About ten years since, I remember seeing, in the hands of a London
bookseller, a curious MS. purporting to be the "Household Book of
Receipts and Expences of Sir Edward Dering, Bart., of Surrenden Dering,
Kent, from Lady-Day, 1648, to April, 1652." It was a think folio, in the
original binding, entirely in the hand-writing of the distinguished
baronet.

Sir Edward was the only son of Sir Edward Dering, the first baronet, by
his second wife, Anne, daughter of Sir John Ashburnham, of Ashburnham,
Sussex, Knt. He succeeded to the baronetcy upon the death of his father,
in 1644, and married Mary, daughter of Daniel Harvey, Esq., of Combe,
Surrey, who was brother of the famous Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the
circulations of the blood.

The volume commences at Lady-day, 1648, with the gifts of his
grandmother Cramond, and his uncles Dr. Harvey and Eliab Harvey. Nov. 8.
1648, is a memorandum of receipts of "the full remainder of the three
thousand pounds he was to pay me on my marriage." The receipts close
March 25. 1652, with "a note of what money I have received for rent,
wood, &c.; in effect, what I have to live upon, for four years, 1413_l_.
8_s_." The expenses begin at the same period; and among the earliest is,
"given my wife, in gold, 100_l_." Under the date Aug. 4. 1648, we read,
"Item: paid Mr. Edward Gibbes, to the use, and by the appointment of my
sister Dorothy, it being her portion, 1200_l_." Dorothy was probably Sir
Edward's only sister, by the same mother, Sir Edward, the first
baronet's second wife. Her sun of life soon set; for Feb. 21. 1650, a
whole page is occupied with items of mourning "at the death of my deare
and only sister, the Lady Darell."