D'E1VES, SIR SYMONDS, was born at Coxden, in Dorsetahire, December 18, 1602. From the Grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, and having completed the usual course of study there, wcut to Loudou, entered upon the study of the law, and in due time was called to the bar. But being heir to considerable property, and seeing the threatening state of public affairs, he did not commence practice, but retired to his property at Stow Hall in Suffolk, and to the life of a country gentleman. In 1639 he was high-sheriff of Suffolk, and received the honour of knighthood. In the following year he was elected member of parlia ment for Sudbury; and he was created a baronet by Charles I. iu 1641. D'Ewes was n puritan in religion, and naturally adhered to the same party in politics; but he was opposed to the adoption of extreme measures against the king, and was one of the members expelled from the House by the application of Pride's purge. He died April 18, 1650. Sir Symonds D'Ewes was a man of considerable learning and great industry, and he made an extensive collectiou of records and historical mauuscripts which he placed at the service of the learned, and which were largely used by Selden and other con stitutional writers and inquirers of that day. He did not himself publish anything, except two speeches which he delivered in the House of Commons—one an endeavour to establish the superior antiquity of Cambridge over Oxford University (4to, 1642), and another, a dis proof of the authenticity of the Greek postscripts of the Epistles of Timothy and Titais (directed of course against the claims of episco pacy); but a work of considerable value compiled by him was published some forty years after his death by his nephew Mr. Paul
Bowes : ' The Journals of all the Parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, both of the House of Lords and Commons,' fol., Loud., 1682. A more remarkable record of the man however was published in 1845: ' The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Bart., during the reign of James L and Charles I.; edited by J. 0. Halliwell, Esq.,' 4 vols. 8vo. It extends down to 1636 only, and consequently does not reach the period when contemporary notes of one who was at the same time a moderate puritan, an actor in the parliamentary struggles, and an observer of the great events preceding the death of Charles, would have been peculiarly valuable; but it contains, amidst a great deal that is wholly valueless, much interesting information illustrative of his times, and of many of his more emineut contemporaries. D'Ewes himself it shows to have been a thorough pedant, with a certain amount of shrewdness as well as of learning, and a most marvellous stock of conceit.