Cecil, the chancellor of the university, in which he freely criticised the new statutes and their authors with remarkable freedom; and 24 March 1572 he wrote again on behalf of Cartwright, urging that he should be permitted to return to Cambridge and to lecture there. In 1572 he was appointed divinity reader at St. Paul's Cathedral, and delivered a series of well-attended expositions on the earlier chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the preface (22 April 1572) to 'A briefe and necessarie Catechism,' he renewed his attacks on the clergy. 'There was never no nation,' he said, 'which had so ignorant ministers'. In 1573 he was suspended from his lectureship and summoned before the Star-chamber. He was there charged with having given utterance to unwarrantable and unorthodox sentiments, and more especially with having predicted that Parker, his former friend, would be the last archbishop of Canterbury. This charge he sought to explain away. Examined as to his general agreement with the doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles, his answers were deemed satisfactory. His sentence of suspension from his lectureship was cancelled. But when an effort was made in 1574 to obtain for Dering the appointment of lecturer at Whittington College as successor to Thomas Sampson, Parker put his veto on the proposal. Shortly after this Dering's health began to give way. In 1572 he married Anne Locke, who nursed him as he succumbed to tuberculosis. He died 26 June 1576 at Thoby, in the parish of Mountnessing, Essex. Works The collected edition of 1614, London, contains: A Sermon preached before the Queenes Maiestie. A Sermon preached at the Tower of London. Twenty-seven Lectures or Readings upon the Epistle to the Hebrews. Certain godly and comfortable Letters, &c. A briefe and necessary Catechisme for Christian Housholders. Godly private Prayers for Christian Families. References Sources 16th-century English Anglican priests Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge People from Pluckley 1540s births 1576 deaths