Ancestral Trails 2016 » Edward de VERE (1550-1604)

Personal data Edward de VERE 

• He was born on April 12, 1550 in Hedingham Castle, Hedingham Sibley, Essex.
• Title: 17th Earl of Oxford
• He died on June 24, 1604 in 44 Phillipp Street, Shoreditch, Middlesex, he was 54 years old.
• A child of John de VERE and Margery GOLDING

Household of Edward de VERE

(1) He is married to Anne CECIL.

They got married on December 19, 1571 at Westminster, Middlesex, he was 21 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Elizabeth de VERE  1575-???? 
2. Susan de VERE  1587-???? 
3. Bridget de VERE  1584-1631 

(2) He is married to Elizabeth TRENTHAM.

They got married in the year 1591 at Westminster, Middlesex, he was 40 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Henry de VERE  -1625

(3) He is married to Anne VAVASOUR.

They got married.

Child(ren):

1. Edward de VERE  1581-????

Notes about Edward de VERE

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (/də ˈvɪər/; 12 April 1550 - 24 June 1604) was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his reckless and volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate. Since the 1920s he has been among the most popular alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.

De Vere was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and Margery Golding. After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth and was sent to live in the household of her principal advisor, Sir William Cecil. He married Cecil's daughter, Anne, with whom he had five children. De Vere was estranged from her for five years after he refused to acknowledge her first child as his.

De Vere was a champion jouster and travelled widely throughout Italy and France. He was among the first to compose love poetry at the Elizabethan court, and he was praised as a playwright, though none of his plays survive. A stream of dedications praised De Vere for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works, and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies, as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals.

He fell out of favour with the Queen in the early 1580s and was exiled from court after impregnating one of her maids of honour, Anne Vavasour, which instigated violent street brawls between De Vere's retainers and her uncles. De Vere was reconciled to the Queen in 1583, but all opportunities for advancement had been lost. In 1586, the Queen granted De Vere a £1,000 annuity to relieve his financial distress caused by his extravagance and selling off his income-producing lands for ready money. After his wife's death, he married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's maids of honour, with whom he had an heir, Henry de Vere. He died in 1604, having lost the entirety of his inherited estates.

De Vere was born heir to the second oldest earldom in England at the De Vere ancestral home, Hedingham Castle, in Essex, north-east of London. He was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife, Margery Golding. He was probably named to honour Edward VI, from whom he received a gilded christening cup. He had an older half-sister, Katherine, the child of his father's first marriage to Dorothy Neville, and a younger sister, Mary de Vere. Both his parents had established court connections: the 16th Earl accompanying Princess Elizabeth from house arrest at Hatfield to the throne, and the countess being appointed a maid of honour in 1559.

De Vere was styled Viscount Bulbeck and raised in the Protestant reformed faith. Like many children of the nobility, he was raised by surrogate parents, in his case in the household of Sir Thomas Smith. At eight he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, as an impubes, or immature fellow-commoner, later transferring to St John's. Thomas Fowle, a former fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, was paid £10 annually as De Vere's tutor.

His father died on 3 August 1562, shortly after making his will. Because he held lands from the Crown by knight service, his son became a royal ward of the Queen and was placed in the household of Sir William Cecil, her secretary of state and chief advisor. At 12, De Vere had become the 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, and heir to an estate whose annual income, though assessed at approximately £2,500, may have run as high as £3,500 (£1.06 million as of 2017).

While living at the Cecil House, De Vere's daily studies consisted of dancing instruction, French, Latin, cosmography, writing exercises, drawing, and common prayers. During his first year at Cecil House, Oxford was briefly tutored by Laurence Nowell, the antiquarian and Anglo-Saxon scholar. In a letter to Cecil, Nowell explains: "I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required", and his departure after eight months has been interpreted as either a sign of the thirteen-year-old De Vere's intractability as a pupil, or an indication that his precocity surpassed Nowell's ability to instruct him. In May 1564 Arthur Golding, in his dedication to his Th' Abridgement of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, attributed to his young nephew an interest in ancient history and contemporary events.

In 1563 De Vere's older half-sister, Katherine, then Baroness Windsor, challenged the legitimacy of the marriage of De Vere's parents in the Ecclesiastical court. His uncle Golding argued that the Archbishop of Canterbury should halt the proceedings since a proceeding against a ward of the Queen could not be brought without prior licence from the Court of Wards and Liveries.

Some time before October 1563 De Vere's mother married Charles Tyrrell, a Gentleman Pensioner. In May 1565 she wrote to Cecil, urging that the money from family properties set aside for de Vere's use during his minority by his father's will should be entrusted to herself and other family friends to protect it and ensure that he would be able to meet the expenses of furnishing his household and suing his livery when he reached his majority; this last would end his wardship though cancelling his debt with that Court, and convey the powers attached to his title. There is no evidence that Cecil ever replied to her request. She died three years later, and was buried beside her first husband at Earls Colne. de Vere's stepfather, Charles Tyrrell, died in March 1570

In August 1564 de Vere was among 17 nobles, knights and esquires in the Queen's entourage who were awarded the honorary degree of Master of Arts by the University of Cambridge, and was awarded another by Oxford University on a Royal progress in 1566. His future father-in-law, William Cecil, also received honorary degrees of Master of Arts on the same progresses. There is no evidence De Vere ever received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In February 1567 he was admitted to Gray's Inn to study law.

On 23 July 1567, while practising fencing in the backyard of Cecil House in the Strand, the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household. At the coroner's inquest the next day, the jury, which included De Vere's servant and Cecil's protégé, the future historian Raphael Holinshed, found that Brincknell, drunk, had deliberately committed suicide by running onto Oxford's blade. As a suicide he was not buried in consecrated ground, and all his worldly possessions were confiscated, leaving his pregnant wife destitute. She delivered a still-born child shortly after Brinknell's death. Cecil later wrote that he attempted to have the jury find for de Vere's acting in self-defence.

In November 1569, de Vere petitioned Cecil for a foreign military posting. Although the Catholic Revolt of the Northern Earls had broken out that year, Elizabeth refused to grant the request. Cecil eventually obtained a position for him under the Earl of Sussex in a Scottish campaign the following spring. de Vere and Sussex became staunch mutual supporters at court. de Vere received his first vote for membership in the Order of the Garter in 1569, but never attained the honour in spite of his high rank and office.

On 12 April 1571, de Vere attained his majority and took his seat in the House of Lords. Great expectations attended his coming of age; Sir George Buc recalled predictions that 'he was much more like ... to acquire a new erldome then to wast & lose an old erldom', a prophecy that was never fulfilled.

Marriage
In 1562, the 16th Earl of Oxford had contracted with Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, for his son Edward to marry one of Huntingdon's sisters; when he reached the age of eighteen, he was to choose either Elizabeth or Mary Hastings. However, after the death of the 16th Earl, the indenture was allowed to lapse. Elizabeth Hastings later married Edward Somerset, while Mary Hastings died unmarried.

In the summer of 1571, de Vere declared an interest in Cecil's fourteen-year-old daughter, Anne, and received the queen's consent to the marriage. Anne had been pledged to Philip Sidney two years earlier, but after a year of negotiations Sidney's father, Sir Henry, was declining in the Queen's favour and Cecil suspected financial difficulties. In addition, Cecil had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Burghley in February 1571, thus elevating his daughter's rank, so the negotiations were cancelled. Cecil was displeased with the arrangement, given his daughter's age compared to De Vere's, and had entertained the idea of marrying her to the Earl of Rutland instead. The wedding was deferred until Anne was fifteen and finally took place at the Palace of Whitehall on 16 December 1571, together with that of Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Lord Herbert, with the Queen in attendance. The tying of two young English noblemen of great fortune into Protestant families was not lost on Elizabeth's Catholic enemies. Burghley gave de Vere a marriage settlement of land worth £800, and a cash settlement of £3,000. This amount was equal to de Vere's livery fees and was probably intended to be used as such, but the money vanished without a trace.

de Vere assigned Anne a jointure of some £669, but even though he was of age and a married man, he was still not in possession of his inheritance. After finally paying the Crown the £4,000 it demanded for his livery, he was finally licensed to enter on his lands in May. He was entitled to yearly revenues from his estates and the office of Lord Great Chamberlain of approximately £2,250, but he was not entitled to the income from his mother's jointure until after her death, nor to the income from certain estates set aside to pay his father's debts until 1583. In addition, the fines assessed against de Vere in the Court of Wards for his wardship, marriage and livery already totalled some £3,306. To guarantee payment, de Vere entered into bonds to the Court totalling £11,000, and two further private bonds for £6,000 apiece.

In 1572, de Vere's first cousin and closest relative, the Duke of Norfolk, was found guilty of a Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth and was executed for treason. de Vere had earlier petitioned both the Queen and Burghley on the condemned Norfolk's behalf, to no avail, and it was claimed in a "murky petition from an unidentified woman" that he had plotted to provide a ship to assist his cousin's escape attempt to Spain. The following summer De Vere planned to travel to Ireland; at this point, his debts were estimated at a minimum of £6,000.

In the summer of 1574, Elizabeth admonished de Vere "for his unthriftyness", and on 1 July de Vere bolted to the continent without permission, travelling to Calais with Lord Edward Seymour, and then to Flanders, "carrying a great sum of money with him". Coming as it did during a time of expected hostilities with Spain, Mary, Queen of Scots, interpreted his flight as an indication of his Catholic sympathies, as did the Catholic rebels then living on the continent. Burghley, however, assured the queen that De Vere was loyal, and she sent two Gentlemen Pensioners to summon him back under threat of heavy penalties. De Vere returned to England by the end of the month and was in London on the 28th. His request for a place on the Privy Council was rejected, but the queen's anger was abated and she promised him a licence to travel to Paris, Germany, and Italy on his pledge of good behaviour.

Remarriage
On 5 June 1588 Anne Cecil died at court of a fever; she was 31. On 4 July 1591 De Vere sold the Great Garden property at Aldgate to John Wolley and Francis Trentham. The arrangement was stated to be for the benefit of Francis' sister, Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, whom De Vere married later that year. On 24 February 1593 she gave birth to De Vere's only surviving son and heir, Henry de Vere, at Stoke Newington.

Between 1591 and 1592 De Vere disposed of the last of his large estates; Castle Hedingham, the seat of his earldom, went to Lord Burghley, it was held in trust for De Vere's three daughters by his first marriage. he commissioned his servant, Roger Harlakenden, to sell Colne Priory. Harlekenden contrived to undervalue the land, then purchase it (as well as other parcels that were not meant to be sold) under his son's name; the suits De Vere brought against Harlakenden for fraud dragged out for decades and were never settled in his lifetime.

Protracted negotiations to arrange a match between his daughter Elizabeth and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, did not result in marriage; on 19 November 1594, six weeks after Southampton turned 21, 'the young Earl of Southampton, refusing the Lady Vere, payeth £5000 of present money'. In January Elizabeth married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Derby had promised De Vere his new bride would have £1,000 a year, but the financial provision for her was slow in materializing.

His father-in-law, Lord Burghley, died on 4 August 1598 at the age of 78, leaving substantial bequests to De Vere's two unmarried daughters, Bridget and Susan. The bequests were structured to prevent De Vere from gaining control of his daughters' inheritance by assuming custody of them.

Earlier negotiations for a marriage to William Herbert having fallen through, in May or June 1599 De Vere's 15-year-old daughter Bridget married Francis Norris. Susan married Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.

From March to August 1595 De Vere actively importuned the Queen, in competition with Lord Buckhurst, to farm the tin mines in Cornwall. He wrote to Burghley, enumerating years of fruitless attempts to amend his financial situation and complained: 'This last year past I have been a suitor to her Majesty that I might farm her tins, giving £3000 a year more than she had made.' De Vere's letters and memoranda indicate that he pursued his suit into 1596, and renewed it again three years later, but was ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining the tin monopoly.

In October 1595 De Vere wrote to his brother in law, Sir Robert Cecil, of friction between himself and the ill-fated Earl of Essex, partly over his claim to the property, terming him 'the only person that I dare rely upon in the court'. Cecil seems to have done little to further De Vere's interests in the suit.

In March he was unable to go to court due to illness, in August he wrote to Burghley from Byfleet, where he had gone for his health: 'I find comfort in this air, but no fortune in the court.' In September De Vere again wrote of ill health, regretting he had not been able to pay attendance to the Queen. Two months later Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sidney that 'Some say my Lord of Oxford is dead'. Whether the rumour of De Vere's death was related to the illness mentioned in his letters earlier in the year is unknown. De Vere attended his last Parliament in December, perhaps another indication of failing health.

On 28 April 1599 De Vere was sued by the widow of his tailor for a debt of £500 for services rendered some two decades earlier. De Vere claimed that not only had he paid the debt, but that the tailor had absconded with 'cloth of gold and silver and other stuff' belonging to him, worth £800. The outcome of the suit is unknown.

In July 1600 De Vere wrote requesting Sir Robert Cecil's help in securing an appointment as Governor of the Isle of Jersey, once again citing the Queen's unfulfilled promises to him. In February he again wrote for his support, this time for the office of President of Wales. As with his former suits, De Vere was again unsuccessful; during this time he was listed on the Pipe Rolls as owing £20 for the subsidy.

After the abortive Essex rebellion in February 1601, De Vere was 'the senior of the twenty-five noblemen' who rendered verdicts at the trials of Essex and Southampton for treason. After Essex's co-conspirator Sir Charles Danvers was executed on in March, De Vere became involved in a complicated suit regarding lands which had reverted to the Crown by escheat at Danvers' attainder, a suit opposed by Danvers' kinsmen.[160] De Vere continued to suffer from ill health, which kept him from court. On 4 December he was shocked that Cecil, who had encouraged him to undertake the Danvers suit on the Crown's behalf, had now withdrawn his support for it. As with all his other suits aimed at improving his financial situation, this last of De Vere's suits to the Queen ended in disappointment.

In the early morning of 24 March 1603 Queen Elizabeth died without naming a successor. A few days beforehand De Vere at his house at Hackney had entertained the Earl of Lincoln, a nobleman known for erratic and violent behaviour similar to his host's. Lincoln reported that after dinner De Vere spoke of the Queen's impending death, claiming that the peers of England should decide the succession, and suggested that since Lincoln had 'a nephew of the blood royal...Lord Hastings', he should be sent to France to find allies to support this claim. Lincoln relayed this conversation to Sir John Peyton, Lieutenant of the Tower, who, knowing how physically and financially infirm De Vere was, refused to take Lincoln's report as a serious threat to King James' accession.

De Vere expressed his grief at the late Queen's death, and his apprehension for the future. These fears were unfounded; in letters to Cecil in May and June 1603 he again pressed his decades-long claim to have Waltham Forest (Forest of Essex) and the house and park of Havering restored to him, and on 18 July the new King granted his suit. On 25 July De Vere was among those who officiated at the King's coronation, a month later James confirmed De Vere's annuity of £1,000.

On 18 June 1604 De Vere granted the custody of the Forest of Essex to his son-in-law Lord Norris and his cousin, Sir Francis Vere. He died six days later, of unknown causes, at King's Place, Hackney, and was buried on 6 July in the parish church of St. Augustine. In spite of his bouts of ill health, he left no will. Elizabeth's will requested that she be buried with her husband at Hackney. Although this document and the parish registers confirm De Vere's burial there, his cousin Percival Golding later claimed that his body was interred at Westminster.
SOURCE: Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford

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Timeline Edward de VERE

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