Sir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet

Sir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet (18 December 1602 – 18 April 1650) was an English antiquary and politician. He was bred for the bar, was a member of the Long Parliament and left notes on its transactions. D'Ewes took the Puritan side in the Civil War. His Journal of all the Parliaments of Elizabeth is of value; he left an Autobiography and Correspondence. Early life Simonds d'Ewes was born on 18 December 1602 at Coaxdon Hall, Dorset (now in All Saints, Devon), the eldest son of Paul d'Ewes, of Milden, Suffolk, one of the Six Clerks in Chancery, and his first wife Cecelia, daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Simonds of Coaxden. His father's family came originally from Gelderland: Simonds' great-grandfather emigrated to England about 1510. He inherited a fortune from his maternal grandfather while still young; his other grandfather, Gerard d'Ewes, of Gaynes, Upminster, Essex, who married Grace Hynde, was a printer. After his mother's death in 1618, his father remarried the widowed Elizabeth Isham, Lady Denton, who was only a few years older than her stepson: Simonds approved of the marriage and may have played a part in arranging it. His relations with his father, a difficult and quarrelsome man, were never good. After some early private teaching, including time at the school of Henry Reynolds (father of Bathsua Makin, who impressed d'Ewes much more), he was sent to the grammar school at Bury St Edmunds. At Bury St Edmunds, he wrote 2,850 verses of poetry in Greek and Latin. D'Ewes then went to St John's College, Cambridge, and studied under Richard Holdsworth. At St John's, he was exposed to and influenced by a strong college tradition of Puritanism.