In the early years of the 14th century the Dallingridges had been little more than minor gentry of Sussex, possessed of a few parcels of land at Dallingridge near East Grinstead. Their subsequent rise owed much to three lucrative marriages, contracted in successive generations. First, through his marriage to Joan, daughter of Walter de la Lynde, John Dallingridge (d.1335) acquired the Sussex manor of Bolebrook as well as a moiety of that of Laceby in Lincolnshire. These passed to their son Roger, who substantially increased the family fortunes by his match with Alice Radingden, for her inheritance included Sheffield and four other manors in Sussex. In about 1380 these for the most part descended to Sir Edward, following his father’s death.
Edward’s earliest attachments were influenced by those of his father Roger (four times a knight of the shire between 1360 and 1377), who having been employed by Queen Philippa in the forest administration of Ashdown Chase, had been made steward of the estates in Surrey and Sussex held by the widowed countess of Surrey and Warenne of the inheritance of her nephew Richard, earl of Arundel (d.1376). He was named among the trustees of Arundel’s other estates in 1366.
Following the deaths in 1376 of Lord Despenser and the earl of Arundel, Dallingridge was for a while closely attached to the latter’s younger son, John, Lord Arundel, under whose captaincy he served in 1378 at Cherbourg, and for whom, on another occasion, he stood surety at the Exchequer. During his second Parliament, in 1380, he secured a share in the custody of the alien priory of Frampton, which Lord John had held before he drowned. Although a comparative newcomer to Parliament, Sir Edward was one of the three knights appointed to a commission drawn from both Houses to make a thorough investigation of the royal administration, following complaints in the Commons of excessive taxation. Their comprehensive brief was to look into the condition of the realm, the conduct of the King’s ministers, and the state of royal revenues. It may be that Dallingridge owed his place on the commission to another member of it, Richard Fitzalan, the next earl of Arundel, to whom he had already become attached. The Commons voted a subsidy earmarked expressly to finance an army to be sent to Brittany under the leadership of Thomas of Woodstock, and this expedition Dallingridge joined in the summer.
Perhaps as a consequence of his association with Arundel, Dallingridge’s relations with John of Gaunt had become uneasy. In January 1381 he and his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Sackville II, together with their friend and fellow retainer of the earl, Sir Philip Mestede,
Dallingridge was released from prison before January 1385, being urgently needed to supervise the fortification of Rye and Winchelsea in the face of renewed threats of invasion from France. However, the task of defending the Sussex and Kent shores had to be left to subordinates in June, for the earl of Arundel called on him to join his retinue in the King’s army marching to invade Scotland. Even so, the importance of Dallingridge’s military role in the south received emphasis during the Parliament which met in the autumn; and he was then granted a royal licence for the crenellation of his manor-house at Bodiam, specifically so that the adjacent countryside might be more easily defended against the King’s enemies. Major works were begun on the castle immediately. Returned to the Commons yet again in 1386, Dallingridge was among the supporters of Arundel and Gloucester in their move to take over the administration. It was while Parliament was in session that Sir Edward, testifying in the court of chivalry in the celebrated dispute between Scrope and Grosvenor (over their claims to bear the same heraldic arms), recalled remarks made many years earlier by Earl Richard’s father as to the noble blood and ancestry of Lord Scrope. Early in 1387 he assisted in the task of organizing the fleet which was to sail under Arundel’s command as admiral, he himself taking a prominent place on the flagship. That spring he and his fellow feoffees of the Fitzalan lordships in Wales formally leased them to the earl. It seems very likely that he was a member of Arundel’s military retinue which took up arms against the royalist forces later in the year; and it is not surprising that at the dissolution of the Merciless Parliament it was he who was appointed to take oaths in Sussex pledging support for the regime of the earl and his fellow Lords Appellant. During the session of this, Dallingridge’s tenth Parliament, he had secured a royal pardon for having received from Earl Richard a grant for life of the manor of High Roding (Essex) without first obtaining a licence. He helped the earl to organize and finance his second naval expedition, that of the summer of 1388, supplying his own ship The Trinite of Winchelsea for service; and Arundel subsequently made him his lieutenant as captain of Brest, where he spent part of the winter. Dallingridge had benefited personally from the earl’s shared control of Crown patronage by securing the joint keepership of the alien priory of Wilmington in May 1388, and from January following he occupied it with another of Arundel’s retainers; they were authorized to pay the farm directly to the garrison at Brest.
It might be expected that the dismissal of the senior Appellants from the King’s Council in May 1389 would be followed by Dallingridge’s retirement from royal employment. On the contrary, Richard II, appraised of his worth, and in all probability persuaded by the Appellants to accept the counsel of their nominees, appointed him a member of the Council on 4 May, and he quickly set about making himself indispensible. That summer he was entrusted with a delicate mission as intermediary between the King and his own erstwhile lord, the duke of Brittany, negotiating for the surrender of certain castles in Guienne in return for the duke’s restoration to the earldom of Richmond. He evidently made a favourable impression: as a ‘King’s knight’, in July he was permitted to purchase two manors in Sussex forfeited by judgement of the Merciless Parliament, and a month later it was agreed that he should be retained for life with the substantial annual fee of 100 marks, which, moreover, he might take directly from the farm he owed for Wilmington priory. Throughout the four remaining years of his life Dallingridge was the most prominent knight in the King’s Council, sharing responsibility for many important executive acts and policy decisions. For instance, in November 1389, he expressed to the King the Council’s advice that the newly-elected Pope, Boniface IX, should not be given formal recognition until it became clear how his election would affect the Great Schism. In 1390 and 1391 he sat on many conciliar tribunals to determine appeals from the various courts of chivalry, and to arbitrate where lesser courts had failed to settle disputes. Along with other members of the Council, in the spring of 1390 he went on an embassy to France, in the course of which he was to survey the fortifications of Calais. Pleased with Dallingridge’s counsel, the King made him a gift of 100 marks that October, and was later to reward him with a grant of two tuns of red wine a year. In the summer of 1391 the councillors, including Dallingridge, were concerned with matters arising from the papal embassy, and in December he was sent on another mission to the duke of Brittany, specifically because of their former friendship. He received wages of 10s. a day for attendance on the Council, and in the year beginning in January 1392 he is known to have served 207 days, often accompanying the King in his peregrinations about the country. Upon the Council records no name appears more frequently than his.
Dallingridge’s place on judicial tribunals made him familiar with a number of conflicts with the civic authorities of London, leading to serious local unrest. Following the removal of the government to York in May 1392 and the suspension from office of the mayor and aldermen of London a month later, Sir Edward was chosen to act as warden of the City. He left the King at Nottingham on 29 June and at 9 a.m. on 1 July came to the Guildhall to be sworn into office. However, after the Londoners had been fined 3,000 marks, and had forfeited their liberties, on the 22nd he was replaced by Sir Baldwin Radington, the controller of the Household, by all accounts a rigid disciplinarian. It was rumoured that the King had found Dallingridge to be ‘too gentle and tender with the Londoners’, but it seems more likely that it was Richard’s intention to release him to act as a free agent in the complicated negotiations between the Crown and the City which were to follow. Dallingridge remained in London in consultation with Radington for a few days, and then, from 17 to 26 Aug., he spent his time ‘pro concordia facienda versus Regem pro civibus’ — a diplomatic intervention which led to the formal reconciliation at Woodstock in September, he himself being then present. Dallingridge had sat in his last Parliament as an elected Member of the Commons in 1388, but it seems likely that he attended the assemblies of 1390 and 1391 in his capacity as a royal councillor, as he certainly did the meeting at Winchester in January 1393.
There is no record of Dallingridge’s activities after 1 July 1393, and this Sussex knight, who had so successfully combined the qualities of soldier and councillor, died before 30 Aug. He was buried next to his wife in the Cistercian abbey at Robertsbridge.