Edward de Vere
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was born on April 12, 1550, at Castle Hedingham in Essex. He became a royal ward at the age of twelve after succeeding his father. De Vere experienced a tumultuous life, marked by personal and familial challenges, including a contested legitimacy from his half-sister and a scandal involving a fatal incident with an undercook, which was ruled a suicide. He received a classical education, spending time at Queen's College, Oxford, and later under notable tutors such as Sir Thomas Smith and William Cecil.
Throughout his life, de Vere was known for his tumultuous relationships, including a troubled marriage to Anne Cecil, which produced three daughters, and a liaison with Anne Vavasour that resulted in a scandal and a brief imprisonment. He was acknowledged as a patron of the arts, with several writers dedicating works to him, yet few of his own writings survive, although he was celebrated as a poet and dramatist during his time. Notably, he is associated with the theory that he may have written under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." De Vere served as Lord Chamberlain during the coronation of James I but struggled with financial difficulties and personal controversies until his death in June 1604, possibly from the plague.
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Edward de Vere
Courtier
- Born: April 12, 1550
- Birthplace: Castle Hedingham, Essex, England
- Died: June 24, 1604
Biography
Edward de Vere was born on April 12, 1550, at Castle Hedingham, Essex; he was then known as Lord Bulbeck. He succeeded his father, John de Vere, as the seventeenth earl of Oxford at the age of twelve, when he became a royal ward. His half-sister Katherine challenged his legitimacy—on the grounds that John de Vere’s marriage to Edward’s mother, Mary Golding, had been irregular—but his inheritance was successfully defended by his uncle, Arthur Golding. He spent a year at Queen’s College, Oxford, and was subsequently tutored in the houses of Sir Thomas Smith and William Cecil, the future Lord Burghley. In 1567, he killed an unarmed undercook, but the subsequent inquiry deemed that the unlucky victim had committed suicide by running on to his sword.
De Vere recovered personal control of his estates in 1571 and married Anne Cecil, Burghley’s daughter. They had three daughters, all of whom married into the aristocracy, but the marriage was far from happy. He became a rather unsteady favorite in the Elizabethan court, flirting with the queen but mocking her behind her back, then leaving for the continent without seeking her permission—but when he was captured, the queen relented and gave him license to undertake a tour of France, Germany, and Italy.
De Vere left for sixteen months in 1577-1576, traveling without his wife in the close company of a Venetian choirboy. He was challenged after calling Sir Philip Sidney a puppy, but the queen forbade the duel. He caused a more serious scandal when he fathered a child with Anne Vavasour in 1581, occasioning a brief spell in the Tower and launching a long feud with Vavasour’s uncle, Sir Thomas Knyvet. He ran through his fortune very quickly, and was soon in permanent debt. After his first wife’s death in 1588, he married Elizabeth Trentham in 1590. His son and heir Henry was born in 1592.
Numerous writers dedicated books to de Vere. The most notable is the proto-novel Euphues, by his some-time secretary John Lyly. However, de Vere’s own works remain stubbornly evasive; he was hailed as one of the best of the court poets by William Webbe and George Puttenham and identified as the best in Henry Peacham’s The Complete Gentleman, but only twenty-three of his poems survive. The most famous is the dialogue “Fancy and Desire”—in which the former interrogates the latter, whose self-portrait seemingly has autobiographical elements.
De Vere was also active as a dramatist; he maintained a band of acrobats and two theater companies, one of which played at the Blackfriars Theater, while the other toured the provinces. He was hailed by Francis Meres in 1598 as “the best among us for comedy” but none of his dramatic works survive, unless one credits the widely held theory, first advanced by Thomas E. Looney in 1920, that he signed them all with the pseudonym “William Shakespeare.” He served as Lord Chamberlain at James I’s coronation, but was never a favorite thereafter. He died in June, 1604, at King’s Place in Hackney, probably of the plague, although some later writers have suspected on moral, rather than medical, grounds that the cause of his death may have been syphilis.