ally visiting his friends at the west end. During that time he built and endowed a school, in which he himself taught bible-classes and gave lectures to working men. Denison was one of the earliest members of the committees formed by the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity in 1869. He recognised the unsatisfactory results of giving relief by doles, and resolved to do his best to establish some better method of dealing with poverty. In 1868 he went to Paris, and later to Edinburgh, to study the working of the poor law. In the autumn of the same year he became parliamentary candidate in the liberal interest for Newark, where his visits to the neighbouring house of his uncle, Mr. Speaker Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington, made him well known. Denison was Lord Ossington's heir presumptive. He was returned to parliament in November 1868, but only made one speech there. Although his political sentiments were liberal, he did not strictly adhere to any particular party. The fatigues of parliamentary life seriously enfeebled his health, and in May 1869 he visited the Channel Islands, whose political constitution he studied with great interest. At Guernsey he had an interview with Victor Hugo, who ‘ranted’ at him for half an hour, and convinced him that ‘with all his sublimity of imagination he was a bad politician and a worse reasoner.’ Returning symptoms of his old disease forced him to abandon a projected visit with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to the United States, and he decided to make a voyage to Melbourne, where he hoped to study the questions of emigration and colonisation. He left England in October 1869. The alternation of the weather and the diet of a sailing ship rendered the voyage injurious rather than beneficial. He gradually sank, and died at Melbourne on 26 Jan. 1870, within a fortnight of his landing.
His letters and other writings, edited by Sir Baldwyn Leighton, bart., were published in 1872, 8vo, and were republished in a popular form in 1875. They present a graphic picture of Denison's keenness of observation and enlightened humanity, and they have induced many to follow in his footsteps.
[Letters and Writings of Edward Denison, ed. by Sir Baldwyn Leighton, Bart., London, new edition, 12mo, 1875; Times, 22 March 1870.]
DENISON, JOHN, D.D. (d. 1629), divine, became a student in Balliol College, Oxford, in 1590, and graduated in arts and subsequently in divinity. He was highly esteemed as a preacher and was appointed chaplain to George, duke of Buckingham, and to James I. After holding the headmastership of the free school of Reading, Berkshire, he was successively vicar of the three churches in that town, being instituted to St. Laurence's 7 Jan. 1603–4, to St. Giles's 9 July 1612, and to St. Mary's 31 March 1614. On 29 Nov. 1610 he was instituted, on the presentation of the lord chancellor, to the rectory of Woodmansterne, Surrey (Manning and Bray, Surrey, ii. 466). He died in January 1628–9, and was buried on 1 Feb. in the church of St. Mary at Reading.
In addition to several detached sermons he published:
- ‘A Three-fold Resolvtion, verie necessarie to Saluation. Describing Earths Vanitie. Hels Horror. Heavens Felicitie,’ London, 1608, 12mo, pp. 580; 4th edit. London, 1616, 8vo; 5th edit. London, 1630, 8vo. Dedicated to Sir William Willoughby.
- ‘The Heauenly Banquet. Or the Doctrine of the Lords Supper, set forth in seuen Sermons. With two Prayers before and after the receiuing. And a Iustification of Kneeling in the act of Receiuing,’ London, 1619 and 1631, 8vo.
- ‘On the two Sacraments, Baptism and the Lords Supper,’ London, 1621, 4to.
- ‘De Confessionis Auricularis Vanitate adversus Cardinalis Bellarmini Sophismata, et de Sigilli Confessionis Impietate, contra Scholasticorum et Neoticorum quorundam dogmata Disputatio,’ Oxford, 1621, 4to. Dedicated to James I.
There is an engraving which purports to be a portrait of him, but it has been said that it is in reality a print of Martin Luther altered (Bromley, Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 86).
In a letter from Sir Thomas Bodley to Dr. King, vice-chancellor of the university of Oxford, read in convocation on 8 July 1629, Denison is stated to have presented some ‘very special good bookes’ to the public library.
He was the brother or near kinsman of Stephen Denison, D.D., minister of St. Katharine Cree, London, who died in 1649, and who published several sermons.
[Coates's Reading, p. 336; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 439; Hearne's Johan. Glastoniensis, p. 632; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vii. 162; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England (1824), ii. 65; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.]
DENISON, JOHN EVELYN, Viscount Ossington (1800–1873), speaker of the House of Commons, was the eldest son of John Denison of Ossington, Nottinghamshire, by his second wife, Charlotte, daughter of Samuel Estwick. He was born at Ossing-
