The 16th Earl, de Vere's father, is said to have had his own company of play actors. Queen Elizabeth was 25 when she became queen in 1558. About 1561, when she was 28 and de Vere was 11, she and her retinue spent about a week at Castle Hedingham. In those days, when not on state business, daytime was spent in hawking and hunting, and the evenings in banqueting with entertainment by musicians, and dancing, acting performances called interludes, masques, and plays, provided by the host's resident players.

At about the age of 9 de Vere had already entered St. John's college, Cambridge university. He took his degree at age 14. But his father died in 1562 when he was about 12, and he then inherited the 86 family estates and titles of 17th Earl of Oxford, and Lord Great Chamberlain of England, plus several other titles. De Vere's mother was Margaret Golding, and her brother Arthur Golding was a classical scholar who translated Ovid's Metamorphoses from the Greek and was a tutor for de Vere.

After his father's death de Vere had to report to William Cecil, Elizabeth's private secretary and secretary of state for the entire country of England. It was the law that minors in the nobility had to become wards of the state until they became 21. Cecil was the Wardmaster for Elizabeth. So, a few days after his father's death young de Vere rode on horseback the 40 or so miles to Cecil's mansion in London, accompanied by 140 retainers on horseback, all dressed in black.

For de Vere, the next 9 years experience as part of Cecil's household was like living in the White House in Washington, or 11 Downing Street, next to 10 Downing St. in London. The centre of the nation's business ran through the frugal and parsimonious hands of William Cecil under Elizabeth, until Cecil's death in 1598. Arthur Golding was an officer in the Court of Wards under Cecil. De Vere's curriculum included Latin, Greek, French, geography, drawing, cosmography, penmanship, dancing, shooting, fencing, exercise, and prayer and presumably music since he played the lute and virginal keyboard instrument. His principal tutor was the Dean of Litchfield, a scholar. De Vere had, in fact the finest education the country had to offer. After obtaining his degree at Cambridge he continued his education at Gray's inn, the law college. His uncles included the Earl of Surrey, a poet, and Lord Sheffield, a musician and a poet. Even Cecil's garden was famous for its variety of trees, plants and shrubs and his chief gardener had written a book on the General History of Plants.

When de Vere was 13 his half-sister Katherine, who had married the Baron of Windsor, sued for his estates claiming his father's marriage to Margaret Golding was not legal. This was the earl's second marriage and Katherine was his daughter by his first marriage. This first marriage was to Dorothy of the Neville family, in 1536. Apparently in 1546 she left the earl on the grounds of his 'unkind dealing' and the bad company he kept. Dorothy claimed that in 1546 the earl went through a bigamous form of marriage with a Joan Jockey at White Colne church. The river Colne was in north east Essex. The countess Dorothy took this report 'very grievously.' There was also a report that the earl kept someone called Anne at Tilbury Hall. Tilbury is a port on the river Thames downstream from London and about 40 miles south of Castle Hedingham. It seems he ended both relationships before his wife Dorothy died, in 1548. Apparently 3 of the earl's men, led by Lord Sheffield and Sir Thomas D'Arcy, later baron Darcy of Chiche, both being brothers of the earl, went to Joan Jockey's house in Earl Colne, broke down the door, pinned her down, and permanently disfigured her nose, which it's said was a punishment in those days for a woman who was a whore. It's said that the earl's men were not dismissed after the incident.

This information regarding de Vere's father comes from a Stratfordian professor who states that it derives from a record of a series of depositions taken in 1585. Her doesn't tell us why these statements were made almost 40 years after the alleged incidents, or what the circumstances were surrounding the depositions. The same source tells us the 16th earl then contracted to marry Dorothy Fosser of Haverhill, Suffolk, but after the banns had been read twice, he instead travelled to Belchamp St. Paul's in Essex where 'in a clandestine ceremony conducted by a suborned vicar of nearby Clare, Suffolk, he married Margery, half sister of Arthur Golding.' We hear no more about the 16th earl's life, apparently uneventful until his death in 1562.

Now we can better see why Katherine, Edward de Vere's half sister, and her husband Baron Windsor, were prompted to claim Edward's estates. Their claim stated that Edward de Vere was a bastard as the marriage to Margaret Golding was not legal, and that Edward de Vere could not therefore inherit the estates.

Fortunately for de Vere the claim was not upheld. But he had to go through all this, proud and haughty young aristocrat as he was, at age 13. This is one of those incidents that can never leave you for the rest of your life. For example, it's said that some time afterwards the Queen with her often cruel sense of humour had reminded him of the incident and called him her 'little bastard" causing him to burst into tears and rush away from her presence.

De Vere's mother remarried shortly after his father's death. It's said she married an undistinguished gentleman, not of the nobility, and apparently dropped out of de Vere's life after that. He was busy with tuition all day at Cecil's mansion in London, or at Oxford or Cambridge or Gray's Inn, or with attendance at Court at the Queen's pleasure.

The Stratfordian source previously mentioned tells us that de Vere remained at Cambridge less than a year and never received an earned degree from Cambridge or Oxford. However, whether earned or not he received a BA degree from Cambridge in 1564 at age 14, and an MA degree at Christ Church College Oxford in 1567. He is said to have taken the 3 years of legal study at Gray's Inn.

It would appear that the instruction he received from his private tutors was at least as rigorous and scholarly as he would have received at either university, so that it seems to me to make little difference as to whether his degrees were awarded in recognition of his private education, social standing in the realm and personal ability or by completing a university curriculum. His private tutor the Dean wrote to his Wardmaster Cecil, when de Vere was about 13½ years old "I clearly see that my work for the Lord of Oxford cannot much longer be required." That year de Vere wrote a half page letter in French to Cecil. And during the Queen's visit to Cambridge he had acted in a presentation in Latin of Aulularia of Plautus at King's College chapel.

In 1564, when de Vere was 14, Arthur Golding wrote to him "it is not unknown to others, and I have had the experience thereof myself, how earnest a desire your honour hath naturally graffed (sic) in you to read, peruse and communicate... as well the histories of ancient times...as also of the present estate of things in our days and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit and understanding. Let these and other examples encourage your tender years... to proceed in learning and virtue... and yourself to become thereby the equal to any of your predecessors... whereof your great forwardness giveth assured hope and expectation... Your Lordship's humble servant, Arthur Golding."

Meanwhile, for the 9 years of wardship Cecil was running up substantial itemized bills on de Vere's account. £10 for one pair of black velvet hose. £15 for drugs during an illness, a total of £145 in one quarter year, with of course paper, nibs, and a number of books including Tully, Plato, the Geneva Bible, Chaucer, Plutarch. He read Plutarch in French 10 years before Lord North's translation into English.

There has been some discussion as to whether Cecil, a lawyer as well as Secretary of State, dealt fairly with his wards' estates. It may well be that he did. Even today a lawyer as administrator of an estate is entitled by law to charge a percentage of the entire estate as a set fee every year: a percentage fee of total disbursements, another percentage fee for total receipts, and another percentage fee for total assets under administration. Any sales of assets such as real estate would incur further fees, and all disbursements by the administrator for the estate would be charged. Over time it is not difficult for an estate to be whittled away by such charges. In any case it's said that over a 15 year period de Vere parted with 49 estates to pay bills, while Cecil, starting with very little when he came to power, by his death had amassed 300 landed estates. But it was not all one sided. Cecil had in effect been entrusted by Elizabeth with running the country of England under her policy direction. De Vere must have met at Cecil's mansion, or at Court, just about anyone of importance in England and heard about plots, counterplots, and rivalries of the various monarchs and prelates in Europe and met some of the participants.

In 1567, when he was 17, while practising fencing at Cecil's mansion, de Vere wounded an unarmed undercook named Thomas Brincknell with a thrust to his thigh. The man died the next day. Cecil apparently packed the jury which determined that Brincknell caused his own death by wilfully hurling himself on de Vere's rapier. Apparently the man was drunk at the time. It's known that Cecil had a network of spies and it's been suggested that the man was spying on de Vere for Cecil. The unfortunate result was that the man's death was adjudged suicide which meant de Vere was free of charges but the man was denied Christian burial and his pregnant widow and 3 year old son were stripped of their assets and "abandoned to relatives or the parish church."

During the time when I was in the navy and was a navigating officer on a ship engaged in some combined exercises with ships of other nationalities, a UK motor torpedo boat tried to cross the bow of a foreign destroyer but came too close and was cut in half. The engine room crew didn't stand a chance and a man on deck was killed. We picked up the survivors including the young "straight" or full time navy lieutenant in command. Later, in our wardroom I said to him "you must fell pretty bad, 3 men killed and lost your boat." "No", he said, "just an error of judgement."

I don't know which point of view de Vere would have expressed about the death of the undercook.

When de Vere was 20, and still under wardship, after some persistent requests to see military service, he was sent to the north as an aide to the earl of Sussex who had the unpleasant task of subduing the rebels and disposing of the survivors of a rebellion led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. The north was mainly catholic and the south of England mainly protestant. Towns were burned down and hundreds of men taken from their homes and put to death. It's not apparently known what part de Vere had in this or whether he was involved at all. He was there for two months.

Whatever he may or may not have done regarding the rebellion in the north, Stowe in his Annals described his return to Vere House in London ...

And so to his house... with four score (80) gentlemen in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him and one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognizance of the Blue Boar embroidered on their left shoulder.

We have come a long way from the life of William Shaxper in our search for the greatest poet/dramatist the world has ever known.

When he returned to London he faced one of the most significant events in his life. His wardmaster Sir William Cecil, administrative head of the government of England, told de Vere he was to marry Cecil's daughter Anne Cecil. She was going to be only 14 at the time of the marriage. It was the wardmaster's right to order this marriage. And it would greatly benefit the aspiring house of Cecil to have a marriage to the premier earl of the realm and Anne as the Countess of Oxford. This kind of strategy was how Cecil was building up his own family resources. He applied the same principles to state business and increasing the resources of England. The circumstances surrounding this marriage seem to have developed something like this:

De Vere was outraged. Her had seen this girl as a child of 6 when he joined the Cecil household just as he was becoming a teenager. He probably still regarded her as a child. He certainly would not want Cecil as a father in law. The only thing they had in common was that they had both attended St. John's college, Cambridge. She was apparently a quiet girl, completely under the domination of her father. It would be like having an enemy spy in your camp to have his daughter as a wife. Bereft of family as he was, de Vere went to the only person he could for help - the Queen. He told her he would not marry Anne - she was a commoner, he was an Earl. The Queen sympathized, but he was too late. Cecil had already discussed it with her and talked her into approving the plan. What Elizabeth did was typical of her. The marriage was postponed a few months, by which time Anne was 15, and the Queen elevated Cecil to the peerage as Lord Burghley. De Vere now had no cause for objection. The marriage took place. It was a grand affair at Westminster Abbey. The Queen was present. Anne had been one of her Maids of Honour and was now Countess of Oxford. There was one final silent objection de Vere could make. Apparently he didn't consummate the marriage. In those days before contraceptives there was no child after the first year of marriage, or after the second.

At age 21 de Vere was no longer a ward, and Elizabeth monopolized his time, keeping him at court. Apparently Anne's mother, now Lady Burghley, was sharp tongued and didn't hesitate to tell the Queen she was not giving the marriage a chance. The Queen, born in 1533, was now 38. The love of her life had always been, and would always be, Robert Arundel, the earl of Leicester. They had both spent part of their youth in the Tower of London and probably met there. Both were in constant fear of execution then. She called him her 'sweet Robin.' Elizabeth had pet names for her favourite courtiers. Archbishop Whitgift she called her 'little black husband.' He was probably often reproving her for her 'wanton' conduct. De Vere was her 'Turk.'

Elizabeth and de Vere shared ability to converse, read and write in several languages, their love of music, both played keyboard instruments, and he the lute also, they both loved and excelled at dancing, hunting, hawking, riding, writing poetry and love of plays. During the next few years he was the darling of her Court. She once sent for him to come and dance for her when a French emissary was in Court, but he twice refused, sending word he would not dance before a Frenchman. He was not punished for disobedience. But in all the long years until her death and his, she never ever gave him a position of authority. She had Cecil, Walsingham, Leicester, Drake, Hatton, Raleigh, Sussex, Essex, and others involved in governmental affairs of state, but never de Vere. Not that he didn't ask, frequently. Once, during the wars in Flanders, he was permitted to go as a soldier to join Leicester who was in charge there. But he was back in two months. Either Leicester sent word to the Queen that he was unsuitable or she thought he was, or she didn't want to risk losing him there, and he was either sent back by Leicester or recalled by her. It's doubtful that he asked to go back home.

De Vere was known as the madcap earl. Attendance at the House of Lords, where he was entitled to take a seat at age 21, might have subdued him a little but the Queen avoided parliaments like the plague and only called 5 in her 45 year reign. But she did call one in 1571 and the young earl did apparently take his seat in the Lords at that time. As she had entered he was carrying her train as the ceremonial Lord Great Chamberlain.

In 1571, with de Vere still 21, the Queen held a 3 day tournament, 'a solemn joust at the tilt, tourney and barriers,' (one day of each). The challengers were de Vere, Charles Howard, Sir Henry Lee and Christopher Hatton, who all did very valiantly, but the chief honour was given to the earl of Oxford, according to Stowe's Annals. This was a holdover from mediaeval feudal rather brutal sport. The challenger commonly came to the east gate of the lists... the Constable spoke to him 'For what cause...' in a ritual and the challenger replied in ritual language. The Constable opened his visor to verify he was who he said he was in making the challenge. Prizes were determined on:

1. who broke the most spears as they ought to be broken

2. who hitteth three times in the height of the helm

3. who meeteth two times cournall to cournall (parry and return)

4. Who beareth a man down with the strike of a spear.

Apparently the weapons were blunted to prevent death or serious injury, although deaths at tourney were not unknown.

One of the Defendants in the tournament wrote to the Earl of Rutland

the earl of Oxford's livery was crimson velvet, very costly...there is no man of life and agility in every respect in the Court but the Earl of Oxford.

He performed "far above the expectations of the world" winning against older more experienced competitors. Apparently he was a brilliant horseman and had a eulogy in Latin verse written to him about that. He was not the only excellent rider though; Leicester was another and so was Hatton. But de Vere is said to have taken first prize in all 3 tournaments he is known to have participated in, this one, and two others in later years.

These activities did not distract him from his greatest loves: poetry and music. He already had writers dedicating their work to him and he himself was writing poems, some signed, some apparently anonymously. It's been said many times that you can usually identify his work because he deliberately weaves E.Ver(e) or 'ever' into it and one meaning of the word in the original French being truth, the word 'truth', and the family motto being in Latin 'Vero Nihil Verius' ( Nothing Truer than Truth, or, Nothing Truer than Vere) is like a refrain echoing through his work.

The Queen apparently in his earlier days at Court called him Phoebus and Cupid, and when he was obstreperous Boar, the blue boar being the hereditary emblem or cognizance of his family.

As early as 1569 when de Vere was only 19 Thomas Underdowne had dedicated to him his translation of Heliodorus' Aethiopian History. During de Vere's lifetime 33 books and music compositions are known to have been dedicated to him. The organist John Farmer who dedicated two books to him said

without flattery be it spoke those that know your Lordship know this, that using this science (music) as a recreation your Lordship have overgrown most of them that make it a profession.

In 1572 Castiglione's The Courtier, translated into Latin by Bartholomew Clarke, de Vere's tutor at Oxford university, was published under de Vere's (Oxford's) sponsorship. De Vere wrote the preface himself, also in Latin. This is almost two pages long in small print and it's been described as 'graceful, courtly and elegant.' De Vere himself was writing poems in English and Latin. It's said that after 1573 'he never signed his verses with his own name.' There is one poem in the Oxford 16th c. Book of Verse (1932 edition) shown as by Queen Elizabeth, but apparently the original is signed E of O. These early poems are competent enough, but he was too young and too popular with the Queen at Court then to have suffered enough and had enough experience for his verse to have much bite and tautness to it. I see no point in quoting from his verse and getting into arguments as to whether stylistically he was or was not, and was capable of or not, of being William Shakespeare. Somebody was, and my reasoning is that writers do their finest work when writing about things they know best or have experienced personally. I'm posting to the Web as I go along so at present I have no more idea than you do as to how this enquiry is going to end. De Vere at present to us is just a candidate and his cause will, in my view, stand or fall on a match between his life experience and what William Shakespeare wrote about. And that's why we're going through the main events in de Vere's life with some particular attention.

In 1572 de Vere staged a 'spectacular mock battle for public entertainment at Warwick Castle.' It was part of the Queen's annual summer progress around the country. The location was on the banks of the river Avon. De Vere was a commander of one side in this performance which involved hundreds of soldiers. Cannons sent firebrands across the river. Two wooden forts were constructed for the occasion. The Earl of Warwick commanded the opposing force.

In August, 1572 came the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris, France, which was intended to wipe out the Protestants in that city. Many in England were shocked by this event. Christopher Marlowe wrote a play called The Massacre at Paris. De Vere wrote a friendly letter to Cecil warning him to be careful of his own safety. Cecil was a staunch Protestant, with leanings towards Puritanism, an extreme form. That is probably partly why he was so opposed to plays, playwrights, actors and theatres.

1573 was an eventful year in de Vere's life. Thomas Bedingfield provided his translation of Cardanus Comfort to de Vere, saying he was too modest to publish his work, which was a meditation on death by a leading Italian mathematician, Geronimo Cardano. De Vere wrote a long prefatory letter saying that the author should not keep his work from the world. It's an eloquent piece of writing, effortlessly maintains the same polished standard throughout, and is somewhat dense in style.

A pivotal event occurs on May 20, 1573. On that day 3 of de Vere's men, Danye Wylkyns, John Hannam and Maurice Dennis, alias Deny the Frenchman, according to a later letter of accusation sent to Burghley, attacked with muskets two of their former associates, now Burghley's men, at Gad's Hill, on the road between Gravesend and Rochester. These two men, William Ffaunt and John Wotton, in their letter charged that their attackers "lay privily in a ditch awaiting our coming with full intent to murder us" and "our late noble Lord and master (Oxford) who with pardon be it spoken, is to be thought of as the procurer of that which is done." Another source tells us

shots were fired at close range, but no one was hit. The gunfire was so close, the letter said, that the saddle girth on one of the horses broke and the rider was thrown to the ground. "It please God to deliver us from that determined mischief" the victims told Burghley. They went on to complain that the same men "beset our lodgings" in London and forced them to flee to Gravesend, where they still felt themselves to be in danger. They pleaded with Burghley to provide them with security from their attackers and from Oxford "as the procurer of that which is done". Oxford may have been more than just the instigator. The victims mention his 'raging demeanor" which suggests they saw him at the scene...they do not accuse him of having been there...

We're told that de Vere interceded on behalf of his men but Burghley punished them. We're not told how. I have consulted 8 secondary sources on this important incident, both Stratfordian and Oxfordian. Each contains some different snippets of information. None give the letter of complaint in full. As my days of access to original research material have long gone, we have to be content with what we can piece together from these secondary sources. There are a number of unanswered questions here. Was there any indication of personal injury? Was there any theft? If not, was there merely harassment? Was all that happened at Gad's Hill that shots were fired, which either intentionally or unintentionally missed? Was the only injury that a man and his horse were frightened and as a result the man fell off his horse? Why did the attack continue when the victims reached their destination? If the attackers rode off towards London, how did they know where to find the victims later? Did the attackers verbally threaten the victims, and if so, what did they say? How did the Earl of Oxford intercede, was it in writing, if so, to whom, and what did he say? And finally, how were the men punished, was there a court case and a judgement?

I have a volume of Tudor constitutional documents, printed from the originals. That's because one of my history tutors was a constitutional historian. If it were a question of early Canadian history, I have, for example, a copy of the 1839 Durham Report. But this Gad's Hill incident is of no historical significance. I was not even aware of it in my study of history. But in the foggy world of literature and literary criticism it is an important event. Is the problem here that perhaps none of the 8 secondary sources I consulted had read the original documentation and each copied one from another or some other secondary source. That happens more often than one might suppose. The end result is that we have a very imperfect report on this important incident. It seems most probable that de Vere inspired it, and that there was never any intent at theft or injury, but we don't know why he initiated it and we don't have access to the full circumstances and accusatory letter.

But back to de Vere. The next year, 1574, ambassador Henry Killigrew at Edinburgh wrote to Walsingham, Elizabeth's 'spy master', dated July 18,

My Lord of Oxford and Lord Seymour are fled out of England and passed by Bruges to Brussels.

It's also suggested that he went in connection with one of many catholic plots to replace Elizabeth as Queen. Apparently he had made efforts to help his cousin the Duke of Norfolk who had been accused of involvement in one such intrigue. But Norfolk was arrested in 1569, about the time of the northern rebellion of Northumberland and Westmoreland, when as we saw, young de Vere went briefly as an aide to Sussex, who put it down. And Norfolk after due process was executed in 1572, so the whole Norfolk incident is irrelevant in 1574. The puzzle is why use the word 'fled' when de Vere was in such favour at Court, and was throughout his life a devoted subject to Elizabeth, as an honourable feudal Lord would have or should have been. Others say he went to Flanders, which might relate to the protestant resistance in the Netherlands led by William the Silent against Spanish catholic overlordship. Whatever his reason for going, he did not first inform the Queen and ask her permission. Either he did not know he should have, or thought it no great matter and she would not mind. When she found out she sent his friend Thomas Bedingfield to bring him back, and he returned promptly. There was no serious repercussion as a result of this incident.

It seems clear that de Vere had no seditious intent and that catholic plotters 'saught conference with him, a thing he utterly refused.' Burghley played an important part in soothing everyone down and vouching for de Vere's patriotism. Burghley seems to have had his hands full tidying up after his unpredictable son-in-law. Fortunately for de Vere, his father-in-law had experience in running England for Elizabeth and so was equal to the task of dealing with de Vere. But de Vere seems never really to have appreciated what Burghley did for him from time to time. He probably just expected it of him as the proper thing to do.

After his return from the continent de Vere told his then friend Charles Arundel (which some years later Arundel, a Catholic, tried to use against him) that while he was in Flanders the great Spanish General the Duke of Alba was so impressed with him that he made him Lieutenant General over all his armed forces then in the Low Countries. De Vere then went on to describe in great and convincing detail how he dealt with the siege of a city, personally led an attack, ending

then Master Beningfield, as the devil would have it, came in upon his swift post-horse and called him from this service by Her Majesty's letters, being the greatest disgrace that any such general (ever) received. And now the question is whether this noble general were more troubled by with his calling home, or Beningfield more moved with pity and compassion to behold this slaughter, or his horse more afraid when he passed over bridges at sight of the dead bodies - whereat he started and flung in such sort as Beningfield could hardly keep his back...

The detail, far more extensive than this excerpt I've taken tells us what a wonderful imagination de Vere had, and how convincing he must have been to so dupe Arundel. De Vere must have been most amused by it.

Meanwhile, Anne, his wife, and her parents, seemed to think that if she could become pregnant by him, de Vere might pay more attention to his home life. He'd been married close to 3 years and no child yet. There are rumours, perhaps apocryphal, that the 'bed trick' was foisted on him. This was a popular theme in the Renaissance world. Simply put, the man was induced to have a night time tryst with a woman in the dark so that he would think she was someone other than who it really was. Afterwards the duped man would find out who he had really gone to bed with. Whether this actually happened to de Vere we don't know. It may merely have been his feudal aristocratic sense of chivalry that made him leave alone a 15 year old girl until she grew up. Thomas Wright in his History of Essex, written in 1836, reported that it happened to Lord Oxford, planned by Burghley. But this is a report about 260 years later. In any case it appears she had sexual relations with him before he left for the Continent early in 1575. It's doubtful one night together would have produced a child, so presumably the sexual relationship once started continued for some time before he left England. On this occasion he left with the Queen's permission.

He spent about 2 months in Paris, France where he was entertained by the royal family: king Henry 3rd, the queen mother Catherine di Medici, and Marguerite de Valois. He had budgeted £1,000 for his tour, and Burghley was apparently still in control of his funds although he was no longer a ward. He took a mere 8 retainers with him. While in Paris he heard from Burghley that his wife was pregnant. He wrote back

My Lord, your letter has made me a glad man...I thank god therefore, with your Lordship, that it hath pleased Him to make me a father, where your Lordship is a grandfather... and hopes it will be a boy.

De Vere had his portrait painted and sent it, with 2 fine horses, as a gift to Anne.

Burghley was spying on him and received reports that his conduct in Paris was exemplary. Even the painter was persuaded to send back a surreptitious report to Burghley. This is no more, and no less, than Burghley did with his own son, Thomas.

From Paris de Vere went to Strasburg, in Germany, and met there the scholar Johannes Sturm. He is said to have left on April 26, 1575 for Venice. It seems he made this city his base for excursions into other Renaissance cities in northern Italy, visiting at least Genoa, Milan, Padua, Verona, Florence, Siena. The painter wrote to Burghley that he lost track of him in Italy and did not know whether he had gone to Greece or elsewhere in Italy. It seems that de Vere may have suspected the painter was secretly reporting to Burghley. It may be that - as another report says - he went by ship from Venice around the Italian coast to Palermo in Sicily. He would no doubt have seen the famous Etna volcano and Stromboli, an island with an active volcano. While in Palermo it's said he issued

There were no takers.

De Vere must have returned to Venice in northern Italy, for while in Padua, on September 24th he received news from Burghley that his wife had given birth to a daughter on July 2nd. De Vere thought that the delay in receiving the packages with the news might be "by reason of the plague being in the passages none were suffered to pass.." This presumed substantial delay may be significant, as we will soon see.

About this time he sent Anne a Greek bible with a poem by him in Latin inscribed on the flyleaf. It is full of puns on Vere, Veritas, Vera, and ends (in translation)

So that, thus alleviating the absent longing of thy dear husband, thee, a Vere, may be called the true glory of thy husband.

It seems their private correspondence has not been found, if it still exists.

There is apparently extant a letter from a Sir Stephen Poole to a John Chamberlain, written Sept. 21, 1587, from Venice. This is 11½ years later. In the letter he says he is happy to be lodged among a great number of

One Virginia Padoana, courtesan, is twice cited for breaking Venetian sumptuary laws (dressing too expensively) in March 1581 and October 1595. This is 5 and 19 years later than the time of de Vere's visit.

It so happens that I made a fairly detailed study of the history of Venice in my Is Our Civilization Dying? (See my web site for the complete study.) In it I found (chapter 4) that Venice began to go downhill morally, politically, and militarily, soon after the end of the 1500s. The information about Virginia Padoana may or may not tell us she was a high priced prostitute at the time of de Vere's visit. She certainly was 5 years later, and very likely was when he was there.

De Vere overspent on his tour by another £3,000 and had to borrow 500 crowns from the rich Paduan banker Baptista Nigrone. Money urgently needed was finally received through the Venetian banker Pasquino Spinola.

He left Venice in March, 1576 travelling through Milan and Lyon, France. He arrived back in Paris, on his way home, on March 31, 1576.

Now comes probably the most significant event in his whole life. He had been out of England for 15 months. On April 4th his steward, the manager of his estates who had just arrived in Paris to meet him, told him that the child born by de Vere's wife during his absence was not his. The steward said that Burghley had misrepresented the date of the birth, it was September, not July. Now the strange delay in receiving 'packages' of letters from Burghley took on a more sinister meaning. If the steward's information was true, Burghley would have had to wait for the child to be born in case he might have announced the wrong sex, or it might have been still born.

De Vere did not then know it, but Dr. Masters, the Queens' physician wrote a report to Burghley which apparently survives and states that on March 7th he had examined the Countess of Oxford and confirmed her pregnancy. The letter is quite long, but in it he reports Anne as saying

The Queen was aware of all this, and that de Vere had said in her presence that if Anne were of child while he was away it was not his. Apparently he had last had intercourse with her in October, and would expect to have known whether there were missed periods before he left at the end of December. Burghley it seems did not know he had not been with his wife after October and apparently assumed he had been with her in December just before he left England. Whatever the details, we can deduce that his correspondence with Burghley about the birth in early July he could accept, but if it was a September birth and Burghley had covered it up, then the child was not his.

Uncertainty about this haunted de Vere for the rest of his life. He had already been called a bastard publicly for gain by his older half-sister, and now this. Nothing could be more humiliating to a man, and to de Vere, already a poet and man of letters, highly educated and a public figure, it was devastating, and right or wrong, could never be undone.

On January 3, 1576 according to a note by Burghley, de Vere had "confessed to Lord (Henry) Howard that he lay not with his wife but at Hampton Court." This was in October. Knowing this Burghley would have realized that a September birth would not be accepted by de Vere, but a July birth would.

On de Vere's passage across the Channel from France to England his ship was attacked by pirates. He refused to land at Dover, where Thomas Cecil, Anne's brother, was there to greet him. Instead he landed at London, where his wife and Burghley were there to meet him. It's said he passed them by without recognition and went straight to the Queen, She it was who had connived with Burghley to marry him to Anne, which he did not want and had tried to avoid. It was not, then, a love match, since he knew Anne and what she was like as they grew up in the same household. And look at the consequences in de Vere's public life. He was now a subject for snide remarks and ridicule. There was no one but the Queen to turn to. His father was dead, his mother had quickly re-married a nonentity and dropped out of his life, his half sister had tried to disenfranchise him. This incident, and that fateful meeting with the Queen which followed it is I suggest, the most important event in his life.

On his tour abroad he had met the King of France, a Medici, a Guise, and a Valois. These were names to conjure with in history, and he had met them all, on equal terms. He met the highest born society and nobility in northern Italy, now becoming decadent. He had apparently, in his conceit and self assurance, issued a tournament challenge to all and sundry in Europe! And he returned to this - the loss for ever of his good name. He could not escape the consequences for the rest of his life.

He wrote to Burghley 27th April, 1576:

My Lord, although I have forborne, in some respect, which should (be) private to myself, either to write or come unto your Lordship...but now urged thereto by your letter...until I can better satisfy or advertise myself of some mislikes, I am not determined, as touching my wife, to accompany her...as...you mean if it standeth with my liking, to receive her into your house...it doth very well content me...I do not doubt but she hath sufficient proportion for her being to live upon and to maintain herself..this might have been done through private conference before, and had not need to have been the fable of the world...but I do not know by what or whose advice it was to run that course so contrary to my will or meaning, which made her so disgraced to the world, raised suspicion openly, that with private conference might have been more silently handled, and hath given me more greater cause to mislike.. Wherefore - now you shall understand me- not to urge me any further....

Edward Oxeford.

The friendly relationship with the whole Burghley family was now finished. And to make matters worse, it seems Burghley had been blabbing openly about the event. But through all this Burghley apparently still controlled de Vere's assets.

We left Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, when he was 26 years of age, experiencing intense anger and frustration and in the depths of despair. He had already lived almost half his life. He died at age 54, said to be of the plague, which was not unusual in those days. Death might otherwise come by execution or on a field of battle. Old age by our present standards was a rarity.

It may be helpful for us to compare de Vere's life with that of another Elizabethan poet, Sir Philip Sidney. He was 4 years younger than de Vere. He went to Shrewsbury school and Christ Church college, Oxford. He died at age 32 from wounds in battle. His death was typical of the man. Fighting to help the Protestants in the Netherlands he set out one day with a small force that included Sir William Pelham who had forgotten his leg armour (greaves). Sidney at once threw off his own greaves. Later he was wounded in the leg but managed to return to the camp. There he refused a cup of water in favour of a dying soldier saying ' thy need is greater than mine.' The whole country mourned his death. About 200 elegies were written in his honour. He is described as poet, statesman, and soldier. He had toured Europe and happened to be in Paris at the time of the St. Bartholomew massacre which he witnessed. He went to Italy, spent some time in Venice, went to Austria, and Poland where it's said he was offered the then vacant crown, and returned to Vienna acting apparently in a quasi-diplomatic capacity for the Queen and Burghley. He was summoned home by the Queen. In 1577 he was sent to congratulate the new Elector Palatine and Emperor and promote the Protestant cause. He met Don Juan of Austria and went on to Heidelberg and Prague. He proposed a Protestant League and Church Conference in a speech to the Emperor and advocated a general league against Rome and Spain. On his way home he visited William the Silent (of Orange), the Protestant leader in the Netherlands. But he was a man of letters and an accomplished poet, and even from this briefest of biographies we can see he was cast in a very different mould from the unpredictable, tempestuous, arrogant, irresponsible, artistic de Vere. 17th Earl of Oxford, who apparently was never asked by the Queen or Burghley at any time in his entire life to undertake any diplomatic duties abroad and was regarded more with envy and dislike by his peers than with the praise received by Sidney.

We know de Vere could write poems. Even a Stratfordian professor who is strongly opposed to the candidacy of de Vere writes

1576 saw a second edition of Cardanus Comfort, and a first edition of A Paradise of Dainty Devices, a poetic anthology with the initials 'E.O.' (Earl of Oxford) on its title page and attached to 6 poems. Anthologies with Oxford's name or initials appeared in print every second year on average, to the end of Elizabeth's reign.

We know de Vere wrote plays. Most scholars quote Francis Mere's Palladis Tania where de Vere's name was first in a list of 17 playwrights. Mere said he was 'best for comedy.' That was in 1598. The same book mentioned Shakespeare and listed 12 plays by him. Unfortunately Mere did not list titles of any of the comedies of de Vere and none with his name have survived.

So we have excellent 3rd party evidence that de Vere wrote poems and plays. From our perspective that merely makes him a candidate. What we are going to regard as a definitive test is how closely his life ties in with the poems and plays. If the match is weak, or doesn't exist, then whether he wrote poems and plays or not he cannot be the elusive Shakespeare. That's because I am convinced that successful writers write their best work about what they best know about.

De Vere had persuaded the parents of an Italian choirboy and musician, age 16, to let him be taken to England, apparently for a year. His name was Orazio Cogno. He lived in De Vere's mansion in London for about a year, as a 'page' but performed at least once for the Queen who urged him to convert to the Protestant religion. He came to know about 5 or 6 musicians to the Queen who were from Venice. She is said to have had a total of about 60 musicians. In later testimony from a court of Inquisition back in Italy he stated that de Vere 'speaks Latin and Italian well.' When asked 'did you obtain the Conte's licence to leave' he said 'no, he would not have allowed me to leave.' We further learn that everyone in de Vere's household was allowed to live as they wished, so that Orazio was able to attend masses in the houses of the French and Portuguese ambassadors. De Vere's relationship with Orazio Cogno is of some importance and will come back to haunt him, as we will soon see.

The Spanish ambassador wrote at one time with hopes de Vere would join the Catholic cause, but nothing came of it. De Vere seems neither to have been a devout Catholic nor Protestant, He was brought up as a Protestant at Hedingham Castle, and then spent 9 years as a ward in Burghley's staunchly Protestant mènage. Perhaps he was more of a Pantheist or even an Agnostic.

De Vere was still in favour at Court, but things were very different for him now. His self esteem had been dealt two very hard blows, bastardy and cuckoldry; whether true or not, the stigma was there. He was separated from his wife, who had gone back to live with her parents, Lord and Lady Burghley. His love life so far had not been great. He had been forcibly married to a young girl he did not want, who then perhaps for all he knew was adulterous. He was sexually teased by a wanton Queen who did this with several of her young courtiers, knowing that they dare not make advances back to have actual sex with her, as she was their Queen and could destroy them with a whim at any moment. And he had sex with a high priced Italian courtesan, who taught him more than he ever dreamt of about sex, but not love, and probably gave him syphilis.

But his spirit was indomitable. He was now concentrating more on writing poems, and plays for the Court. He began to consort with other playwrights, principally the so-called 'university wits.' There were some very fine writers among them but some were also quite dissolute, particularly Greene. De Vere knew some or all of them, Greene, Nash, Peele, Marlowe, Kyd, Lyly, Lodge, and others. On his return from the Continent de Vere apparently bought Fisher's Folly, today known as Devonshire Place, but known after de Vere's purchase as Vere House. It seems to have been a mecca for playwrights. We're told that by 1585 within about 5 minutes' walk lived Marlowe and Kyd (who lived with him), Greene, Poley, and the famous actors James Burbage, Edward and John Alleyn. Burghley regarded them all as dissolute and de Vere as mixing with his 'lewd friends.' This behaviour was not likely to improve relationships in his marriage. His cousins were also interested in the dramatic arts and he was friendly with them: Henry and Philip Howard, Charles Arundel, and Francis Southwell.

Lady Suffolk was one of those who wanted to see the de Vere marriage put back together. She wrote to Burghley with a plan. This was to 'borrow' Anne's infant daughter Elizabeth and walk into a room where de Vere was without saying whose child it was, to see if he would recognize any consanguinity of blood. She also mentioned he was on the point of buying a house on Watling Street. We're not told whether either of these plans came to fruition. The estrangement of de Vere from his wife continued.

Oxfordians say the earlier versions of, for example, Timon of Athens, or the Comedy of Errors, were written by de Vere and later improved, updated, and partly rewritten by him. The Stratfordians say these older plays were more primitive efforts written by others and Shakespeare took these and rewrote them to his own impeccable and mature style. Starting with a different premise, I propose to side-step this type of argument and consider only the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare.

As to de Vere, he has certainly told us what he is going to do. This should help us decide whether or not he's Shakespeare. I have said earlier I would not quote his poetry or get into the argument as to whether it shows stylistically he could or could not be Shakespeare. But I need to quote one poem now. This one is different, because it's de Vere telling us he has had enough, and what he's going to do about it. And being a Vere, with all his emphasis on truth, we should listen to what he says:

Fain would I sing, but fury makes me fret,

And Rage hath sworn to seek revenge of wrong;

My mazed mind in malice is so set,

As Death shall daunt my deadly dolours long;

Patience perforce is such a pinching pain

As die I will, or suffer wrong again.

I am no sot, to suffer such abuse

As doth bereave my heart of his delight;

Nor will I frame myself to such as use

With calm consent, to suffer such despite;

No quiet sleep shall once possess mine eye

He has told us precisely what he is going to do. By sheer Wit, or intellect, he is going to portray in poems and plays (devices) what has happened to him. He will expose the perpetrators of the injuries to him and his good name for the pitiful objects of humanity that they are. The names will be different, of course, and the plots taken from history, comedy, or fantasy, but the message will be there, plain and clear. His life will be an open book for the reading. And I, for one, believe him. He has the ability to do what he says he's going to do. This is no idle threat. De Vere's line in the poem just quoted

is no idle boast either. It tells us exactly what he's going to do, as we shall soon see.

We're very fortunate to have come across this poem. It makes our enquiry straightforward. De Vere has truth as his motto and in his name. When we've finished looking at his life we will look at Shakespeare's poems and plays to see if they have the evidence of de Vere's plan for retribution in them. If so, then he's Shakespeare, if not, then he isn't.

De Vere was trying to improve his own finances, but while keeping his distance from Anne his wife, apparently made over to her his estate at Wivenhoe in Essex and his Savoy apartment in London.

In 1576 Captain Martin Frobisher had left Gravesend with two ships to find the Northwest Passage to China. Humphrey Gilbert, Michael Lok, and Dr Dee - an astronomer and astrologer, a friend of De Vere's and known to the Queen, -had been planning the voyage for some years. It was a financial failure. Within 4 months the ships were back in England. 5 of the Queen's ministers lost money on this venture, but not de Vere. But in 1577 they tried again, the Queen leading the way with a £1,000 subscription. Finding some promising looking ore en route they returned. There was some excitement in England as to its value, was it gold ore as claimed? Now, just before the 3rd expedition of 11 ships set out, de Vere wrote a letter to the Commissioners for the Voyage to 'Meta Incognita' as an offer

Before the ships set sail de Vere contributed a further £2,000, buying the stock from Michael Lok, and de Vere was now the principal investor, But when the ore was brought back and tested it proved to be iron pyrites or 'fool's gold.' It looks like gold but isn't, and is almost worthless.

Frobisher and 40 infuriated men went to Lok's house accusing him of being

Cozen' = to cheat, to defraud.

Lok apparently already knew by the test assays, before the 3rd voyage set sail, that the ore was worthless. He was committed to prison. But all this did not get back for de Vere his lost £3,000. And before the end of the 1570s his total investment losses are said to have been about £5,000.

In 1579 de Vere hired John Lyly to be his personal secretary. This was no ordinary relationship on both sides. Lyly had attended Magdalen college Oxford and received his BA degree in 1575, when he was 21. He had petitioned Lord Burghley for a fellowship to afford to continue there, but was unsuccessful. In 1578 he became 'instantly famous' with the publication of a prose romance 'Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit.' In 1580 Lyly published a sequel 'Euphues and his England.' The hero's name, Euphues, comes from the Greek word for witty or graceful. Lyly's style was rather ornate in sentence structure 'based on parallel figures from the ancient rhetoric' and loaded with proverbs, references to history and poetry, ancient writers, textbooks, and imagination. He had actually created a new style of writing, called euphuism to this day. A thumbnail biography of Lyly says 'Lyly's style had a marked impact on contemporary writers, not the least on Shakespeare.' Strangely, this biography fails to mention that he worked for de Vere for '10 or 12 years' according to one source and 'his association began in 1573 and continued into the 1590s' according to another, and that all his plays were created while he worked for de Vere. The brief biography states Lyly 'got control of the First Blackfriars theatre in 1583, the year he married a Yorkshire heiress.' That's not quite the whole story. Apparently de Vere leased the First Blackfriars theatre in 1580, revived his family tradition of maintaining an acting company, and John Lyly produced plays there that were then performed for the Queen and her Court.

Now we get more external evidence that de Vere was writing poems and plays. William Webbe in 'A Discourse of English Poetrie' praised the poetry of certain Lords and gentlemen in the Queen's Court with Oxford 'the most excellent among the rest.' The author of 'The Art of English Poesy' said that some noblemen 'have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest of which number is first that noble gentleman Edward, Earl of Oxford.' Lyly wrote a number of prose comedies for boys' companies while working for de Vere, and only one in verse, in 1594. Lyly had dedicated his second Euphues work to de Vere. Anthony Munday, also a playwright, was also a retainer of de Vere's and he dedicated his 'Mirrore of Mutabilitie' to de Vere.

In 1578 the Queen gave de Vere

Where did these lands come from? From the estates of the decapitated Duke of Norfolk who de Vere had earlier tried to save. It seems generally to be agreed that Elizabeth gave away nothing, so what was the service for this rather small annual income? Perhaps it was to cover the cost of employing John Lyly, possibly Anthony Munday as well. She didn't spell it out, so we just don't know what the consideration was going from de Vere to the Crown in exchange for the payment.

In mid 1578 the Queen and her Court made a 'progress,' as a Court journey was called, to Cambridge. De Vere, with his superior horsemanship, rode a spirited steed next to the Queen's coach. He was at the height of his favour at the Court at this time. Gabriel Harvey met the Court at Audley End to welcome them, with Latin verses he had composed for the occasion. He began with a very long and fulsome eulogy to de Vere who probably enjoyed it. But the rest of the Court must have been bored and frustrated by it. Harvey praised his mind and fiery will, including the following sentence

Pallas was Pallas Athene, the spear shaker and ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, poetry and the fine arts. This fitted well with de Vere; one of his titles was Lord Bolebec, or Bolbeck, whose crest was a lion shaking a broken spear, and de Vere had been a champion at the Tournament lists. Harvey's panegyric continued

De Vere had known Harvey during his student days at Cambridge. Harvey correctly points out in his euphemistic style that war is imminent and urges de Vere to

All this and much more was spoken in Latin before the Queen and the entire Court. The Queen knew that de Vere had been pestering her and her ministers for active service at war so this speech would have resonated with de Vere, including the 'shakes a spear' phrase plus de Vere's own lion and broken spear crest. I think we have to chalk up half a point for de Vere as a candidate based on this. But only half a point because it does not account for 'William.'

So, July 1578 is the height of fame and fortune for de Vere, having survived allegations of bastardy and cuckoldry, what more could go wrong? Plenty, and go wrong it did. His 3 courtier companions, cousin Lord Henry Howard, Charles Arundel and Francis Southwell, were all Catholics. De Vere seems to have had no theological problem consorting with friends of either faith. But in December, 1580 he found those three friends were involved in yet another Catholic plot to replace Elizabeth. He severed relations with them and denounced them to the Queen as conspiring for the Catholic powers. They were placed under house arrest. All three denied the charge.

Howard and Arundel wrote letters to the Privy Council accusing de Vere of conspiring with the Spanish to overthrow Elizabeth (sedition) being a habitual drunkard and very seldom sober (a drunkard), vowing to punish the Queen for calling him a bastard (treason), swearing that Elizabeth had a miserable singing voice (defamation?), communicating with the dead by magic (necromancy), denying the divinity of Christ (blasphemy), buggering a boy that is his cook, and many other boys by his own confession as well as by witnesses - the list including Orazio Cogno the Venetian boy, some of the boys complaining and weeping (sodomy with a boy = pederasty). Some of these charges were serious, and if authenticated would be punishable by death. Burghley was a member of the Privy Council, and whether he exerted any influence in de Vere's favour we don't know, but the charges were not pursued, and the three accused were released after a few months.

De Vere now had 3 more enemies and a serious charge of homosexuality with young boys. He apparently never did deny any of the charges against him. They were just not taken up by the Privy Council. Also, a Stratfordian professor tells us that Henry Howard stated that Oxford had the Neopolitan disease. Every nationality seemed to 'pass the buck' on this. The English called it the Spanish disease, the French called it the English disease. The disease was syphilis.

I don't know whether Henry Howard included this in his list of charges against de Vere or stated it elsewhere. If de Vere had the disease he presumably got it from the courtesan in Venice. But she was still alive and called a courtesan 19 years later. A medical book I happen to have gives this description:

Howard also said de Vere was applying a salve to his legs. This might refer to the disease, or could have been due to an accident in a gondola at Venice where he was said to have hurt a leg. We cannot be sure from this patchy evidence whether or not he had the disease. He apparently didn't die from it as his death notice said 'Plague.' Perhaps something later in his life story or in Shakespeare's plays - if he becomes a successful candidate - may give us more clues. If he's not a successful candidate, it's not of interest to us.

But there's more to come. The Howard threesome affair had scarcely died down when something arose that affected his court life, which had been so far his greatest triumph and unsullied. The Queen was surrounded by educated young ladies called her 'Maids of Honour.' They were loaned to the Queen as it were in trust to look after them, coming from noble or wealthy families. Close personal attendants on a monarch had to be trustworthy to reduce the risk of assassination. As well as performing their mundane daily intimate duties around the Queen, these Maids included some who were precocious and lobbied for favours for their families, something like professional lobbyists at Washington, in the U.S. With all the young courtiers around them, there was much opportunity for sexual misconduct, and the Queen was heavy handed if she came across such behaviour. It's said one unfortunate Lady merely asked permission to marry. The Queen not only spoke very sharply to her, she rained blows upon her and broke one of her fingers.

The Queen is said to have been fair with reddish hair; Anne Cecil said to have been fair, and petite; de Vere had brown hair with a reddish tinge. And one of the Maids of Honour was a 19 year old somewhat sharp faced damsel called a 'beauty' with jet black hair, who had a quick wit, a great sense of humour and high intelligence. She, it seems, made advances to de Vere. She was what in earlier days was called a Siren - a woman who could get the attention, fascinated attachment and sex from the man she wanted by whatever strategy worked. And that's what Anne Vavasour did with de Vere. She's also spelled as Vasavor and Vavasor. She enticed him into a torrid love affair with her.

He should have known better. There could be no good outcome. He couldn't marry her. He was married to Anne Cecil, though they lived apart. The Queen thought of de Vere, Leicester, Hatton, men close to her who she favoured, as untouchable. Her Maids of Honour were also untouchable. Elizabeth probably had a child by Leicester, the evidence is quite strong, but years later after giving up hope of marrying her he secretly married someone else. When Elizabeth found out she was in a rage and nearly put Leicester in the Tower (but had no legal reason). She insulted his wife from that day on. She had deliberately kept de Vere away from his wife and we don't really know what went on between the Queen and de Vere. But now the inevitable happened. Anne Vavasour became pregnant.

When the child was born on 21 March 1581 Elizabeth clapped Anne and the infant into the Tower, and when she found out that de Vere had fathered it, the word went out to get him. He was searched for, found, placed under arrest by 29 April, brought back and put in the Tower. Stratfordians say he 'took French leave' and was brought back; Oxfordians just say all three were put in the Tower. It makes little difference. The Queen was outraged. His Court life as it had been with Elizabeth was finished.

It may seem to you that I have been unfair to Anne Vavasour. After all, she was only 19, but de Vere, a married man, was 30. Thomas Knyvet and Thomas Vavasour certainly thought it was all de Vere's fault, as we will soon see. But apparently she had a reputation for promiscuity, or I suggest a more accurate description could be sexual precocity. She married a few years later but subsequently left her husband to become the mistress of Sir Henry Lee. She bore him an illegitimate child and after his death re-married, was convicted of bigamy and fined £200. We're told the fine was later remitted, but not told why.

I have tried to find out who raised the de Vere illegitimate child. Did Anne Vavasour take him around with her from man to man? Or did de Vere take care of his upbringing. There's no evidence I've been able to find that he did. The child was called Edward Vere. 'By the time he was 17 he was a distinguished soldier fighting with Sir Horatio de Vere in the Low Countries, and something of a poet as well.' 'In 1607 he was knighted, (as Sir Edward Vere), having distinguished himself as a captain under Sir Francis Vere.' 'Eventually he became a lieutenant colonel.' None of these comments tell us how he was raised, but the references to the two 'fighting de Veres' who were Oxford's cousins, plus Edward Vere's military history suggest he was probably raised by Horatio or Francis de Vere.

During this eventful year of 1581, de Vere's company of actors began making tours of the smaller cities in England: Bristol, Coventry, Dover, Norwich and perhaps others. They continued giving performances throughout 1582, 1583, and 1584. It's said they visited Stratford on Avon in 1584. This raises some interesting possibilities. In 1583 his company played at court under Oxford's name, but Lyly took them there, and Evans did in 1584. Hunnis, master of a boy's choir, Evans and Lyly worked together under de Vere's direction.

In December 1581 Anne, de Vere's wife, wrote to him

Elizabeth released Anne Vavasour, her infant son, and de Vere from the Tower after a few months, but he was banished from the Court. However, all was not yet over in the Vavasour affair. Thomas Knyvet a 'well connected courtier' generally said to be 'apparently a kinsman of Anne Vavasour" attacked de Vere with a 'sword.' In the ensuing ?sword? ?rapier? fight both men were wounded, de Vere apparently seriously. Street fighting later erupted between retainers on both sides over the next year or two, and 4 men were killed. I suspect Knyvet's conduct, apparently surprising de Vere and attacking him with intent to maim or kill, seems more like the conduct of an infuriated lover than a kinsman. It was not until 1585 that Thomas Vavasour, whose name does indicate he was a relative, issued a somewhat lengthy formal challenge in writing, accusing de Vere of leaving others to do his fighting and saying don't hide behind your nobility for 'I am a gentleman.' He continued

Although Thomas Vavasour had called him a coward, apparently de Vere did not take up the challenge. Meanwhile, Burghley seems to have pleaded with the Queen on de Vere's behalf, pointing out that imprisonment and injury was double punishment for the same offence. He concluded de Vere was 'ruined' as far as she and her Court were concerned. But after 'some bitter words and speeches' the Queen pardoned de Vere in mid 1583 and he was allowed to return to Court, though clearly things could never be the same between them.

De Vere had returned to cohabiting with his wife in December 1581, perhaps after receiving her plaintive letter. The son she bore him in May 1583 died one day after birth. Whatever de Vere's motives were, he apparently kept his wife more or less in a state of pregnancy from returning to her until her death in July 1588. The most charitable reason we can find for his doing this is presumably to try to get a male heir, a son. Instead she bore him 3 more daughters. Two survived, Susan, and Bridget.

Thomas Vavasour had begun his challenge with these two sentences:

No one knows what the tantalizing phrase 'that shadow of thine' means.

But there is a possible and perhaps likely explanation. De Vere had been accused of necromancy: dabbling in the world of alchemy, astrology, spirits, seances, prediction by communication with the dead, magic, secret societies, and the like. It's probably best described as the world of the occult. This world bordered on the religious, where Catholic priests exorcized those allegedly possessed by a Devil. Richard Mainy tells of exorcisms carried out at Lord William Vaux's house in Hackney in 1588. Dr. Dee, the astrologer and astronomer, was a friend of de Vere. John Lyly who was secretary to de Vere seems to have been accused of 'black arts' by Gabriel Harvey. And in 1582, Lyly ended a letter to Burghley with a strange postscript

All this is by way of introduction to saying that "Books of Shadows" were membership books of secret societies. We know that early in his life de Vere was moving in that direction because in 1573 a poem of his was published with the title Labour and its Reward. He begins

After a few more metaphors he says this

His cottage is compact with paper walls,

In four lines there seem to be some remarkable references to freemasonry: halls, high degree, compact, and paper walls (the Old Charges or constitution and history of the freemasons). It's doubtful this could be mere coincidence. De Vere would not be the only public figure to be interested in the occult, Sir Isaac Newton living in the next century was another. But Thomas Vavasour's reference to 'that shadow of thine,' and 'thy base and sleepy spirits' seems probably to be an oblique reference to de Vere's supposed involvement in the world of necromancy.

Various poets and playwrights were dedicating their works to Oxford in the 1580s. He was still being called the best for comedy, but by the end of the decade this would surely change because the early promise of fame and fortune was being replaced by disaster and calumny.

In 1583 de Vere's brother-in-law Lord Willoughby was sent on a diplomatic mission to Denmark. He returned to talk in some detail about what he'd experienced at the royal court at Elsinore, including firing cannon for each round of drinks.

In 1584 de Vere won his last tournament at Court.

In August 1585 after requests to Elizabeth and Burghley for military duties against Spain he was sent to the Netherlands to take command of a cavalry regiment, but was replaced by the younger Earl of Essex in early October. He sent his baggage ahead to England but it was captured by pirates. The most reasonable explanation for his quick return is that although an excellent horseman he was not suitable material to lead a regiment. You cannot afford to have incompetent leadership in a war; it costs precious lives. That was the allied problem in World War 1.

In 1586, the Queen gave de Vere an annual grant or pension for life of £1,000. It was to be paid in equal quarterly instalments, a wise precaution, or de Vere might have spent all of it before the first quarter ended. In the grant order there is no explanation as to what caused the grant, pension, or annuity to have been made.

Although we are not concerning ourselves with political history here, a significant political event occurred in 1586 which must have had an effect on de Vere's life. This was the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. To help us understand the circumstances, here's how it happened. Her ancestry was that Henry 7th, king of England, had a daughter named Margaret. She married James 4th, king of Scotland. Their son became Henry 5th, and his daughter was Mary who became Mary Queen of Scots. In 1568 her forces had been defeated in battle in Scotland and she had fled to northern England. She was a problem for Queen Elizabeth because Mary was a focal point for Catholic European powers to rally supporters in various plots to overthrow Elizabeth, who kept Mary in close confinement or 'house arrest' guarded in a castle or elsewhere for about 19 years. The Babington plot against Elizabeth apparently involved Mary although the evidence is circumstantial, and she was brought to trial in 1586. The charges involved complicity, as a foreign head of state could scarcely be charged with treason. Mary was denied counsel, as though the charge was treason, and she stood alone facing a court of men: the Archbishop of Canterbury; Hatton, the Lord Chancellor; Burghley, the Lord Treasurer; and 43 others, namely 29 peers, 9 Privy Councillors who were commoners, and 5 judges. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was one of those peers.

The Queen of Scots defended herself with courage. The abstract of the trial is most touching to read. The actual event must have been harrowing to witness for any sitting there, thinking to themselves, 'there, but for the grace of God, go I.' Despite her remarkable skill and dignity the end result was a foregone conclusion. She was found guilty. This was in October. Elizabeth procrastinated until the following February before allegedly signing the execution order at the urging of her ministers, then throwing it on the floor. Her secretary was later charged with exceeding his authority in having the sentence carried out. He was fined 10,000 marks and imprisoned.

Witnessing this trial and the events surrounding it, as de Vere did, must have had a profound effect on his impressionable character. He was 36 at the time.

Anne Cecil, de Vere's wife, died of fever in the royal palace at Greenwich during June, 1588, at the age of 32. There appears to be no evidence whether or not de Vere was present at his wife's death.

An account of the funeral has survived from the record of Sir William Dethicke, the Garter King of Arms

Elizabeth Vere was Anne's eldest daughter. This quasi-official record does not mention the presence of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, her husband, or her father and mother, Lord and Lady Burghley, or either of their two sons, Robert and Thomas Cecil, both brothers of Anne Cecil, the deceased. Lady Burghley died in 1589 and may have been too ill to attend. The Queen was present at the marriage, but it seems she did not attend the funeral.

The Spanish Armada was crossing the Bay of Biscay in July, no doubt being shadowed by smaller, faster English ships which would have sent word to English ports (by rotation of ships) as to the enemy's progress. England was in a state of emergency, preparing for imminent war. This may explain the apparent absence of Lord Burghley and his son Robert, who succeeded him in office after his death, but may or may not account for the apparent absence from the funeral of Thomas Cecil and Edward de Vere, husband of the deceased Anne.

Some Oxfordians, apparently basing their claim in part on a ballad, say de Vere outfitted a ship and was about to take part in the defence against the Armada when the Queen recalled him. A Stratfordian professor says that de Vere 'did not take to sea' against the Armada, and 'so far as we know' never owned the ship Edward Bonaventure. He continues

We might think that de Vere could not further disgrace himself in the eyes of the real world, but he did. The Spanish Armada proceeded through the Channel between France and England, while being pursued and harassed from up wind by Drake and other English mariners, The Earl of Leicester, in charge of the English army, asked de Vere to assume the governorship of the port of Harwich, in Essex. De Vere must have known it well, it was only 25 or so miles from Castle Hedingham and about 15 from his estate at Wivenhoe. He refused, saying it was beneath his dignity. From a personal point of view he was quite right. Even in the 21st century Harwich has a population of only 15,000 and is just a small ferry port to the Continent.

De Vere was not considering the whole strategic picture. Leicester, with 23,000 men at Tilbury, in the Thames estuary east and downstream from London, was only about 40 miles south from Harwich, along the Essex coastline. This was because the English plan was to defend London, with 36,000 men stationed there, and assumed the Spanish fleet, once linked up with their land forces in the Netherlands, would make for the level Essex coast and the ocean going port of Tilbury rather than upwind to the south of England with the high cliffs at Dover. This was no ordinary alarm. It was the biggest threat to England's independence since the conquest by William of Normandy over 500 years previously. When the little nation faced this emergency, de Vere had put his personal feelings ahead of his country's safety.

The Order of the Garter was an elective honour by peer vote, and from this time on, de Vere's support in the elections was insufficient to obtain it, and so remained until Elizabeth died.

At the time of his marriage to Anne Cecil, de Vere had signed an agreement for Castle Hedingham, the ancestral home of the de Veres, to be her 'jointure' (i.e. her sole estate limited to her for her use) after her husband's death, for her lifetime, secured by a bond of £4,000 to be void on her death. This contract, secured by a substantial bond, looks like the work of lawyer Burghley.

After the death of his wife Anne in 1588, de Vere had a house with 3 daughters, one 12 year old, the other two being infants. In 1591 what he did was turn the lot of them over to Burghley, and he honoured the marriage agreement even though Anne had died first, and gave the Castle Hedingham estate, his patrimony, the principal seat of a long line of Earls of Oxford and de Veres, to Burghley in trust for his minor age children.

The keep of the castle still stands. Its height is over 100 feet, and is a solid square with walls said to be 12 to 13 feet thick. There's a banqueting hall next to ground level, with a minstrels' gallery still intact. Above that are three floors of 'chambers.' Built in the 1100s it appears to have been constructed as a keep with motte, moat and bailey. If that's so, there was never a castle with substantial living quarters surrounding the keep. A motte was a natural or artificial mound on which the structure was built. A bailey was an enclosing wall inside the moat. Hedingham castle, close to the mediaeval village of Castle Hedingham, apparently had a fine Tudor style bridge constructed over the moat (now dry) in the 1400s. If the keep is all there ever was for residential living, it seems a bit sparse for the prime residential site for the premier earldom of the realm.

But de Vere kept his word, as we knew he would:

... raze the ground whereon my sorrow grew...

He issued a warrant authorizing the dismantling of part of the building, probably the bailey, and many of the outhouses. A history of Essex says he destroyed all the pales of the 3 parks, wasted the standing timber, and pulled down the walls that enclosed the castle.

Some Oxfordians say that's not true. De Vere did have some old outhouses torn down and the castle may have been in need of some repair, but de Vere did not destroy it. But if you go to a web site on Castle Hedingham one of the first statements you'll find is that the keep is still there, but the castle no longer exists. So it's not completely clear what there was originally and what was destroyed.

Here's what was happening to de Vere's patrimony:

Much has been written about de Vere's having wasted away his family estates. There is some truth in this. He once stated in a letter to Burghley that his own interests and what he wanted to do with his money came first for him. But a perusal of the will of his father, the 16th Earl, shows he was long on estates but surprisingly short on cash.

Here's an official bill de Vere received from the government in 1590:

You can see that no less than £14,000 is directly related to Burghley's activities on de Vere's behalf. Livery is an allowance for food or clothing provided for retainers and allowance for provisions for horses; at law it's also the legal delivery of property and a writ allowing this, so it looks as though Burghley was involved in these charges also.

To put this £22,000 debt in perspective, the Queen's total ordinary revenue from the entire country of England for the fiscal year 1588-9 was £294,819. So de Vere was hit with a bill representing a sum equal to 7.5% of the annual revenue of the entire kingdom. That, I suggest, was Burghley's response to how de Vere treated his daughter.

It was also Hatton's revenge. He was an implacable enemy of de Vere who had mocked him and made him seem foolish in some of his plays given at Court. Hatton was now Lord Chancellor and he had forced the settlement of de Vere's debts. Elizabeth apparently did not take kindly to this treatment of her poet/dramatist. She laid a demand on Hatton for 'arrears of 10ths and first fruits' for a staggering amount - almost twice his charge to de Vere. This seemed to be such a shock to him that he died soon afterwards, the same year.

Burghley did something else after his wife's death in 1589. On their family tomb in Westminster Abbey he had an elaborate inscription engraved, his position statement vis à vis de Vere and an indelible record for all time, translated as

There could scarcely be a more permanent and damning indictment of de Vere than this, and it also states unequivocally that the daughter Elizabeth is de Vere's and no one else's daughter.

In fairness to these two men, de Vere and Burghley, it should be said that fate had thrown these opposites together in an inextricable yet incompatible relationship. Each was, in his own way, at heart a noble soul, the one a statesman who, though called a fox, and crafty, used every quality he had to steer his country safely through perilous times for over 40 years. The other, called a madcap earl, used his fertile and vivid imagination to become a renowned poet and dramatist and be so acknowledged in his own right and in his own day, whether or not he was Shakespeare. These two opposites were tied together for almost their entire lives, but their life styles and destinies were by nature diametrically opposed. Each tried time and again to be polite and friendly towards the other, but every time they did so, the fundamental divide between them stared them in the face. De Vere was unstoppable, Burghley was immoveable. It is not for us to judge between them.

De Vere's fortunes seem to have reached their nadir in December, 1590. That was when Thomas Churchyard became involved. He was a writer and a poet and may have been the son of the Churchyard who was a page of Henry 8th and later was a Steward of estates for de Vere in his youth. If it's the same Churchyard, by 1590 he would have been quite elderly. There is surviving correspondence which shows that de Vere ordered him to rent some rooms in a London house. Whether de Vere knew it or not, the owner of the house was Julia Penn, the mother in law of Burghley's private secretary, Michael Hicks. It seems the rent for the rooms taken in her house was not paid promptly. Churchyard wrote to her

I stand to that bargain, knowing my good Lord so noble ... and of such great consideration ...that he will perform what I promise... I absolutely here, for the love and honour I owe my Lord, bind myself and all I have in the world, for the satisfying you for the first quarters rent of the rooms my Lord did take...

Churchyard entered into a bond with Julia Penn for £25. She wrote to de Vere

Churchyard then wrote to her

It seems someone on Julia Penn's side of the affair reported it to the Queen. This would not have been difficult as the Burghley faction was involved. Apparently this is all that exists so we don't know how it ended. For Churchyard's sake, it's to be hoped de Vere paid his rent. This is very paltry stuff for the premier Earl by rank in England, in 1590 now 40 years old.

We left de Vere at the end of 1590, when he was involved in an unseemly squabble over some overdue room rent in London. We had seen him descend to this level partly by selling off 54 of his estates and partly by his own disreputable conduct. But through it all he must have had qualities that attracted some people to him who became devoted to him, and we saw that Thomas Churchyard, the soldier/writer/poet who spent many years in his service, was one of them.

There is extant an 'indenture' between de Vere and John Lyly, another poet/dramatist, who spent many years working for de Vere. Although it's dated in December 1584, it is 'forever' and so runs during the final period of the lives of both of them, as they died in the same year. This agreement describes Lyly as 'of London, gent. Servant to the said Earl.' It recites at some length that the earl has some property in Stansted, Essex, made over for ever to Edward Hubbard, described as 'Receiver General to the said Earl' and Hubbard's wife, for ever, for which they pay £30-13-4 yearly rent. This rent the earl makes over to Lyly

The 'certain sum' is interesting and shows contract law has not changed much from that day to this. Past consideration does not create a valid contract. It must have present consideration on both sides to constitute a legal agreement. Modern drafting gets around this by inserting "for two dollars and other valuable consideration, receipt of which is hereby acknowledged...' But our main interest here is that it shows us how de Vere had used his property to pay his bills and salaries. It also shows us by the 'forever' that this document is innocent of the concept of inflation and what it may do to such binding agreements.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have evidence as to exactly when John Lyly ceased to be a 'servant' of the earl. But now, in 1591 both of them have but 13 years to live. De Vere in his correspondence mentions his 'infirmity' and 'lame hand', and in one instance he says that he 'has not an able body.' He gives that as his reason for his inability to attend upon Her Majesty the Queen. There is visible evidence for his physical deterioration. A portrait dated 1586 shows de Vere to be erect, proud, haughty, supercilious, arrogant, imperious, and every inch an aristocrat. But a 1597 portrait shows an ageing, balding man, humbled by circumstance, the fire has gone from his eyes, his body droops; this is the portrait of a man beaten down by the cares of the world. There is as yet no reconciliation in old age, it is a retreat in middle age. The 'what will be' of youth in his former portrait has become 'what could have been.' His hands now look as though there may be some deformity, perhaps arthritis. His right arm is resting next to a skull. It is this, the man de Vere has become, that we now have to consider.

One biographer has headed his chapter on this part of his life as 'The Recluse' and proceeds to write another 48 pages mostly on anything but de Vere. That's because from now on in his life very little is known about him. He has dropped out of sight and is no longer a public figure.

It's said with apparent confidence that he married Elizabeth Trentham, a Maid of Honour, in 1591, but no one seems to have cited a parish record or date for the marriage. Some say 1591 or 1592. As to the bride, no one seems to know when she was born. She is said to be the daughter of Sir Stafford Trentham, a Staffordshire landowner. One contemporary reference refers to her as 'fair' which evokes modern comment that she was a 'court beauty.' We don't know that. We don't know how they met. We don't know how old she was, whether this was her first marriage or she was a widow. It was de Vere's second marriage, he being a widower since 1588. She is said to have been 'a wealthy heiress' but no one tells us what her worth was financially. We apparently know nothing about her mother.

There are some things we do know. This was the first time de Vere married by his own choice. It seems to have been a love match. She bore him a son in 1593. Apparently there is no evidence for further children. The son survived to manhood and became the 18th Earl of Oxford. De Vere and Elizabeth stayed together until his death in 1604. She died in 1612. Her will says in part

I joyfully commit my body to the earth from whence it was taken, desiring to be buried in the church of Hackney within the County of Middlesex, as near unto the body of my said late dear and noble Lord and husband as may be, and that to be done as privately and with as little pomp and ceremony as may be. Only I will that there be in the said church erected for us a tomb fitting our degree...

She was, after all, Countess of Oxford. From this I think we may deduce that she loved her husband, and that he probably loved her, to make it so, and that he had not been buried in Westminster Abbey to which his rank entitled him, but in the local Hackney church with little ceremony, and not even a tomb 'fitting his degree.'

There is extant a letter sent by Elizabeth Trentham to a judge of the High Court. Because we have so little information about their marriage, here's the letter in full

Master Doctor Caesar, I should have delivered a request from my Lord unto you concerning a suit depending in the Court of Requests against an insolent tenant, that for the space of many years hath neither paid any rent nor will show his lease for my Lord's satisfaction. And now being by a late mischance in my coach prevented from the hope of any present opportunity to meet you at the Court, I do earnestly entreat you that whensoever my Lord's counsel shall move against one Thomas Coe of Walter Belchamp for the discovery of his lease and satisfaction of his rent, either you yourself or Master Wylbrome will give the cause that expedition as in your favourable justice it shall deserve, and prevent the dilatory pleadings which the injustice of Coe's cause will offer unto you. And thus commending myself very heartily unto you, commit you to the Almighty. From Hackney, this 20th November, 1602.

Your assured friend,

Elizabeth Oxenford.

This tells us she took some part in de Vere's financial affairs, and that she had a coach, which puts her in the top echelon of citizenry, as few could afford coaches.

We also see she is a competent writer, well educated, gracious, and of an open, honest, and straightforward disposition, and yet firm in her demeanour.

In 1597 Elizabeth Trentham had bought King's Place for the 3 of them. It was so called because Henry 8th, Edward 6th, and Queen Elizabeth had each stayed there. The balcony is said to have been 168 feet long. A near neighbour was apparently connected with a publishing house. De Vere now had an idyllic setting for whatever he wanted to do.

So what is he doing during his last 13 years? We know he had already written to Burghley asking that his £1,000 annual grant be commuted to a lump sum payment of £5,000 which shows how incompetent he was in financial matters. We know he was writing letters to Burghley until Burghley's death in 1598 and after that to his successor in office, Burghley's second son Robert Cecil, 'begging' letters as his detractors call them, asking for preferment. These letters do not become his station in life. They border on the obsequious. He wrote about the tin mines in Cornwall. He did have some originally, but must have parted with them earlier. He asked for the Governorship of the isle of Jersey, the Presidency of Wales, a monopoly. It was useless, the Queen and the Cecils politely ignored all his many requests and gave these benefits to others. The Queen, despite whatever she may have implied to him privately, as he hinted in his correspondence, apparently had him pegged at his £1,000 a year for life. For whatever he had done or was doing - he referred to it as his 'office' - that was all he was going to get. Here's one such letter written to Lord Burghley in 1594. He might have said 'I'm sorry I couldn't send my attorney to the appointment with you as he was out of town, please at your early convenience see him or other of my counsel about my case dated xx.' But he says this instead:

My very good Lord, If it please you to remember that about half a year or thereabouts past I was a suitor to your Lordship for your favour; that whereas I found sundry abuses, whereby both Her Majesty and myself were, in my office greatly hindered, that it might please your Lordship that I might find such favour from you that I might have the same redressed. At which time I found so good forwardness in your Lordship that I found myself greatly beholden for the same; yet, by reason that at that time mine attorney was departed the town, I could not then send him to your appointment. But hoping that the same disposition still remaineth towards the justness of my cause, and that your Lordship, to whom my estate is so well known, and how much it standeth me on not to neglect, as heretofore, such occasions as to amend the same as may arise from mine office; I most heartily desire your Lordship that it will please you to give care to the state of my cause, and at your best leisure admit either my attorney or other of my counsel at law to inform your Lordship, that the same being perfectly laid open to your Lordship, I may enjoy the favour from you which I most earnestly desire. In which doing I shall think myself singularly beholden in this, as I have been in other respects.

This 7th July, 1594.

Your Lordship's ever to command,

There are only 4 sentences in this entire letter. Unfortunately it doesn't tell us what his office is, or what the suit is he's asking to be decided in his favour.

De Vere was never awarded any political or military career with the Queen, but is known to have written a number of plays which were performed at the Court for the Queen's enjoyment. His annual lifetime grant is most likely connected with play writing and performing, because that seems to be about all that he did with his life. There is only one incident that has survived, apparently, as to his actual performing. It's been quoted often, but as it's all we seem to have, here it is. The story goes that as he was performing in one of his plays in his earlier, sunnier days at Court, the Queen deliberately dropped one of her gloves at his feet as he was in mid speech. It's said that without breaking the metre of his verses he stooped and picked up the glove while saying

Although engag'd on this high embassy,

Yet stoop we to pick up our cousin's glove

then continued on in his play with its unbroken iambic pentameters as though nothing had happened. That was the world he excelled in. No wonder he had a string of poet/playwrights as his secretaries. But since he more or less gradually retired from the Court as he grew older, his interest shifted from Court performances to having an acting company of players who performed in the City of London or the provinces. And we're told that his players performed in the provinces from 1580 to 1590. But in 1600 an anonymous play "The Weakest goeth to the Wall" was published with a title page saying it was acted by the "Earl of Oxford's servants." In 1601 another anonymous play was published also acted by de Vere's men.

Various noblemen had each a company of players, called 'servants.' Actors without patronage were treated at law as mere vagabonds. The noblemen were responsible for their 'servants' good conduct and gave them protection and patronage, meaning the noblemen paid them if their earnings from performances were insufficient to be self supporting.

In 1602 The earls of Oxford and Worcester amalgamated their companies of players. The Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor indicating that the Queen is now 'requiring' the Lord Mayor to allot them officially their favourite playing location, the 'Boar's Head.' There were several with this name. And the particular one designated here is not named by address. But the fact that it is a Boar's Head is probably related to de Vere having the Blue Boar as part of his hereditary insignia. This is about as much as we know as to what de Vere was doing in his last 13 years. Except for one more traumatic event in his life.

De Vere had been required to attend the trial of the Earl of Essex in 1601, at Westminster Hall. This was about 2 years before the Queen's death. It was a trial for treason. The Earl of Southampton was also on trial with Essex. The 'earls, barons, and judges of the land' sat at the trial 'according to their degrees.' From the abstract of the court proceedings it appears that each peer in turn had to pronounce 'whether ...Essex... Southampton... is guilty of this treason whereupon he hath been indicted, as you take it upon your honour or no?' for each accused in turn. The trial only took a day. Both earls were convicted. Essex was executed. The Earl of Southampton was sentenced to life imprisonment but obtained a reprieve two years later, when, on his accession to the throne, James 1st had him released from prison.

De Vere knew Southampton well. At one time there was a proposal by Burghley, who was then Wardmaster of Southampton, for him to marry de Vere's eldest daughter, but either he refused or she would not have him because it fell through, and Burghley fined him £5,000 in consequence of this default.

Some Oxfordians think Southampton was the child of the Queen by de Vere. In my opinion the evidence is insufficient, and fails for two reasons. First, if he were the illegitimate son of de Vere by the Queen, de Vere could not have approved the marriage of Southampton to one of de Vere's daughters by Ann Cecil, unless he was convinced beyond doubt that she was not his child. But his life shows that he never really knew, and therefore the marriage might be incestuous. Next, I think it fails because the Southamptons brought him up as their own son, their 2nd son, which seems unreasonable if he had nothing to do with either of them.

It's rather sad that in 1603 when Queen Elizabeth died he actually had to write asking to be permitted to exercise his hereditary right to perform his hereditary functions at the coronation of King James. If he did take part, the standing for many hours, his lameness, and 'not an able body' must have been a painful experience. He was probably granted this permission because James was a literary monarch, as much or more keen on plays, acting, and playwrights as was Queen Elizabeth. This was the King James of the King James Version of the Bible fame. James appointed de Vere to the Privy Council, de Vere at last received the Order of the Garter, was given back the hereditary rights to the Forest of Essex which his family had lost in political struggle before his time, and over the return of which to him Elizabeth had procrastinated for so long. And James confirmed and continued his annual grant of £1,000.

I have tried to estimate Elizabeth Trentham's age at her death in 1612. The Queen had died at age 70, but that was exceptional. Anne Cecil had died at age 32. Probably 55 was an average life span, as many women were worn out through child bearing in an age without contraceptives. If Elizabeth Trentham died at about age 55 in 1612, she would have been about 34 in 1591-2 when she married de Vere, who would have been about 41 at the time.

In 1608-9, when she was a widow, and their son Henry was about 15, and a teenager, she sold King's Place. She then apparently sold some of her own land as well and bought back Hedingham Castle, so that her son would have the hereditary Earls of Oxford estate.

Burghley did well for his granddaughters. Elizabeth, the eldest, married in 1595 William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby, a patron of an acting company and reputedly writer of comedies, though none have survived with his name.

Bridget, the second daughter, married in 1599, the year after Burghley's death. But by then the two unmarried daughters were in the guardianship of Robert Cecil, their uncle and Lord Treasurer of England. Bridget married Francis Norris, who became Lord Norris of Rycote on the death of his grandfather in 1600.

Susan married Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, in 1604, the year her father died.

Of course all three granddaughters of Burghley were buried at Westminster Abbey.

These three daughters of de Vere, brought up by Burghley, would have learned to have the same attitude to de Vere as had their grandfather. Elizabeth, the eldest, would have seen first hand how de Vere treated her mother when he returned to her between 1582 and her death in 1588. All three would have known of Anne's piteous letter to de Vere, protesting her innocence of anything and confirming her love for him. When she died he unceremoniously turned them all over to Burghley and at least partially disfigured their birthright, Hedingham Castle. Even the name Elizabeth was not a de Vere or Burghley name. She was named after the Queen, who had conspired with de Vere to keep him away from his wife.

From all they learned as they grew up in the Burghley household, de Vere's daughters would have known their father to be a lewd wastrel, a drunkard, and worse, who consorted with low characters in the theatre business, and who had frittered away the greatest accumulation of wealth in the land next to the monarch's. These children of de Vere's were probably taught to obliterate his shameful parentage from their memories; they were Cecils through and through. If you doubt what I say here, I suggest you might re-read what Burghley caused to be written on his wife's tomb.

Before we leave de Vere we should look at a sample of his handwriting. Here are the last few lines of a letter in July 1600 to Robert Cecil, Lord Treasurer, asking for his help in obtaining the Governorship of the Isle of Jersey The page seems to have deteriorated during the last 400 years, but there are no blots. He tends to write uphill. Here are the words in this extract from the letter:

there were a time to receive benefits and good turns from princes. Well, I will not use more words, for they may rather argue mistrust than confidence. I will assure myself and not doubt of your good office both in this but in any honourable friendship I shall have cause to use you. Hackney.

and brother

Edward Oxenford

We've tried to give a true and honest account of what is known about the life of de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, based as much as possible on existing documentation and 3rd party evidence, and not on hearsay, and including what is known of the better as well as the baser side of his character. It seems to me that after all his triumphs, failures and vicissitudes he remains a candidate for the elusive Shakespeare, and we leave him now.

From this point on we'll devote ourselves to Shakespeare's works and test what they say against de Vere's life. If de Vere fails this test we'll pick the next most likely candidate and repeat the life story process and test this next life against what Shakespeare wrote about, and continue on until we find a life that fits. Somewhere in Elizabeth's reign there must have been lived a life that fits. All we have to do now is find it. Then the evidence will lead us to a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt.

from Edward Furlong

Shakespeare's Plays: