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³ Clarendon, , History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray, W. D. (Oxford, 1888), 1, 512Google Scholar; and it was commonly accepted that popular support was essential for the two Houses: cf. Persecutio Undecima (1648), p. 63Google Scholar; Nalson, J., An Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State, 11 (1682–1683), 187Google Scholar; The Moderator Expecting Sudden Peace or Certaine Ruine (1643), p. 15.Google Scholar

⁴ For Parliament's reactions, see Manning, B. S., ‘Neutrals and Neutralism in the English Civil War 1642–1646’ (unpublished Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1957), esp. 16–108; and cf. also Pym's and Ven's attempts to stir up feelings against the Kentish petition of 1642 and the impending one from Somerset [B.M. Additional MS 14827, fo. 77V.].Google Scholar

⁵ The Resolutions of Divers of the Gentry of Nottingham … sent to … Knights of the County of Nottingham (1642), p. 5Google Scholar; Manning, , op. cit. p. 38Google Scholar; A Short Discourse Tending to the Pacification of all Unhappy Differences (1642), p. 1Google Scholar; Animadversions upon those Notes which the Late Observator hath Published … (1642), p. 12Google Scholar; A Present Answer to the Late Complaint unto the House oj Commons by divers Members of the said House (1642), p. 5.Google Scholar

⁶ Thus, The Declaration of the Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled, concerning His Majesties last Message about the Militia (5 May 1642); Parker, H., Observations upon some of His Majesties late Answers and Expresses (1642), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

⁷ Essex Record Office, Morant MSS, XLVII, 31, 67.

⁸ Everitt, A. M., The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester, 1966)Google Scholar; Laslett, P., ‘The Gentry of Kent, 1640’, Cambridge Historical Journal, ix (1948), 148–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jessup, F. W., Sir Roger Twysden 1597–1672 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Chalklin, C. W., Seventeenth Century Kent; a Social and Economic History (London, 1965).Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Lamont, W. M., Godly Rule 1603–1660 (London, 1969), pp. 83–93Google Scholar; Everitt, , op. cit. p. 85 - this is a judgement which largely concurs with that in the D.N.B.Google Scholar

¹¹ The Coppie of a Letter written unto Sir Edward Deering (1642); Vicars, J., God in the Mount (1642), p. 84.Google Scholar

¹² Henry Oxinden (of Barham) observed in Feb. 1642, ‘itt did ever runne in my head, that Sir Edward Deereing has so used to turne round in his Studie that hee would doe the like in the Parliament House. Pray God his much turning hath not made his head dazie, and that hee doth not turne out of his right witts.’ The Oxinden Letters 1607–1642, ed. Gardiner, D. (London, 1933), p. 296Google Scholar; see also Laslett, , op. cit. pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

¹³ B.M. Harleian MS 162, fo. 366. I am grateful to Dr C. A. Holmes for this reference.

¹⁴ Lamont, , loc. cit.Google Scholar; cf. Dering, , op. cit. p. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁵ B.M. Stowe MS 743, fos. 85, 106; Kent County Archives U350 c/2/26, c/2/54; Bodley MS Top. Kent c6, quoted by Plumb, J. H., ‘The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715’, Past and Present, XLV (1969), 106Google Scholar; and also Stowe 743, fo. 140.

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¹⁷ Add. 47787, fo. 32V.

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¹⁹ Stowe 184, fo. 10. Yet even in this, he seems to have been trying to hedge his bets. In the attempt to apprehend the separatist leader John Fenner in 1636, Dering appears to have been reluctant to proceed. He wrote that he knew Fenner was at home, but protested somewhat implausibly, ‘Night or day I would willingly bestowe my labour with successe but I should be very sorry to make Fenner more wary by affrighting him.’ He was also allegedly in doubt as to the authority by which he could break down a door to seize the local sectary. K.C.A. U1551.

²⁰ Everitt, , op. cit. ch. III.Google Scholar

²¹ Stowe 743, fo. 149; Stowe 184, fo. 15. His correspondent Robert Abbot wrote in March 1641 that at this election the ‘Brownists’ (i.e. separatists, rather than supporters of Richard Browne) had been preparing to petition against Dering for his rigorous practices towards them. Ibid. fo. 27.

²² Sir John Skeffington to Dering, at the height of the latter's activist period in Dec. 1640: ‘You have abus'd my sorrowes: I had engag'd as many for you as my dry braine could affoard. By the waters we sate downe and wept to consider what an advantage you had given Babylon.’ Skeffington went on to protest against the way in which Dering, now ‘in power and State’, was calling ‘pale Soules’ before his ‘tribunall’. Stowe 744, fo. 17.

²³ Stowe, 184, fo. 27.

²⁴ Lamont, , op. cit. p. 86. Compare the opening of Abbot's letter in Mar. 1641: ‘We are happy in our choise. All my arguments could not perswade this, till your worships and your partner in this noble service, had made yourselves knowne by your speaches.’ Stowe 184, fo. 27.Google Scholar

²⁵ Proceedings in Kent, p. 23Google Scholar; Lamont, , op. cit. pp. 85–7.Google Scholar

²⁶ Sir Richard Skeffington, from whom Dering had differed in late 1638 because the former was ‘so much for the Puritans’ [K.C.A. U350 c/2/59], referred to their mutual ‘deare freinde Mr. Pyme’. Stowe 184, fo. 19.

²⁷ Persecutio Undecima, p. 17; also Nalson, , op. cit. 11, 248.Google Scholar

²⁸ Dering, , op. cit. p. 17.Google Scholar

²⁹ When talking of the London petition, he assured the House that ‘my heart goes cheerfully along therewith’ [ibid. p. 18]; for D'Ewes's reaction, Lamont, , op. cit. p. 88. Similarly, Sir Thomas Peyton saw it as no different from any of the other Root and Branch petitions then being presented. Bodley MS Film 39, p. 66.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Notestein, W. (New Haven, 1923), pp. 337, 343.Google Scholar

³¹ See above, pp. 198–9; and Stowe 184, fo. 27.

³² K.C.A. U350 c/2/86–88, the first of which praises Dering's ‘zeale for Gods matters’, and the last claims that Dering's activity in God's cause alone emboldened him to write; also, Proceedings in Kent, pp. 25–6, where the petitioners maintain that they ‘have cause to praise God’ for Dering's service.Google Scholar

³³ Dering, , op. cit. p. 19.Google Scholar

³⁴ Rushworth, J., Historical Collections, iv (1682), 425.Google Scholar

³⁵ Stowe 184, fos. 27, 33.

³⁶ Ibid. fos. 27–9. For a further instance of local hostility to activists' contacts with the centre, see Lamont, , op. cit. p. 89.Google Scholar

³⁷ The Oxinden Letters 1607–1642, pp. 270, 298.

³⁸ A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers; from 1640–1708 A.D., ed. Eyre, G. E. B. (London, 1913), 1, 20, 24Google Scholar; Dering, , op. cit. pp. 49, 65, 96, 155. I am grateful to Mr M. J. Mendle for this information.Google Scholar

³⁹ Persecutio Undccima, p. 17.

⁴⁰ Dering, , op. cit. p. 2Google Scholar; Proceedings in Kent, p. 47.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Rushworth, , op. cit. iv, 425, 428Google Scholar; Dering, , op. cit. Dedicatory Epistle.Google Scholar

⁴² Thus, Abbot asserted in Mar. 1641 that he would be glad if the Prayer Book were reformed and ceremonies ‘layed aside’, and he bracketed the papal Church and the school of Arminius together. Stowe 184, fos. 28–28V.

⁴³ Persecutio Undecima, p. 17; May, Thomas, The History of the Parliament of England, 1 (1647), 115. The King himself made exactly the same point in a speech to both Houses at the end of Jan. 1641 attacking the Root and Branch agitation: ‘distractions’ were ‘occasioned through the cause of Parliament though not by the Parliament … and petitions in an illegall way given are neither dismitted, nor denyed’. Harl. 4931, fo. 106.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Stowe 184, fos. 27–9.

⁴⁵ Dering, , op. cit. pp. 63–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Commons Journals, II, 146, 152, 156; Harl. 163, fo. 191.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ C.J., ii, 172; Harl. 478, fo. 93V.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ C.J., 11, 143.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Burton, H., Englands Bondage and Hope of Deliverance (1641)Google Scholar; C.J., 11, 181.Google Scholar On the subject of parliamentary sermons in general, see Trevor-Roper, H. R., ‘The Fast Sermons of the Long Parliament’, in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (London, 1967), pp. 294–344; tnat at least one contemporary was aware of the connexion outlined by Prof. Trevor-Roper can be seen from Add. 11045, fo. 144V.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Sir Henry Vane his Speech in the House of Commons, at a Committee for the Bill against Episcopall-Government (1641), p. 3; Wilson, John F., Pulpit in Parliament (Princeton, 1969), pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ Ibid. pp. 155–8; the other versions of the proposals are to be found in Master Grimstons Argument Concerning Bishops. With Mr. Seldens Answer. Also severall Orders, concerning Church Government (London, 1641), pp. 2–5Google Scholar; The Order and Forme for Church Government By Bishops and the Clergie of this Kingdome (London, 1641)Google Scholar; Sixteene Propositions in Parliament. Touching the manner and forme for Church Government, by Bishops and the Clergie of this Kingdome (London, 1642). I am indebted to Mr Mendle for these identifications, and for pointing out that John Moore transcribed the scheme into the volume of his diary which covers the summer of 1641 [Harl. 479, fos. 175–173V (reverse foliation)].Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid. fo. 71V.

⁵⁶ Stowe 184, fo. 43V. Similar reports, that the Protestation, binding individuals to further the godly cause, was being used to foment disorder in churches, were coming to London from places as far afield as Tewkesbury and Yorkshire, and from men as sympathetic to the general aim of religious reform as John Geree and Thomas Stockdale, Fairfax’s agent and later recruiter M.P. Geree, John, Vindiciae Voti (London, 1641), sig. CGoogle Scholar; The Fairfax Correspondence, ed. Johnson, G. W. (London, 1848), 1, 381–2.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Stowe 184, fos. 47–47V. On this score, Burton seems to have been speaking directly to Abbot: if such a problem arises, and the minister's position is endangered, he should reform himself, and then he would not lose his flock [Burton, H., The Protestation Protested (1641), sig. C2V.–C3] - advice which was hardly calculated to ease social tensions. It should be noted that such concern for the fate of the Prayer Book, and alarm at the extent of the religious disorders, swayed a majority of the House by the end of August, and was strong enough to move men as zealous as William Strode, Serjeant Wilde and John Crew. Northants. Record Office MSS, FH 2881; B.M.Add. 11045, fos. 142, 143V.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Dering, , op. cit. p. 93.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Lamont, , op. cit. p. 91.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Dering, , op. cit. pp. 96–105.Google Scholar And perhaps the chief fear he manifested in his famous speech in the Grand Remonstrance debate two days later was of what effect it would have on the ‘common people’. Rushworth, , op. cit. iv, 425–8.Google Scholar

⁶¹ The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Coates, W. H. (New Haven, 1942), pp. 151–2.Google Scholar

⁶² Archaeologia Cantiana, 1 (1858), 187–9Google Scholar; ibid. II (1859), 179–80, 188, 214; Stowe 184, £. 47V. The grievance is also to be found in clause xii of the Kentish petition of 1642. Arch. Cant., 1, 208.Google Scholar

⁶³ ibid. 1, 190–1.

⁶⁴ Dering, , op. cit. p. 79.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Dering was clearly influenced by strident cries from the local governors that disorder was endemic; now, whether these cries were genuine, that is, whether they accurately reflected contemporary social conditions, is another matter entirely, and not wholly relevant to the argument that Dering reacted in response to certain pressures. Dering's correspondents are supported by Henry Oxinden's prognostication in Nov. 1641 that the sectarian tumults in Kent indicated ‘the latter day to bee very neare att hand’ [Oxinden Letters 7607–1642, 257]. Unfortunately, no sessions papers survive, but it is interesting that the calendar of prisoners in gaol awaiting trial shows no significant increase in the number of detainees in 1641 when compared with the two previous years, and a slight decrease from the 1636–8 level (which could, of course, reflect a decline in efficiency of law enforcement) [K.C.A. Q/SMc 1, no foliation]. It would be tempting to read from this that Abbot and others were playing a devious political game, comparable to that of Sir Thomas Aston's 1641 petitioning campaign from Cheshire, another attempt to get local pressure to work on Parliament. But in the absence of further information, the question must remain unanswered.

⁶⁶ Stowe 184, fo. 29; see also Stowe 744, fo. 17; Proceedings in Kent, p. 22.Google Scholar