DENDY, Edward (1613-74), of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and Eye, Suff.

Edward Dendy and his father both served as serjeants-at-arms but their two careers contrasted sharply. It was, with a certain irony, as a result of his father’s loyalty to the Stuarts that the son rose to become one of the leading servants of the commonwealth. The elder Edward Dendy, whose background is otherwise obscure, had begun his career in the service of the 1st earl of Exeter (Thomas Cecil†).18Secret Hist. of the Court of James the First (Edinburgh, 1811), ii. 194-5; ‘Serjeant Edward Dendy’, N and Q, 9th ser. x. 118; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 221; W.J. Collins, ‘Some mems. of the Dendy fam.’, Trans. Baptist Hist. Soc. v. 129-43. In 1621 he entered the royal household as a serjeant-at-arms and continued in that position into the 1640s.19CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 314; 1625-6, p. 551; 1628-9, p. 444; 1631-3, p. 36; 1635, pp. 78, 555; 1638-9, p. 266; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 608; C66/2247, m. 7; C66/2360, mm. 26-7; C66/2680, mm. 1-2; C66/2755, mm. 31-5; APC 1621-3, p. 112; 1623-5, pp. 170-1; 1627-8, pp. 42-3, 300; 1628-9, pp. 232, 264, 292-3, 317; 1629-30, pp. 81-2; 1630-1, pp. 285, 290, 321, 357, 374; Foedera, viii (2), 25; LC5/183, ff. 114, 128v, 136; LC3/1, f. 3v. To him was entrusted the task of searching out the Five Members in the days following the king’s unsuccessful attempt to arrest them on 4 January 1642. Comments made by him in the course of this search, suggesting that Denzil Holles* was a traitor, earned him a rebuke from the Commons.20CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 241; CJ ii. 386b.

It is as a soldier serving in the parliamentary armies during the 1640s that Edward Dendy junior can first be confidently identified. Dendy claimed that he had signed up for military service before the battle of Edgehill in October 1642.21Eg. 2651, f. 235. Until the reorganization of the army in the spring of 1645, he was a captain in the troop of horse of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†).22Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 143; SP28/12, ff. 271, 274; SP28/14, f. 20; SP28/17, f. 393; SP28/22, ff. 332, 337, 344; SP28/23, ff. 13, 89, 91, 256-8, 277-8, 466; SP28/25, ff. 330, 379-80, 551, 560, 573-4; SP28/26, f. 64; SP28/152, ff. 12, 16, 33; Davies, ‘Eastern Association’, 89; SP28/139/1, ff. 19-20, 28; SP28/128/8, f. 140v. This link with Manchester may well have led to Dendy’s marriage in January 1645 to the daughter of another Huntingdonshire figure, the late John Goldsburgh† of Godmanchester.23Regs. of St Mary le Bowe, ii. 452; Goldsborough, Goldesborough Fam. 148, 152-3. In February Dendy was nominated by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to the New Model army and was appointed, despite an attempt by the Lords to block it, to a commission in Nathaniel Rich’s* regiment of horse; the Lords would have preferred the less radical William, 5th Lord Caulfield, an associate of the 3rd earl of Essex.24Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 143-4; Temple, ‘Original officer list’, 65. Dendy probably saw action at Naseby later that year but some time in 1646, with the first civil war at an end, he ceased to hold his commission. His early departure meant that he did not receive his arrears, when payments were made in 1647.25Eg. 2651, f. 235; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 143-4; Peacock, Army Lists, 109; Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 331; SP28/196, f. 392.

His appointment as a serjeant-at-arms provides the most likely explanation for his decision to leave the army. Later payments for his board wages indicate that Dendy was deemed to have served as the serjeant-at-arms to the Committee for Revenue from November 1645 and he continued to hold this position until at least January 1649.26SC6/CHASI/1664, rot. 22; SC6/CHAS1/1665, rot. 25d; SC6/CHASI/1666, rot. 20; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 320; Berks. RO, D/ED Z2. In October 1646, John Harington I* noted that Dendy had been ‘cast off by his father for faithfulness to the Parliament’.27Harington’s Diary, 43. This comment was made in the context of the Commons’ vote to prevent the commissioners of the great seal acting as assistants to the House of Lords and of the appointment of Henry Middleton as the serjeant-at-arms to the court of chancery. Garbled though his comment may be, Harington most likely meant that Dendy had replaced his own father as one of the serjeants-at-arms. That Dendy did replace his father is known because later royalist writers claimed that he had displayed the filial ingratitude typical of a rebel.28J. Heath, Brief Chronicle of the Late Intestine Warr (1663), 374; W. Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology (1665), 151. The relationship between father and son was certainly strained, no doubt, in part, because of the father’s disapproval of the son’s support for Parliament. When Dendy senior retired to Lancashire, contact between them became infrequent.29HMC 7th Rep. 39; CCC 92; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 221. That said, it is possible that the father had simply sold his place to his son, probably seeing such an arrangement as the most convenient way out of the dilemma in which he found himself.30CSP Dom. 1654, p. 272.

His son’s next career break came in early 1649 with the decision to put the king on trial. Faced with the very real threat of disruption, the high court of justice required a serjeant-at-arms to keep order during its hearings. The decision to appoint Dendy junior probably indicates that, more than any of his colleagues, he believed the trial to be justified. When the court first convened on 8 January 1649, the commissioners instructed Dendy to organize the public reading of the proclamation announcing the trial. The following morning he rode into Westminster Hall on horseback, carrying the Commons’ mace. The actual reading of the proclamation was delegated to John King, the crier of the court. Later that day, the Commons ordered that the proclamation be read again in the City. Escorted by a troop of horse, Dendy rode to the Exchange and presided over the reading by Capt. Edmund Chillenden and by King. After that, they proceeded to Cheapside where Chillenden again read the proclamation.31Nalson, True Copy, 5-8, 10; Muddiman, Trial, 196-7; A Proclamation for Tryall of the King (1649, E.357.34); CJ vi. 114b; State Trials, v. 1126; W. Kennett, Reg. and Chronicle Eccles. and Civil (1728), 278; Ludlow, Mems. i. 214; Heath, Brief Chronicle, 359. During the king’s appearances before the court between 20 and 27 January, Dendy’s principal duty was to lead the accused to and from the dock.32A Perfect Narrative of the whole Proceedings (1649), 3, 15, E.541.19; A Continuation of the Narrative (1649), 7 (E.541.21); Nalson, True Copy, 14, 18, 24, 27-8, 46, 53, 98; State Trials, v. 1178; Ludlow, Mems. i. 215. According to John Nalson (a later and hostile source), Dendy was so ‘visibly struck with such astonishment’ on being confronted with the king’s calm and imperious manner, that he ‘went trembling and quaking’ and was ‘scarce able to support the mace, or to hold up the bar’.33Nalson, True Copy, sig. [A2]. It was to Dendy that the ordnance office was ordered to deliver the execution axe prior to the implementation of the court’s sentence.34Nalson, True Copy, 110.

Dendy’s reward was his appointment on 27 March 1649 to be serjeant-at-arms to the new council of state.35CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 56. His annual salary was £365, although the complaints made about his fees are a reminder that the potential income was much greater.36CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 275; 1650, pp. 2, 199, 216; 1651, pp. 417-18; 1652-3, pp. 7-8; 1653-4, pp. 386, 459; 1655, p. 128. Few government offices at that time were so onerous. It fell to him to expedite, implement and enforce the council’s wishes: the delivery of messages and summonses, the reading of proclamations, the arrest of suspected individuals, the suppression of seditious books, the security of the palace of Whitehall and the allocation of official accommodation all came within his purview. Some of these tasks were assignments of the first importance. Among the prisoners whose arrests he arranged were John Lilburne, William Walwyn, Richard Overton, Marchamont Needham, Clement Walker* and Sir Henry Vane II*.37J. Lilburne, The Picture of the Council of State (1649), 3; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 527, 528, 537, 540, 544, 550, 558; 1656-7, p. 98; 1657-8, p. 124. In 1656 Dendy was sent to arrest Edmund Ludlowe II*, but, on locating him, allowed him to remain at large, while he would have arrested Joseph Bampfield in 1652 and the 2nd duke of Buckingham in 1657 had he been able to find them.38CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 59, 582; 1657-8, p. 124; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 14; Col. Joseph Bampfield’s Apology ed. J. Loftis and P.H. Hardacre (1993), 21-2, 160. The major proclamations for which he organized the public readings included that of December 1653 proclaiming Cromwell as lord protector.39HMC De L’Isle, vi. 595; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 528; 1651, pp. 326, 366-7; 1653-4, pp. 220, 299. The captaincy of the newly-formed Westminster voluntary troop of horse, to which he was appointed in August 1651, was simply an extension of these duties, since the protection of Whitehall was the troop’s probably purpose.40CSP Dom. 1651, p. 349; 1651-2, pp. 592, 598; 1654, p. 5. In August 1653, Dendy informed Sir Thomas Cotton* of the council’s intention to evict him from Cotton House, so that it could provide lodgings for Members during the Nominated Parliament, and then dealt with the objections raised by John Selden*.41Cotton appendix LVIII, ff. 50, 95, 97. It was Dendy’s job to be the long arm of the commonwealth regime.

As serjeant-at-arms he was also responsible for keeping in custody those prisoners seized by order of the council. The usual holding-place was Lambeth House (Lambeth Palace), which had been converted into the debtors’ prison for the court of upper bench, and thus Dendy found himself briefly and inconveniently appointed to administer the whole prison at Lambeth. In April 1653 the council of state set up a committee to investigate complaints about the conditions in which the prisoners there were being kept.42CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 300, 307, 362, 380; J. Lenthall, List of all the Prisoners in the Upper Bench Prison (1653). The Commons took over the initiative on 30 July by ordering that the marshal of the prison, Sir John Lenthall (elder brother of William Lenthall*), be taken into custody to answer the accusations against him. At this point that Dendy was given care of the prison.43  CJ vii. 293a, 293b; E. Dendy, To the Parlament of the Common-Wealth ([1654], 669.f.19.53). The ad hoc nature of his appointment, however, immediately created difficulties. Overcrowding had made necessary the use of insecure overflow accommodation and the prison officials had come to depend on securities taken from the prisoners to discourage escapes. Dendy found he was unable to persuade the officials to hand over these securities.44Dendy, To the Parlament; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 162. The act for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners, passed by the Commons in October 1653, was primarily intended to remedy the abuses alleged against Lenthall but, by creating a commission to oversee the major London prisons, some of these problems were taken out of Dendy’s hands.45CJ vii. 303a-304a, 316b, 319b, 322a, 325b, 329b, 330a-b; A. and O. ii. 753-64. This Act did not absolve Dendy’s conduct during the three months since his appointment. After the dissolution in December 1653 of the Parliament which had appointed him, the creditors of some prisoners who had managed to abscond felt free to sue him.46Dendy, To the Parlament; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 162. In an attempt to restore order, the judges of upper bench reinstated Lenthall as marshal in February 1654.47CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 371, 399-400, 425. Dendy sought, apparently without success, to be indemnified against any suits arising from the escapes.48CSP Dom. 1654, p. 210; Dendy, To the Parlament.

Dendy’s problems were soon compounded by the arrival at Lambeth of a particularly difficult prisoner, John Rogers, the Fifth Monarchist preacher placed under arrest by the council in July 1654 for denouncing the lord protector.49Rogers, Some Acct. 131; J. Rogers, Jegar-Sahadutha (1657, E.919.9): Morning-beams, 6. He happened to be Dendy’s uncle by marriage, but Rogers became convinced that Dendy was having him deliberately mistreated.50Rogers, Some Acct. 216; Goldsborough, Goldesborough Fam. 148; Vis. Surr. 1662-8 (Harl. Soc. lx), 97. This allegedly began with restrictions on visitors and the scale of the fees to be paid and escalated in September 1654, when Dendy, heartlessly ignoring the plight of one of Rogers’ dying children, ordered that his family leave.51Rogers, Jegar-Sahadutha: Morning-beams, 7-23. His fellow prisoners were not impressed and informed Dendy that they thought Rogers was a seditious fanatic.52TSP iii. 136-7; Rogers, Jegar-Sahadutha: Morning-beams, 19-20. Rogers complained in person to the lord protector at an audience at Whitehall on 6 February 1655. Cromwell seemed unconvinced, pointing out that Dendy was ‘accounted one that loved the people of God’. According to Rogers’s own account, he was threatened by Dendy on leaving the council chamber at the end of the audience.53Rogers, Some Acct. 189, 205-6, 215-17. Rogers interpreted a decision the following month to transfer him to Windsor Castle as the means by which Dendy hoped to be revenged.54CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 107, 579; Rogers, Jegar-Sahadutha: A High-Witnesse, 2-3. The problems facing Dendy were eased in May 1655 when, at last, he began receiving regular payments to cover his expenses for keeping prisoners.55CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 214-15; 1655, pp. 320, 604; 1655-6, pp. 585, 586; 1656-7, pp. 136, 589, 591; 1657-8, pp. 212, 350-1, 557.

Despite his claims that his services were not being fully rewarded, during the 1650s Dendy acquired estates more than suitable for a serjeant-at-arms. In the autumn of 1650 he purchased two adjacent Suffolk properties formerly belonging to Queen Henrietta Maria, the honor of Eye and the manor of Eye Hall, together valued at about £200 a year. As a down payment, he supplied half of the asking price of £4,106. (Sir) Harbottle Grimston*, the earl of Oxford and 5th Viscount Hereford were among his new tenants.56E317/Suff/15; E320/Q16; E304/6/Q16; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HB18/51/10/19.6; EE2/T/4. His duties in London probably prevented Dendy visiting Suffolk very often, but, anxious that his rights be protected, he corresponded regularly with his representative in Suffolk and he is known to have been planning a journey to Eye in late 1652 to inspect his new estates.57Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA85/3144/12; Stowe 184, f. 254; E134/1659/Mich37; E134/1659-60/Hil10. It was not until 1659 that he was named to any of the local commissions in Suffolk, despite having been regularly named to those for Westminster since the late 1640s.58A. and O.

Dendy’s land holdings were further extended later in the decade as partial compensation for the army arrears of £1,200 still due to him. The financial difficulties created by the non-payment of these had been great enough for him to seek parliamentary privilege in June 1648 to prevent arrest by his creditors.59HMC 7th Rep. 29, 39; LJ x. 312a. Anxious that their loyal servant should not lose out, the council of state asked Henry Marten* in August 1649 to raise the matter of Dendy’s arrears in the Commons. In February 1651 the council again referred the matter to Marten for action.60CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 275; 1651, p. 49. A petition from Dendy to the Commons eventually produced results in August 1652. While the details of the arrears claim were left to the Army Committee, the Rump ordered that he be granted lands in Ireland worth £200 a year ‘as a mark of the Parliament’s favour to him, for his eminent services’.61CJ vii. 170b. In 1653 he was allocated lands in the barony of Slane in West Meath which were perhaps worth as much as £500 a year.62Eg. 2651, ff. 218, 229, 234v. Council backing also eventually secured the remainder of Dendy’s arrears. In August 1654 he was added to the list of officers to benefit from the ordinance for the sale of forests and in April 1655 they approved a grant of fee farm rents worth £711 4s to him to clear these debts.63CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 307, 309; 1655, p. 132; A. and O. ii. 997-8.

But his Irish lands brought Dendy considerable inconvenience. By the spring of 1656 a powerful group of Irish Adventurers, headed by Sir John Barrington* and including Sir Gilbert Gerard*, Sir William Masham*, Sir Richard Everard*, Sir William Waller* and Edward Turnor*had begun legal moves to have him ejected, convinced that the barony of Slane was part of the lands to be divided by lot among them.64Eg. 2648, ff. 251-2, 268-9; Eg. 2651, ff. 218, 221-3. Representations were also made to the authorities in London and Dublin. The Adventurers argued that they had invested in good faith in the 1642 scheme for the suppression of the Irish rebellion and expected to receive their long-awaited reward.65Eg. 2651, ff. 224-229; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 117, 353; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 596-7, 834. While they rested their case on the various statutes granting the confiscated lands in Ireland to the Adventurers, Dendy initially tried to counter them by exploiting his contacts at Whitehall. The secretary of state, John Thurloe*, assured him that he would be granted a patent under the great seal to confirm his rights but this did not materialize.66TSP iii. 707. In December 1656 Dendy petitioned the Commons arguing that the 1652 parliamentary order ceding the barony to himself had greater authority than the Adventurers’ statutory claim.67Eg. 2651, ff. 235-6; CJ vii. 472b; Burton’s Diary, i. 202-3; Eg. 2648, f. 284. Had either the statutes or the order specified exactly which lands were to be granted to one of the parties, the dispute might have been easier to resolve.

Proposals before the Commons in April 1657 concerning confiscated lands in Scotland and Ireland included a draft proviso protecting any grants made by the Long Parliament, which specifically mentioned Dendy's. Although the proviso had the support of William Lenthall, Bulstrode Whitelocke* argued for delaying any decision, while John Trevor*, Richard Hampden*, Griffith Bodurda* and either John or William Aston all expressed doubts and the matter was referred to a committee.68Burton’s Diary, ii. 66-7; CJ vii. 526a-b. At this stage, Dendy may have sought the support of Trevor.69Eg. 2648, f. 286. After re-drafting, these proposals emerged as the bill for settling lands in Ireland. Dendy’s opponents now gained the advantage, securing the acceptance by the Commons on 8 June 1657 of a proviso exempting the disputed lands from the bill’s provisions and giving leave for the courts to adjudicate on the case.70CJ vii. 550a-b; A. and O. ii. 1109-10. Dendy had aimed to appeal to the Commons’ jurisdictional sensitivities by asking them to rule that one of its orders had overriding authority, only to find that the Commons sidestepped the whole dispute. Sir John Barrington took the chance this offered to bring a case against Dendy in the Irish courts in early 1657 and Barrington’s supporters evidently regarded the outcome as a success.71Eg. 2648, ff. 311, 313, 317. Dendy refused to give up and it was assumed when he was elected to Parliament in early 1659 that he would pursue the dispute from there.72Eg. 2648, f. 332.

Dendy may have been an absentee landlord, but on the re-imposition of the old franchises in 1659, the freemen of Eye elected him as one of their two Members. As a close colleague of James Birkhead, the serjeant-at-arms assigned to the Commons, Dendy might have had some knowledge of parliamentary procedures, but on the floor of the House he usually exposed his ignorance. His first intervention, on 28 January 1659, to propose that thanks be sent to Thomas Goodwin (the president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a former chaplain to the lord protector), who had preached before the Other House, was dismissed as a matter of no relevance to the Commons.73Burton’s Diary, iii. 13. Two months later, as an expert on holding people in custody, he spoke twice on whether petitions should be received from former royalists, arguing that they should take the precaution of imprisoning such subversives before allowing them to petition. However, with appropriate humility, he admitted that he was ‘ignorant of the privileges of this House, and the liberty of the people’.74Burton’s Diary, iv. 272, 307. His only other speech (8 Mar.), on the major question of whether the Other House should be recognised, came down against the motion by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* supportive of the rights of those peers who had backed Parliament. Dendy’s claim to have been swayed at the last minute by the debates may have been a polite lie to impress the House. The position he expressed, that they should follow the lord protector’s wishes and transact business with the Other House, was the official court line and everything about his conduct in this Parliament indicates that he was a dependable courtier.75Burton’s Diary, iv. 84; CJ vii. 611b.

Despite the expectations among Barrington’s allies, Dendy does not appear to have used his time in the last protectoral Parliament to promote his own interests against the Irish Adventurers. Only in September 1659, when it was proposed in the recalled Rump that the bill for settling lands on the Irish Adventurers should include a proviso similar to that in the 1656 Act, was Dendy able to advance his cause. His petition persuaded the Commons to reject the proviso and refer the matter back to the committee, causing panic and recriminations in the Barrington camp.76CJ vii. 775a; Eg. 2648, ff. 355-6, 358. There was still no final settlement between the parties when the Restoration overtook both claims. The lands were then granted to the duke of York.77W. Suss. RO, Shillinglee MS lttr. 57.

Charles II’s return was a personal disaster for Dendy. During the earliest weeks of 1660 he was probably still performing his duties as serjeant-at-arms.78CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 306, 329; A. and O. However, with the arrival in London of George Monck* and the appointment of a new council of state in February 1660, Dendy prudently made himself scarce.79HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 121. His wife was less careful, attracting the attention of the Westminster justices of the peace by making seditious comments.80LJ xi. 42a, 51b. Dendy soon found himself among the select few singled out as deserving of punishment for their actions over the previous decade. His service as an official of the high court of justice qualified him an accomplice to the regicide and on 14 May 1660 the Commons ordered his arrest. Having failed to obey the proclamation of 6 June, commanding that he give himself up, he was exempted from the act of indemnity and oblivion.81CJ viii. 25b, 47a, 57b; Diaries and Pprs. of Sir Edward Dering ed. M.F. Bond (1976), 43, 45; LJ xi. 52a-53a; Whitelocke, Diary, 601; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 276-7; SR v. 232. He had become an outlaw. His estates in Suffolk and Ireland were confiscated.82LJ xi. 78b; CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 211, 681.

Dendy fled abroad.83Winstanley, Loyal Martyrology, 151; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 121. Reports to the English government from Holland indicated that in July and August 1661 he was in Rotterdam, before proceeding to Amsterdam to evade arrest.84T.H. Lister, Life and Administration of Edward, First Earl of Clarendon (1837-8), iii. 152, 155; CCSP v. 120, 121, 132. In the autumn of 1662 Dendy, William Say*, John Biscoe*, Nicholas Love*, Andrew Broughton*, Slingisby Bethell* and Cornelius Holland* joined another group of arch-republican exiles, who included Edmund Ludlowe II, John Lisle* and William Cawley I*, at Lausanne. When the others moved on, Dendy and Broughton (who had been the clerk of the high court of justice) remained there.85Bodl. MS Eng. hist. c. 487, pp. 964-5; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 343-4. It has been suggested that he may later have acted as Ludlowe’s amanuensis.86Ludlow, Voyce, 17n. Whether his wife and children accompanied him to Switzerland is unclear. His father certainly did not. Having disowned his son, he disposed of his old place as a serjeant-at-arms to Thomas Warner and in 1661 he was allowed to surrender his patent as searcher of the customs at Bristol.87CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 21, 156; H.D.W. Sitwell, ‘Royal sergeants-at-arms and the royal maces’, Archaeologia, cii. 226, 240; CTB, i. 15, 220. He died at Westminster in June 1665.88Reg. of St Margaret’s, Westminster ed. W. Ward (Harl. Soc. lxxxviii), 80; PROB4/16603; PROB6/40, f. 65v. Dendy himself lived on until March 1674, when, according to Ludlowe, he died a good death.89Bodl. MS Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1379; Ludlow, Voyce, 344.