English composer Richard Dering (c1580-1630).
Despite being from England, he lived and worked most of his life in the Spanish-dominated South Netherlands, due to his Roman Catholic faith. It is believed that he would have originally been a Protestant in England in his early life, but later converted to Roman Catholicism during a trip to Italy in his early thirties.
He was born the illegitimate son of Henry Dering of Liss, Hampshire. It is known that by 1610 he had traveled to Italy as well as gaining a Bmus in that year from Christ Church, Oxford. From 1612 to 1616 he traveled with the British ambassador to Venice, and in 1617 it is known that he was organist to the community of English Benedictine nuns in Brussels. He returned to England in 1625 as organist to the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria and 'musician for the lutes and voices' to Charles I.
Dering's music must have had a wide appeal, for much of it was brought out by the enterprising Antwerp publisher Pierre Phalèse the Younger between 1612 and 1628.