The Origins of Sir Edward Dering's Attack on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, c. 1625–1640

Abstract

Kevin Sharpe has recently offered a new interpretation of English politics and government in the 1630s in which he seeks to assess the events of the decade as they might have seemed to contemporaries, rather than to use them as a vehicle to explain the events of the Long Parliament and the subsequent outbreak of civil war. Without questioning the validity of such an exercise, it may none the less be observed that the picture of the 1630s which results does raise the question of how the mood of the Long Parliament in its early stages is to be explained. Sharpe characterizes the 1630s as a period of ‘calm and peace’ in which, though tensions and grievances existed, in particular as a consequence of Charles's religious policies, they ‘neither stymied government nor threatened revolt’. If politics and government operated so smoothly during the 1630s, why were such extensive and radical demands for reform in church and state put forward when the Long Parliament met in November 1640? Was the critical attitude of so many members of the political nation in that November merely the product of short-term factors, such as Charles's use of force to impose a new prayer book in Scotland, or even of political opportunism, or was it a reflexion of grievances which had earlier lain beneath the political surface? This paper seeks to investigate the question of how far the attitude of 1640 was rooted in the experiences of the previous decade in one particular aspect: the career of Sir Edward Dering, with special reference to his position with regard to religion and the church. Dering's career is an appropriate object for a study of this kind because it is illuminated by an unusual variety of sources; this makes it possible to compare Dering's political actions with his ideological position as implied by documents which remained private. Apart from the well-known published Long Parliament speeches and a substantial collection of family papers (embracing both correspondence and documents arising from the offices which Dering held) and apart from the evidence of Dering's antiquarian and historical interests, there survive two published works of polemical theology (together with partial drafts for others), and a number of personal memorandum books.