SIR EDWARD DERING'S HOUSEHOLD BOOK, A. D. 1648-52

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 thin 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, dau…