Where Edward de Vere Lived: 1550-1570.

Data mining need not be limited to the 21^st century. A variation is very helpful toward Tudor and Authorship studies. Having loaded up the letters of Edward de Vere, I noticed that he occasionally signed off with the location from which he was writing. At times it was a place that he was residing at the time. At times, the address was new to me.

This gave rise to the question: How many of Vere’s residences throughout his life do we know? I feel confident that he mainly lived his youngest years before his father died, in 1562, at the seats of the Earldom: Hedingham and Colchester. Unlike his son, Edward, John, the 16^th Earl, was not a courtier. He appeared at Court only when his duties required. The remainder of the time, he resided at his seats and traveled frequently to his various hunting lodges.

How often his son was with him is not clear. We can only be certain that the two both occupied Hedingham Castle when it was visited by the Queen in 1562.

A comment in Strype’s biography of Thomas Smith informs us that the latter was tutor to young Edward.[1] William Cecil mentions as much in passing in a letter to Smith. Edward appears in the records of Cambridge University[2], with which Smith was closely associated, which show him as matriculated in the Michaelmas (autumn) term 1558. His father had secured one of the premiere scholars and politicians in the realm to tutor his son. This, of course, came to pass a matter of weeks before Queen Mary would die.

Shortly after the ascension of Mary I to the throne, Smith had been given a small but surprising annuity to retire from state politics. Nominally, he had been a Protestant but he seems also to have been adept at playing neither side of the religion issue. Nevertheless, all of his residential properties were forfeit except for what would become the Smith family seat at Hill Hall some 45 miles south of Cambridge. Smith likely had been living in rooms at the University however much his official residence was elsewhere. 

[This paragraph revised 9-22-22] His residence being so far away, and under construction, the Lord Bulbeck having matriculated as his student, and the reign of Elizabeth at hand, it seems virtually certain that Smith continued to reside in rooms at the University. This being the case, young Edward certainly did the same. How long Edward’s residence continued is not certain.

Smith did not move to reside at Hill Hall in future years though he is sure to have visited it between terms, it being close to London. He was immediately called back into government under Elizabeth as one of its principle members. It is highly unlikely he lodged Edward at the Hall for further tutoring.

The next definite record of residence for Edward de Vere was as the 17^th Earl of Oxford residing at William Cecil’s mansion on The Strand. Being a minor, Edward was Cecil’s ward. The Strand was the most fashionable London street at the time. It ran from the outer precincts of White Hall, at Charing Cross, to the Temple District on Fleet Street. The street was called The Strand because it butted against the Thames to the south which served as the city’s highway of fastest travel. Each great house featured a water gate as parking garage. Cecil’s house was well on its way to becoming the most fashionable on the street.

Cecil always kept an open table at The Strand. Noblemen and intellectual friends were always in and out, as the result, to enliven the conversation. As I recall, the house’s large chapel occupied the east end of the house together with a large classroom. The school Cecil kept here was famous throughout the country. His wards and children attended. Noble families applied for their children some number of which were accepted.

It is unclear just when Edward took rooms at court. It is clear, however, that he did and that the closer he came to his legal majority the more time he spent at Court. Cecil held the purse-strings so lands were not yet being sold off to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. That would come after he reached the age at which he was his own master.

As his majority approached, in 1570, Edward signed a lease to occupy the master’s rooms of the Savoy[3] directly across The Strand from Cecil House. The great palace of John of Gaunt — the Savoy — had been converted into a charity hospital after his days. A funding crisis was eventually resolved, in part, through renting the high-end apartments and buildings of the palace.

The humbler rooms went to the likes of Cecil’s retainer John Lyly who Edward surely met through Cecil. Lyly would find a place as Edward’s secretary while he wrote the first Euphues novel[4] and his earliest plays. These works, of course, greatly influenced Elizabethan literature including the plays of Shakespeare.

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[1] Strype, John. The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith (1820). 19.

[2] Cooper, Charles Henry. Annals of Cambridge (1843). II.107 ff.

[3] Green, Nina. Transcription of a letter from the Chaplains of the Savoy to William Cecil, 12 August 1573. Lansdowne 20/30, ff. 75-6. http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/

[4] Lyly, John. Euphues The Anatomy of Wit (1579).

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• More on Thomas North as Shakespeare and author of Arden of Feversham. June 14, 2021. “This is also the reason why the title pages included the address of the shop that was selling the book.”
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
• Gutenberg, proto-Hack Writers and Shakespeare. May 26, 2020. “A less well known effect of the Reformation was that many young Catholic men who had taken religious orders in order to receive an education began to lead lives at large from monastic discipline.  Like Erasmus and Rabelais they took up the pen.”
• Shakespeare’s Funeral Meats. May 13, 2020. “Famous as this has been since its discovery, it has been willfully misread more often than not.  No mainstream scholar had any use for a reference to Hamlet years before it was supposed to have been written.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.