Parliament made it, like the king, a target of reform.
The Second Civil War
The second Civil War hardened attitudes in the army. The king was directly blamed for the unnecessary loss of life, and for the first time alternatives to Charles Stuart, “that man of blood,” were openly contemplated. Parliament too was appalled by the renewal of fighting. Moderate members believed that there was still a chance to bring the king to terms, despite the fact that he had rejected treaty after treaty. While the army made plans to put the king on trial, Parliament summoned its strength for one last negotiation, the abortive Treaty of Newport. Even now the king remained intransigent, especially over the issue of episcopacy. New negotiations infuriated the army, because it believed that Parliament would sell out its sacrifices and compromise its ideals.
On December 6, 1648, army troops, under the direction of Col. Thomas Pride, purged the House of Commons. Forty-five members were arrested, and 186 were kept away. A rump of about 75 active members were left to do the army’s bidding. They were to establish a High Court of Justice, prepare a charge of treason against the king, and place him on trial in the name of the people of England.
Trial and Execution of Charles I
The king’s trial took place at the end of January. The Court of Justice was composed of members of Parliament, civilians, and army officers. There was little enthusiasm for the work that had to be done. The charges against the king, however politically correct, had little legal basis, and Charles deftly exposed their weakness. Charles was to be sacrificed to the law of necessity if not the law of England. On January 30, 1649, at the wall of his own palace, Charles I was beheaded.
Outcomes of the Execution of Charles I – Eventual Reinstatement of the Monarchy
The execution of the king aroused hostility not only in England but also throughout Europe. In time the Long Parliament became unable to govern effectively and Charles II returned and took the throne.
Thus was the long and complicated Parliamentary versus Monarchy saga in which Sir Edward Dering 1st Baronet of Surrendon Dering, as an MP, had become actively involved. And this had cascaded, after his death, onto the Execution of Charles I, the rise of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, and the reinstatement of the Monarchy under Charles II.
Sources – I found that the following sources were critical in helping me to gain a perspective on Sir Edward Dering, First Baronet of Surrenden Dering, and his role in the times of the mid 1600’s.
Daniel Dering Mathew - A Family History 