Family and Education

b. by 1504, 1st s. of Nicholas Dering of Rolvenden by Alice, da. and coh. of William Bettenham of Bettenham Wood, Cranbrook. m. by 1525, Margaret, da. of John Brent of Charing, 5 or 6s. 4da. suc. fa. Aug./Oct. 1517.2

Offices Held

J.p. Kent 1547-d.3

Biography

In his will of 20 Aug. 1517 John Dering’s father charged his wife ‘with the keeping of all my children and the finding of John my son to school’: the son was to receive £3 6s.8d. a year after he came of age and during his mother’s lifetime, and on her death he was to inherit all the family lands. In the same year Dering succeeded to his great-grandfather’s lands and also became heir, after his uncle Richard, to most of the remainder of his grandfather’s possessions.4

Richard Dering, until his death in 1546/47, was lieutenant of Dover castle and second in command to the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Sir Thomas Cheyne; it was doubtless Cheyne who procured John Dering’s return for Romney in 1547. In his younger days a client of Cromwell, by the time of his election Dering had become a gentleman of some importance in Kent; considered in 1545 for appointment as keeper of a castle in the reorganized coastal defences, in the same year he had been made crown bailiff of lands purchased from Sir Thomas Wyatt I and in May 1547 he became a justice of the peace.5

By then, however, Dering had not long to live; he took a lease on 20 Feb. 1549 of lands at Timberwood, Kent, and the last commission known to have been sent him, to hear evidence from parishioners resisting the threatened demolition of their chapel, was dated 20 May 1549. He had made his will on 24 May 1535 and it was proved on 13 Sept. 1550. He had made provision for his five sons (including Edward, the Elizabethan Puritan) and four daughters, then all under age, and for his wife, who was his executrix, and had appointed as overseers his cousins George Darrell and Nicholas Moore; Darrell belonged to the Calehill branch of his family and was thus only distantly related to the namesake who sat for East Grinstead in the Parliament of 1547. In the parliamentary session which began on 23 Jan. I552 Dering was replaced by William Tadlowe; as the writ for the by-election was not issued until 8 Dec. 1551 Dering had probably survived the previous session, which ended on 1 Feb. 1550,and had died within the next few months. His widow married as her second husband John Moore of Benenden.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament; Romney ct. bk. 1552-9, f. 1.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from marriage. Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 140-1; Canterbury prob. reg. A13, f. 42; A27, f. 57.
• 3. CPR, 1547-8, p. 85.
• 4. Canterbury prob. reg. A13, ff. 42, 44.
• 5. Ibid. A26, f. 21; LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xx, xxi.
• 6. Arch. Cant. xxx, 155; Canterbury prob. reg. A27, f. 57; F. Haslewood, Benenden, 178; Romney ct. bk. 1552-9, f. 1.