letters, wherein I confess that I cannot equal thy love;’ and he ends with ‘Thine, more and more, if possibly,’ &c. One passage of public news in this letter brings a well-known incident before us. ‘The scaffolds are up in Westminster Hall, and Strafford comes to the barre on Monday morning.’ Some of Sir Edward’s letters to his wife are subscribed ‘to thy best self the heart of thine own Edward Dering.’ And if he writes ‘thine in haste,’ he adds, ‘but heartily,’ and writes outside, ‘To my best and dearest friend the Lady Dering,’ while my lady endorses them, ‘From my dearest.’ One letter quaintly begins with ‘My dear and my comfortable Numps, my happiness is (for the greatest part of it in this world) circuited in the same sphere with thine. Love and cheerfulness are blessings invaluable, and if perchance some excentricke motion interpose, all at last (as in the sphaeres) helpe to make up the harmony. So I hope with us every motion shall helpe the tune.’ It would seem that, in absence, they encouraged one another from Scripture. ‘I did presently, as you wished,’ he writes, ‘read over the 91 Spalme (as you call it). I did think to return you a text, but am in haste;’ and ‘Thine own, as ever, for ever.’ The same tone makes musical all his letters, and her own seem to have been attuned to the same melody. The former are full moreover of most interesting public intelligence. For a troubled time Sir Edward was the much perplexed and ill-requited Lieutenant of Dover Castle. Released from that charge, he was the happy, intellectual, Kentish squire. Next, his county returned him to the Long Parliament, and he commenced his career with fierce opposition to Laud, hoping that ‘His Grace would have more grace, or no Grace at all.’ Sir Edward was what would now be called an Ultra-Radical. He was for abolishing bishops and was ill-affected towards royalty. He took up with the ‘Root and Branch’ party, and they pushed him forward to the proposing of revolutionary measures; and when he withdrew from the course which they had forced him to take they loaded him with execration, and succeeded in turning him out of Parliament for breach of privilege. Subsequently, he lay hid from the pursuit of Parliament, and he is said to have disguised himself as a parson and to have read prayers in a village church. He joined the King. His estate was sequestered, his house at Surrenden was plundered. At a later period the Parliament allowed him to enter on signing the Covenant and paying a composition; but before the affair was concluded the erst lover of the twenty-thousand-pound widow was, in 1644, laid to rest in Pluckley churchyard, which neither covenanting nor compounding can ever disturb. FOOTNOTE: [1] It was his son, by a former marriage, who became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham. _TO BRIGHTON AND BACK AGAIN._