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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).

Edward de Vere,
17th Earl of Oxford.

Pt. 1 - How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).


Pt. 2-1 - The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie


Pt. 2-2 - Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Pt. 2-3 - Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.


Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).Virtual Grub Street. 19 July 2017.


Going back over the documents relating to the Edward de Vere’s return from Venice to England, I am led to a number of observations.  In Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof, I stressed certain documents suggesting that the Earl of Oxford, De Vere, had to have left Venice in December 1575 and departed from a port along the western coast of Italy headed for Marseilles.

True, Benedict Spinola’s brother, Pasquale, had informed him that “the illustrious Count” was preparing to leave Venice after Carnival.  He passed the information along to Oxford’s father-in-law, Lord Burghley, in a letter dated March 23, 1576[1].  But De Vere had written to Burghley from the town of Siena, well south of Venice, on January 3, 1576[2].  Upon his return to England, he’d told stories of visiting Rome.  Spinola had provided bills of exchange to receive funds at both Rome and Naples.  Edward Webbe had written of seeing the Earl in Palermo, Sicily.  A trip to Sicily would require ship passage, the timing of which would have been precisely consistent with a return trip via the southern French port of Marseilles.


It seemed that Pasquale Spinola must have been mistaken or misled.  There would not have been nearly enough time to visit Florence, Siena, Rome, Naples and Palermo and to return to Venice.  Such a trip took considerable time in the 16th century.  A stop of only two weeks in Rome (the Earl’s subsequent stories implied longer), before sailing for Sicily, would have seen the Earl back in Venice well after Carnival even then not yet having had time to inform Pasquale of his intended schedule.  Pasquale’s letter would have taken time to get to Benedict who then could not have written Burghley by March 23.  Viola!  Edward had to have left Venice in December.

But I find myself reminded (by virtue of my review), of the choirboy, Orazio Cuoco, who left with Edward to perform in England.  After his return to Italy, when interrogated by the Venetian authorities about “Millort de Uoxfor,” he stated that they departed Venice after the last day of Carnival.[3]  That Pasquale Spinoza can have been mistaken, I could conceive, but that both he and a member of Edward’s party were mistaken is highly unlikely.  The party departed Venice on March 5 or 6 of 1576.  His luggage departed ahead of time to await him in the French city of Lyon.


 In Benedict Spinola’s letter of March 23, he also mentions his surprise that the Earl of Oxford did not redeem his bill of exchange for Naples.  This strongly suggests that he did redeem the bill for Rome.  It now seems more likely that Edward did visit Rome at some length and then returned north at speed in order to arrive at Venice in time for Carnival. 

But how was he seen in Palermo?  More on this in Part 2 [Link].




[1] March 23. 685. Benedetto Spinola to Lord Burghley.  Calendar Of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign Of Elizabeth, 1575-77.  London: Longman & Co., Paternoster Row ; Trubner & Co., Ludgate Hill : 1880.  277.
[2] Nelson, Alan.  Alan H. Nelson Homepage, UC Berkley.  http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/
PERSONAL/760103.html.  “Endorsed (B): 3 Ianuary 1575 The Erle of oxford by M spinolas packett. Received ye 17 of february.”
[3] “Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Savi all’Eresia, Santo Uffizio. b. 41” tr. Noemi Magri. The Oxford Authorship Site (Nina Green), www.oxford-shakespeare.com/
DocumentsOther/Archivio_di_Stato_1577.pdf  “A printed version of Dr. Magri’s English translation is available in the January-February 2002 edition of the De Vere Society Newsletter, and in Malim, Richard, ed., Great Oxford (Tunbridge Wells: Parapress, 2004), pp. 45-9.”




  • Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere).  "Even most people who assert that the Earl of Oxford was the poet and playwright Shake-speare (a group to which I resoundingly belong) do not seem to know that she was engaged, in 1598, to William Herbert, soon to inherit the Earldom of Pembroke,..."





Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583. (p. 4)

The strength of the traditional interpretation remains what it has always been.  We have virtually no biographical information about William Shaksper of Stratford so who can possibly say that any sonnet does not fit his life?  Every bit as creative as the Bard himself, generations of scholars have collectively composed a story in which Shakespeare is deeply smitten with Henry Wriothesley, the “Fair Youth”.  What sonnets do not seem to fit the story well must be bent to fit.  In spite of the son/sun imagery and the clear statement that the sun was the poet’s joy for but one hour, this is said to be a sonnet about the poet’s disappointment with some flaw in the “Fair Youth”.   Thus fitted, all is gratifyingly consistent.


On the other hand, reading the text as written presents its own issue.  The use of the word “disdaineth” suggests an insensitivity from which the modern mind draws back offended.  While here it is chosen for its manifold play on words with the multiple meanings of the word “disgrace” from line 8, such wordplay itself feels cavalier.  For all Anne is not at all a good poet, we sympathize with the unmitigated pain her poems display.  For all Edward is a great poet, on the other hand, and this one of the greatest sonnets in the English language, the modern reader is bound to be disappointed that he was not less a poet and more devastated.  Might wish that there had been no question as to whether the poet might react with disdain toward a son so weak as to be defeated in the battle to live.





The rest of the poems written by the Countess of Oxford on the death of her son follow:



In doleful ways I spend the wealth of my time:
Feeding on my heart, that ever comes again.
Since the ordinance, of the Destins, hath been,
To end of the Seasons, of my years the prime.
With my Son, my Gold, my Nightingale, and Rose,
Is gone; for 'twas in him and no other where:
And well though my eyes run down like fountains here,
The stone will not speak yet, that doth it inclose,
And Destins and Gods, you might rather have ta'en,
My twentie years: than the two days of my son.
And of this world what shall I hope, once I know,
That in this respect, it can yield me but moss:
Or what should I consume any more in woe,
When Destins, God, and worlds, are all in my loss.


The heavens, death, and life have conjured my ill:
For death hath take away the breath of my son:
The heavens receive, and consent, that he hath done:
And my life doth keep me here against my will.
But if our life be caused with moisture and heat,
I care neither for the death, the life, nor skies:
For I'll sigh him warmth, and wet him with my eyes:
(And thus I shall be thought a second Promet)
And as for life, let it do me all despite:
For if it leave me, I shall go to my child:
And it in the heavens, there is all my delight.
And if I live, my vertue is immortal.
"So that the heavens, death and life, when they do all
Their force: by sorrowful vertue th'are beguiled."


Idal for Adon never shed so many tears,
Nor Thet for Pelid, nor Phoebus for Hyacinthus,
Nor for Atis, the mother of prophetesses,
as for the death of Bulbeck the gods have cares.
At the brute of it, the Aphroditan queen
Cause more silver to to distil from her eyes
Than when the drops of her cheeks raises daisies;
And to die with him, mortal she would have been;
The Charits for it break their perukes of gold,
The Muses and the nymphs of caves; I behold
All the gods under Olympus are constraint
On Laches, Clothon and Atropos to plain.
And yet Beauty for it doth make no complaint,
For it lived with him, and died with him again.


My son is gone and with it death end my sorrow;
But death makes me answer: ‘Madam, cease these moans,
My force is but on bodies and bones;
And that of yours is no more now, but a shadow.


Amphion’s wife was turned to a rock.
How well I had been had I had such adventure,
For then I might, gain have been the sepulchre
Of him that bear in me, so long ago.




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Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583. (p. 3)

sonnets (33-36) in which Shakespeare feels betrayed by the “Fair Youth”.  In its imagery it is a bit of a one off.  Being presumably a “Fair Youth” sonnet it is said to be about the young Henry Wriothesley.

The sonnet is not in itself so unquestionably about the particular short-lived son of Edward de Vere that it can identify De Vere as Shakespeare, or the child as Bulbeck, solely on its own merits.  It is only one of the dozens of sonnets, that I have presented in my books Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the truth and Was ShakespeareGay?  And Just Who Was He Anyway?, that perfectly match the known biographical facts of De Vere’s life.  The pattern is striking.  In that context, the sonnet can only be De Vere’s memorial to his son who died at birth.

The sonnet is numbered 33.

XXXIII

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

The poet’s eager anticipation is palpable.  His joy that the child is a male bathes majestic landscapes in glorious sunshine as in his finest memories, unleashes the dominant sun/son imagery.  But, then, “he was but one hour mine “.  He was swallowed up by clouds (the meaning here of “stain”[1]) and disappeared like the sun “unseen to west with this disgrace”. 




I would suggest that the only reason that the meaning has denied analysis for centuries is because interpretations that might fit badly with the myth created around William Shakespeare were never permitted to come to mind.  Freed of that restraint, I would suggest that the meaning of this sonnet is actually quite clear.

If I may venture a gloss on what the poem says: I felt at that moment like I have felt before majestic, sun-drenched landscapes I have viewed with wonder, then was suddenly surprised, without warning (like the transition between these two quatrains), the sun being swallowed up in clouds “stealing unseen to west” toward the disgrace, the unpleasantness of death.[2]  That’s just what that moment was like when my sun/son was for one hour with me and then disappeared behind the clouds to be seen no more as he stole away toward the west (i.e. death).  Yet I do not love him less for this.  Who can love him less for his eclipse when the sun itself cannot prevent its own eclipse?




[1] Or with our sighs we'll breathe the welkin dim,
And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds
When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.
Titus Andronicus, III. i.

She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass.
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why then, she lives.
King Lear, V. iii

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,…
"Sonnet 35"

Stain, v. …to eclipse.  obs. (Very common in the 16th century)
Oxford English Dictionary

[2] Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;…
Love’s Labours Lost, I. i.

Disgrace, [n.]... 2.b.  A misfortune obs.  7.  Want of grace.  a. of person: ill-favouredness obs.
Oxford English Dictionary



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Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583. (p. 2)

Cecil was not the most powerful commoner, at the time, in England, for nothing.  In the wake of the dispute, Anne’s name occasionally shows up in the Court accounts instructing the staff to provide accommodations for her during summer progresses and festivities at Court.  The accommodations do not mention shared quarters with her husband.

After many adventures, the brilliant and unstable Earl of Oxford separated from his wife, spent lavishly until he was effectively bankrupt and impregnated a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen.  The Queen punished her courtiers ferociously if they were discovered to have deflowered one of her Ladies.  His final punishment was exile from Court until he would return to his wife and exile from the favor of the Queen for the rest of her life.

Soon after husband and wife finally established a family home, we learn more about Anne’s life.  In May of 1583, she gave birth to a son and heir to the Earldom of Oxford.  All during her pregnancy she surely felt that things were turning very much in favor of her happiness.  Perhaps the child (their second) would be male.  A male heir could only endear her to her husband.  The child was indeed a boy and all indications would seem to be that both parents were thrilled.  It is believed that the child probably died the same day but certainly lived no more than a few days.


Even the children of nobility died young in large numbers in those days.  But not every parent was inured to the fact.  Anne wrote poems about her mourning that show she was devastated at the death.  While the poems were not emotionally raw in any contemporary sense, they were in terms of the time.  I give one here and attach the others at the end of this essay:

Had with morning the Gods left their wills undone,
They had not so soon 'herited such a soul:
Or if the mouth, time, did not glutton up all,
Nor I, nor the world, were deprived of my son,
Doth wash with golden tears, inveying the skies,
And when the water of the Goddess's eyes,
Makes almost alive, the Marble, of my Child:
One bids her leave still, her dolor so extreme,
Telling her it is not her young son Papheme,
To which she makes answer with a voice inflamed,
(Feeling therewith her venom, to be more bitter)
"As I was of Cupid, even so of it mother:
And a woman's last child, is the most beloved.

Although the poems are also not particularly good, they do show an educated mind, trained — in the Medieval fashion just being shed in England at the time of her youth — to take examples from classical mythology.




The brief Viscount Bulbeck being the son of the renowned poet and playwright Edward de Vere, we might have hoped to have the text of the father’s own memorial poem.  As far as traditional literary history is concerned, no such poem has yet been discovered.

In Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609), published shortly after De Vere’s death, however, there is a sonnet that centuries of commentators have declared is about the “Fair Youth” of the sonnets and simultaneously exhibits a son/sun imagery.  It is generally said to be the first of a short series of 



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Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Edward de Vere's Memorial 
For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.”Virtual Grub Street. 5 July 2017.
Hedingham Castle, the ancestral
seat of the De Vere family.

We do not know much about Anne de Vere née Cecil, the Countess of Oxford, wife of Edward de Vere.  Even noblewomen generally left little biography behind them.  But some brief introduction is in order before we proceed to the memorial poems she and her husband wrote to mourn the son who may only have lived outside the womb for minutes.

We know that she was the daughter of William Cecil and Mildred Cooke.  Cecil was the First Secretary (sometimes called the Secretary of State), to Queen Elizabeth I, from her ascent to the throne of England until he was created Baron of Burghley and appointed Lord High Treasurer on July 13, 1572.[1]  Upon the death of the Earl of Leicester, in 1588, Burghley became the Queen’s closest friend and adviser.

Mildred Cooke was a wonder of her time.  Her father, Sir Anthony Cooke, had given his five daughters the same education as his sons.  Not only did she know contemporary languages and Latin but she was particularly fluent in Classical Greek.  This some 100 years before England could boast even a small academic community of male scholars in the Greek language.  Acquisition of the language was something of a wonder and a sign of the highest intellectual achievement.

Being born from such distinguished parents the occasional curious fact emerges from one or another document.  From Cecil’s diary we learn that “Litell Tannikyn,” as her father lovingly called her, was born on a Saturday night between the hours of 11 and 12, in the bedroom on the Thames River side of his house at Canon-Row, Westminster.

die Sabati, nocte, intr hora undecima et duodecimo, in domo mea Wesmonast. in cubiculo prox. Thamesi, edidit in partu uxor mea Mildreda.  Int' hor. 3* et 4* post meridie filia que postea die lune baptizata nome suscep. Anna, imponetibus illud Walto Mildmay, milite, Anna Comit Pembrok, Anna Dona Petre.[2]

She was baptized the following Monday.  Sir Walter Mildmay, her father’s closest friend at the time, stood as god father.  Anna, the Countess of Pembroke, stood as god mother.  It is said that, while Tannikyn lived, she was her father’s favorite child.



William Cecil surely thought he was establishing his beloved daughter for a long life as matron over one of the most prestigious and wealthy families in England when he arranged for her to marry Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.  The nuptials were celebrated on December 19, 1571, in a grand ceremony at Westminster Cathedral.  The reception was held at Cecil’s grand estate at Theobalds.  It hosted the Queen herself, the great nobles and officers of the realm, and the senior diplomatic representatives of many of the countries of Europe.




Edward de Vere had no intention, however, of losing his place as the Queen’s favorite at Court.  He remained in constant attendance at whichever palace the Court occupied at a given time.  He continued to travel in the Queen’s retinue wherever she went on progress.  He did not choose to bring his wife with him.  After some time, her mother, Mildred, complained, and Cecil found himself in a very uncomfortable position between an angry wife, a devastated daughter and an offended Queen.




[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof, Richmond, VA: The Virtual Vanaprastha, 2013.  58.
[2] Burgon, John William.  The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1, 228.  London: Robert Jennings, 1839.  (Cited from Landsdowne MS. No. 118, f. 91.)  


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  • Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere).  August 24, 2014.  "Even most people who assert that the Earl of Oxford was the poet and playwright Shake-speare (a group to which I resoundingly belong) do not seem to know that she was engaged, in 1598, to William Herbert, soon to inherit the Earldom of Pembroke,..."
  • Shake-speare and the Influence of Ronsard.  May 22, 2014.  "If Shake-speare were actually born in 1564, the question should naturally arise as to why so many of the sources for his works were written between 1560 and 1580,..."
  • Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.