Edward de Vere Birthday Backgrounder: April 12.

Today, April 12, is the birthday of Edward de Vere who would become the 17^th Earl of Oxford and the poet and playwright known as “Shakespeare”.  I take this opportunity to introduce him before he became Shakespeare through quotes from the first and from the most recent book I have written on the subject.

Edward De Vere was born April 12^th, in the year 1550, at Hedingham Castle, in Essex, to John De Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife Margery De Vere (née Golding).  The Vere family was among the most powerful in England.  They had held the Earldom of Oxford and the ceremonial office of Lord Great Chamberlain (not the same office as Lord Chamberlain) for centuries.  John’s sister, Frances, had married into the even more powerful Howard family, making him the brother-in-law of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who introduced the 14-line sonnet form ending in a final couplet which Shake-speare would make so thoroughly his own that it is now called the “Shakespearean Sonnet”.  Surrey would also be the first to introduce the iambic pentameter as the standard meter of his later poems.[1]

He would become the Earl of Oxford following his father’s death in August of 1562.  Being a minor, he was taken under the wardship of the Queen.  As was  the established manner of dealing with wardship, she delegated her authority to her trusted First Secretary William Cecil.  Somewhat less the established manner, she gave the revenues from De Vere’s lands, during his minority, to her dear personal friend Robert Dudley.

We get a good look at De Vere as a Court wit and writer in the various appendices of my edition of his 1584 play, Ulysses and Agamemnon.  A writer of Court plays was decidedly not a professional.  It would have brought shame upon himself if he were to descend to a profession — especially the theater.

By 1584, however, De Vere’s inadvertent apprenticeship was almost at an end.  He writes still as a talented courtier but he has become something more than his fellows.  He has a strong talent, a special grasp of language, and a creative flight that is mounting higher with each new play.

A playwright emerges who shares traits with the mature Shakespeare but is also quite different.  He enjoys imagery from knightly tournaments.  He revels in the lists.  He knows the details of the rules of tournament combat, the trappings of the lists, the feel of the armor.  In fact, the combat in the play is actually a description of the events of a multi-day grand tournament.

 Second only to the tournament, he loves music.  He is certainly a musician himself.  The images of musical recreation are courtly, complex, knowledgeable down to fine detail.  Like Shakespeare, he has a particular love of hawking imagery.  For more private recreation he reads an impressive range of literature from Latin, French and English.  It is highly likely that he is at least familiar with Homeric Greek. He is fond of word-play based on Greek and Latin grammar.

Sex is often on his mind.  In the mouths of his low characters, he loves to joke about the stews and the venereal diseases that occupy them.  He takes a certain pride in knowing the cant.  The dangers of “the placket” are a matter of considerable interest and concern for him.

 In sum, the playwright is the portrait of a hardy courtier.  He values the medieval courtesies of chivalry and the early renaissance accomplishments of learning.  As so many commentators have realized over the centuries, he finds many of the characters in his play a deep disappointment on this level.  While they represent themselves as being chivalrous they are ready to throw off courtesy the minute it gets in the way of their self-interest.  Only Hector, Troilus and Ulysses are exceptions, only they consistently uphold the chivalric moral codes.[2]

But De Vere also spent lavishly.  So lavishly, in fact, that he nearly bankrupted his Earldom.  He had alienated (i.e. sold off) most of his lands.  Not only that but he had lost his special favor in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth by impregnating one of her ladies-in-waiting.

He bristled like the proud boar on his family crest at the least advice or correction regarding these matters.  He tried to recover his losses through risky investment, and a memorial of sonnets by which to recover the Queen’s affection, and, by the late 1580s, had to accept a bailout from the Queen which removed his control of nearly all of his lands and left him with an annuity of ₤1000 (roughly $300,000 in today's money).

No longer an enormously wealthy Earl, or a dashing courtier, it is at this point that De Vere took up the one thing remaining to him that gave him satisfaction.  Finally humbled before life — no longer able to make excuses — he reflected on the ways of the world and on his short-fallings and took up his pen.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.[3]

It was then that Shakespeare was born.

---

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013).  1.

[2] Vere, Edward de.  Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584, 2018).  Gilbert Wesley Purdy, editor.

[3] Shakespeare Sonnet #29.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.  January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

Office of The Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earls of Oxford

The Lord Great Chamberlain is the sixth of the “great” offices of feudal responsibility to the English monarch.[1]  The “great” offices began as hereditary offices.  The Great Chamberlain remains such to this day.  It is, however, reduced to an entirely ceremonial position.

The office was created by Henry I for the Vere family.  It was awarded first to Albericus (Aubrey) de Vere, in 1133.  Like all hereditary offices, it was created as reward for highly valued feudal allegiance to the king.  Close, dependable alliance with the power of the De Veres was sufficiently attractive that they received special favors that kept them close at hand.  The original office required the holder of it to remain continually in physical attendance upon the king at Court.

The Vere’s were not yet the holders of the Earldom of Oxford.  That would come in 1141 at the hand of the Empress Matilda (a.k.a. Maude) during the years of civil war following the death of Henry I without an heir, and would be confirmed, in 1156[2], by her son, King Henry II.  The Vere’s had gone back and forth in their loyalty between she and King Stephen during the war.  In this way she sought to assure their loyalty.  Nevertheless, they remained with a foot in every camp.

Between the creation of the Lord Great Chamberlain and King Edward II’s coronation in 1308, the office  seems to have separated itself from continual attendance upon the king.  Records from the coronation of Richard II, however, indicate that he held the rights and fees of the office that went with that ceremony, and had “from time immemorial”.[3]

What precisely the coronation duties were, at that time, cannot be determined from available period records.  Only the duty of presenting the king’s ewer before and after the feast that followed is explicitly mentioned.  All offices of the Lord Great Chamberlain, relating to the coronation of Henry IV, were refused to the Earl of Oxford, whose support had been erratic, and given to Thomas Erpingham.

The memorandum regarding the coronation of James I, in 1603, regarding the request of the 17^th Earl, Edward de Vere, to perform the then traditional duties, and receive the traditional gifts and fees, for the office, gives us the first detailed description of what those duties and fees had come to be.

Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford, asks that as he is Great Chamberlain of England,… that it should please the King that he should likewise at the Coronation… do the said office and services as he and his ancestors have formerly done. . . . That is to say that the said Earl on the day of the said Coronation, on the morning before the King rises, ought to enter into the chamber where the King lies, and bring him his shirt, and stockings, and under- clothing. And that the said Earl and the Lord Chamberlain for the time being together on that day ought to dress the King in all his apparel. And that he may take and have all his fees, profits, and advantages due to this office. . . . That is to say forty yards of crimson velvet for the said Earls robes for that day . . . then the Earl should have the bed where the King lay on the night before the Coronation, and all the apparel of the same, with the coverlet, curtains, pillows, and the hangings of the room, with the King's nightgown, in which he was vested the night before the Coronation. He also asks as his ancestors from time immemorial served the noble progenitors of our Lord the King with water before and after eating the day of the Coronation, and had as their rights the basins and towels and a tasting cup ... as appears in the records of the Exchequer.[4]

The direct male line of the Earls of Oxford was broken with the death of Henry, the 18^th Earl, in 1625.   The Earldom fell to a male Vere cousin.  It lapsed altogether with the death of the 20^th Earl, in 1703.

Peregrine Bertie, the Baron Willoughby, being more directly related to the line of earls, through his mother Mary Vere, eventually received the hereditary office of Lord Great Chamberlain.  Bertie was created Earl of Lindsey, in 1626, and he and his male heirs to that title became the hereditary holders of the office.  The family was created Dukes of Ancaster, in 1715, thus transferring the office to that title.

With the death of Peregrine Bertie, the 3^rd Duke of Ancaster, and of his lone a male heir, the 4^th Duke, a year later, the office was renamed Deputy Lord Great Chamberlain and divided between the 3^rd Duke’s eldest daughters.  It has remained in the joint possession of ever more distant relatives since that time.

---

[1] The great officers of the Crown are: 1. Steward, the Lord High, of England; 2. The Lord High Chancellor; 3. The Lord High Treasurer; 4. The Lord President of the Council ; 5. The Lord Privy Seal; 6. The Lord Great Chamberlain of England ; 7. The Lord High Constable of England; 8. The Earl Marshal of England; and 9. The Lord High Admiral.

[2] Dictionary of National Biography (1906).  1137.

[3] Collections relative to claims at the coronations of several of the kings of England (182).  15.

[4] Purdy, Gilbert.  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare; at long last the proof.  285.  Citing Oxford Authorship, Col. S. P. Dom. James I (July 7, 1603) http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/StatePapers14/SP_14-2-76_ff_187-207.pdf.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Dietary Rules for Barnacles: Innocent III to Gordon Ramsey.  March 4, 2019.  “The Barnacle was a marvel of God, a confusion to those in authority in such matters.  Their people turned to them for clarification.”
• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

 

Review of Peck’s Leicester’s Commonwealth with Download Link.

The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584) and Related Documents, edited by D. C. PECK.

Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press: 1985.   ISBN: 978-0821408001.  [Reprinted in PDF format, 2006]  227 pp.

It is particularly important to read well researched books on matters of Oxfordian interest written by scholars unaware or unconcerned about the Authorship Question.  Alternative perspectives challenge popular conceptions that can too easily turn out, in the end, to be misconceptions.

Dwight Clark Peck’s edition of The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (a.k.a. Leicester’s Commonwealth) is such a study.

The present edition is a collation of nine copies of the 1584 text; Appendix A lists these nine and cites the only three variants found. In order to assist smooth reading and emphasize the book’s content rather than its typographical idiosyncrasies, I have elected to regularize the spelling in both the text and the other quoted documents, with abbreviations silently expanded.

The scholarly Introduction is separately and thoroughly annotated.  The endnotes to the text are even more extensive.  The observations throughout are thoughtful and informed.

The position, held by some, that Edward de Vere might have written Leicester’s Commonwealth, for one example of a misconception, while always questionable, is revealed to be untenable by Peck’s exceptional analysis.  Four closely reasoned pages on this other authorship question make clear the likely authors:

To summarize the much-vexed authorship problem, then, our reflections suggest that Leicester’s Commonwealth was written chiefly by Charles Arundell, probably with the as­sistance of all or some of the group comprising Lord Paget, Thomas Fitzherbert, William Tresham, Thomas Throgmorton, and possibly still others; so far this conclusion confirms the assertion of Father Parsons and the opinions of the scholars Pollen and Hicks.

No attempt is made to exclude De Vere.  He simply does not come into view when the history is impartially considered.

By the same token, the purblindness of mainstream scholars deprived of legitimate facts that they are required to ignore or deny, can be highly informative.  The “old play” that has long been understood, by mainstream scholars, to have provided the text of the Ulysses and Agamemnon portion (a.k.a. “the Camp Portion”) of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, proves to be an impenetrable mystery that “may never be solved”.  They are positively are not allowed to connect it to the Ulysses and Agamemnon play performed by “Oxenford’s Boys” in 1584[1].

The Earl of Leicester portrayed in Leicester’s Commonwealth is not allowed to be compared to the Achilles described by Ulysses in the opening speech of Ulysses and Agamemnon[2] though both are described in identical language.  Moreover, the old play is not allowed to be the play we find embedded in Troilus and Cressida.  The fact that the play was performed less than a year after the existence of  Leicester’s Commonwealth had been reported by Walsingham’s spies — that is to say, at a time that the scandal was the subject of every courtier’s whispered gossip — is not allowed into evidence. 

The powerful relationship between the works is either coincidence or the “old play” was written by another.  On this occasion, another who was neither Shakespeare or the Earl of Oxford and certainly not both at once.

All of this said, it is essential that an edition of the Commonwealth be absolutely rigorous.  The facts must be perfectly analysed (inasmuch as they can be known).  This is what Peck has accomplished with his edition.  It is difficult to believe that it could have been better done.  Anything that can be added can only be added because Peck created the essential foundation for further study, further debate.

All of this said, the author does have the habit of referring to the two dominant parties at Court as “Catholic” and “Protestant”.  Although this is common practice now for centuries, it is misleading in important ways. 

Leicester was not a religious man for all that he was the leader of the Puritan religious faction in England.  Their alliance was one of necessity.  The Puritans stood at the brink of being interdicted for their rejection of the Queen as the head of the church and of her bishops as her lieutenants.  Leicester made their excuses for them in the council room in exchange for intelligence on the country’s Catholic sympathizers and the utility they provided via their various offices.

His opponents at Court are more properly referred to as the “Howard-Vere faction” for all that many of them were indeed practicing Catholics.  Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, second in command, as it were, until the execution of Norfolk robbed the faction of its only natural leader, was also not at all a religious man.  If fact he was reckless at times, per reports, in his pursuit of forbidden books and his declarations, among his private friends, against many articles of faith.

Both factions existed mainly for reasons surrounding Leicester’s outsized influence with the Queen.  Of particular concern was the matter of her marriage.   Leicester wielded his forces in order to keep himself the only viable marriage partner for the Queen.  The Howard-Vere factions used theirs (far less effectively) to attempt to arrange a marriage to two successive Dukes of Anjou.  While the Dukes’ Catholic faith was not insignificant in their calculations, the overriding point was that there be no marriage to Leicester.

In 1581, the Howard-Vere faction was revealed to have unexpectedly close ties to the Spanish ambassador Mendoza and sympathies with the supporters of the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots.  

Howard, Arundell, and Southwell received word of their imminent arrest from an unnamed friend on the Privy Council, and the former two took refuge in the Spanish ambassador’s house in the middle of the night. Although he had never spoken with them before, Mendoza saw in his hospitality a chance to win valuable contacts;…

The last of their power was ended through trials, executions and escape into exile.  Mendoza was dismissed and transferred into France.  He and numerous French Catholics provided resources to the Howard-Vere exiles, and, soon afterwards, numerous pamphlets calling for the overthrow of Leicester and the Queen began to appear.  Among them was  Leicester’s Commonwealth.

With this, Elizabeth’s tolerance of the Catholics in her realm came to an end.  Her Secretary Walsingham — a vicious anti-Catholic — immediately rose to be her foremost councilor in the matter.  Slights real and imagined resulted in imprisonment, torture and drawing-and-quartering for English printers and publishers.  For noblemen such slights resulted in the destruction of their power and fortunes, if not execution.  The council, led by Walsingham, called repeatedly for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.   Censorship laws were strengthened and vigorously enforced.

Apart from his tendency to see his subject too much through the perspective of a religious conflict, Dwight Clark Peck’s work verges on perfection.

Dr. Peck’s book can be downloaded in pdf format for free.  Click on the cover page at the beginning of this review to go to the download page.

---

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). “In actuality, according to the minimal records of the time, the play was performed on St. John’s Day, December 27, by “Earl of Oxenford his boys,” a name briefly given to the Boys of St. Pauls.”  Introduction, 243.

[2] Purdy. “The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre observe degree, priority, and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom, in all line of order; and therefore is the glorious planet Sol in noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd amidst the other, whose medicinable eye corrects the influence of evil planets, and posts, like the commandment of a king, sans check to good and bad. But when the planets in evil mixture to disorder wander, what plagues and what portents, what mutiny!  What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors, divert and crack, rend and deracinate the unity and married calm of states quite from their fixure!...”  350 ff.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare as Burleigh's Guest at Castle Hedingham?  February 4, 2019.  “Like the once popular game in which a large circle of people is formed and a message whispered in the ear of the first person, who whispers it in the ear of the next, and so on, around the entire group, we do not know what exactly was the original message but only that the message we hear from the last person is strangely suggestive.”
• Why Shakespeare Appears on Title Pages from 1598.  November 20, 2018.  ‘These he finds unconvincing.  The author’s name having appeared in a number of title pages after 1598, he continues, “it would seem foolish for publishers not to attach the Shakespeare brand to his previously unattributed plays—unless they had other reasons not to do so.”’ 
• The Nymphs of Doctor Foreman’s Macbeth.  October 21, 2018. “How did Foreman make the mistake of describing them precisely as Holinshed?  But differently from the text we have of Macbeth?  To consider Foreman’s account a simple mistake would require an astronomically improbable coincidence.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link

<<< Return to Hedingham Castle Main Page

In this series:

• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.
• A brief history of the Earls of Oxford and Castle Hedingham.

Periodically, between 1535 and 1543, John Leland, the great antiquarian of the reign of England’s Henry VIII, toured England and Wales.  He may or may not have visited visited Hedingham but he did find a source who he trusted regarding the area. 

Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine, so that al the building that now ys there was yn a maner of this old Erles building, except the gate-house and the great dungeon toure.

Mr. Sheffelde told me that a litle beside Colne Priorie yn Estsax, wher the Erie of Oxford usid to be buried, was a manor place of theirs, the dikes and the plotte wherof yet remayne, and berith the name of the Haulle Place. Syns the ruine of this manor place the Erles hath buildid hard by the priory.[1]

Mr. Sheffield would seem to have been a local historian, of sorts, of the region around Lincolnshire, where the Sheffield family was then prominent.  Perhaps he lived near the present city of Sheffield, or, perhaps, he was a family representative living in the city of London.

Mr. Sheffeld told me that Dalaunsun of Lincolnshir hath a part of the [landes] of Vere of Lincolnshir, that [came out] of the house of the Erles of [Oxfor]de. 

The references in the Itinerary suggest that he lived in Lincolnshire.

John Vere, the 13^th Earl of Oxford, had alternately supported different sides in the War of the Roses.  At the time Edward IV finally defeated the forces of Henry VI, Vere was on the losing side and escaped to France.  His lands were confiscated to the crown in 1471.

Upon Richard III’s usurpation of the English crown, Vere entered the service of Henry VII.  This time on the victorious side, Henry VII returned his lands upon being crowned in 1485.  After all of this, that Hedingham Castle was “yn much ruine” comes as no surprise.

Between 1485 and 1543, then, the Hedingham keep and gate house were refurbished and the surrounding baileys rebuilt to the condition the records describe during the second half of the 16^th century.  The moat was emptied and the drawbridge replaced by a fixed stone bridge precursor to the present brick successor.

The original grand hall seems still to have been in existence in a ruined state.  Its foundation was made of brick suggesting (together with its ruined state) that it was constructed of wood.[2]  The stone “front building” through which one entered the keep had already been demolished.

Hedingham and the surrounding areas were the main seat of the Earls of Oxford as evidenced by some few documents such as Gregory Cromwell’s 1531 letter to his father, (and Henry VIII’s Chancellor) Thomas, describing his being hosted to a fox hunting party by the 15th Earl at nearby Yeldham.[3]  Moreso by Henry VIII’s grant of confiscated church lands in the area to the same Earl, in 1536,[4] and documents relating to Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the 16^th Earl at Hedingham in 1561.[5]

In 1548, shortly after the death of Henry VIII, the Lord Protector, Duke of Somerset, used his growing power to gain possession of most of the 16^th Earl’s lands including Hedingham.[6]  The castle and most of his lands were returned by an act of Parliament in 1552.[7]  From that time until his death, the Earl seems to have spent nearly all of his time at his seat hunting in his forested possessions. Occasionally he took a foreign dignitary hunting.

It is not clear that the Earls were always resident in Hedingham while in Essex.  The Queen also visited the Veres’ nearby castle of Colchester, for a much shorter time, during the same progress.  Two years earlier, the 16th Earl had also put up the Duke of Finland, suitor to Queen Elizabeth, at the castle at Colchester.

With the death of the 16^th Earl, Hedingham came to play a much smaller part in the life of the next Earl.  Young Edward de Vere became ward to the crown and lived in various Court apartments and in lodgings provided by the Queen’s Principle Secretary William Cecil until his majority in 1572.  He chose to live a courtier’s life which required him to maintain his Court arrangements for some time afterwards and leased the castle and appurtenances.

---

[1] Itinerary of John Leland, Vol. 2, 25

[2] Tipping, H. Avery.  English Homes, Period 1, Volume 1. 1-2. “…from the fact of these foundations being almost entirely of brick the inference may be drawn that the original buildings, save the wall and its towers, were chiefly of timber, and so remained till the latter part of the fifteenth century.”

[3] TNA SP 1/68, f. 22.  Transcription and translation from Latin by Nina Green.  The Oxford Authorship Site.  http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/StatePapersOther/SP_1-68_f_22.pdf

[4] TNA C 66/668, mm. 26-7.  Transcription and translation from Latin by Nina Green.  The Oxford Authorship Site.  http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Chancery/C_66-668_mm_26-7.pdf 

[5] Vincent, John A. C. “Queen Elizabeth at Helmingham.” The Genealogist.  82-90.  Citing Nichols. The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth. I. 98.

[6] TNA E 328/345. Transcription and translation from Latin by Nina Green.  The Oxford Authorship Site.  http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/NationalArchives/E_328-345.pdf

[7] HL/PO/PB/1/1551/5E6n35. Transcription and translation from Latin by Nina Green.  The Oxford Authorship Site. http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/DocumentsOther/HL-PO-PB-1-1551-5E6n35.pdf

• Office of The Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earls of Oxford.  March 10, 2019.  "Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford, asks that as he is Great Chamberlain of England,… that it should please the King..."
• Connections: Henry II, Toulouse, 1159.  November 27, 2018.  “Once he became Chancellor, Becket never looked back.  He abandoned his duties as Archdeacon and preaching duties attached to his other positions.  He outfitted a lavish  household and lived like a secular lord.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014.  "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

 

Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.

In this series:

• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.
• A brief history of the Earls of Oxford and Castle Hedingham.

King Henry I granted the land at Hedingham to Aubrey (Alberic) de Vere about 1106,  the year King ‘Henry I made him Lord Great Chamberlain of England,… to hold “to himself and his heirs, with all dignities and privileges thereunto belonging.”’[1]  Prior to the invasion of William the Conqueror (King William I), in 1066, Hedingham was possessed by Uluuinus, a Saxon of great note.[2] Aubrey crowned the top of the central hill with a timber fortification.[1] 

The hill is surrounded by a ditch likely corresponding initially to a moat.  The summit of the hill is 27 feet above the bottom of an encircling ditch on the N. side, 34 feet on the W. side, and 38 feet on the S. side.[3]  The ditch is about 90 feet wide.  

The keep was enclosed in an inner bailey.  An outer bailey lay to the N.E. and originally had a draw bridge connecting it with the inner bailey.[3]  A gateway tower rose where the bridge was lowered from the foot of the inner bailey.[4]

Aubrey II, son of Aubrey I, built the present keep between 1130-40, after having returned from serving in the first crusade.[5]

The keep measures 58ft. 3ins. north to south and 52ft. 6ins. east to west.[6]

The external walls are 11ft. thick, excepting the eastern, which is 12ft. 6ins.[3]  They are constructed of flint rubble set in limestone mortar and faced, on the exterior, with thick slabs of oolite limestone from Barnack, Northamptonshire, some 60 miles distant.[7]

The total height is 85 ft.[3]

The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.[8]  The floor is entirely occupied by the great hall or audience chamber, of dimensions 38ft. 3ins. by 31ft. and 27ft.[9], spanned by a Norman arch 21ft. high at the bottom at the center of the room and a ceiling 28ft. high.[10]

The angle turrets, like the main walls of the keep, were originally crowned by battlements but these have been pulled down in order to scavenge the stone, thus depriving the keep of about nine feet of its original height. Behind this parapet, which was 2ft. thick, was a broad paved walk about five and a half feet wide which, passing through arched openings in the return faces of the turrets, enabled a sentry to follow a continuous walk.[11]

The son of Aubrey II was a Crusader like his father, but, unlike him, was a partizan of the Empress Matilda, who, after his father’s death, confirmed him in his English possessions and granted him the reversion of the Oxford earldom, which his male descendants continued to hold until the death of the eighteenth earl in 1625.[5]

A chest was purchased from a local tradesman by the Conservative member of Parliament, and then owner of Hedingham Castle, Mr. Lewis Ashurst Majendie (d. 1885), and placed in the banqueting hall of the Castle. It was supposed by antiquaries to have been the muniment chest of the De Vere Earls.[12]  In the chest would have been many if not all of the family’s most valuable papers.

The keep was pressed into military service as a signaling station during World War I.  The inhabitants set fire to the lead roof destroying it entirely.  The interior of the entire keep was gutted, in consequence.  It is said that valuable furniture and many family possessions stored for safety in the basement chambers were incinerated.  The fate of the muniment chest is not clear.  

Thankfully, the De Vere family muster rolls for the soldiers it provided King Henry V, for the Agincourt campaign, headed by senior pikeman, Edmund Folstolf, as well as many other of the family’s valuable papers, were in safe keeping elsewhere in various historical collections.[13]

H.M.S. Hedingham Castle (K529) was the name of a “castle class” British warship launched on October 30, 1944.  It was decommissioned, after World War II, in 1945.

Next: Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 >>

---

[1] Tipping, H. Avery.  English Homes, Period 1, Volume 1. 2.

[2] Ranger, H.  Castle Hedingham: Its History & Associations. 7.

[3] An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex, Volume 1, pp 47-61.  https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/essex/vol1/pp47-61

[4] Armyne, Israel.  1592 Survey.  Gentleman’s Magazine Library (1893).  English Topography, Part IV.  128.  Tipping, 1.

[5] Tipping, 2.

[6] Ibid. 5.

[7] Various.  See bibliography.

[8] The first floor by the British and European term refers to what Americans call the “second floor”.  It refers to the first floor above the ground.

[9] Tipping, 8.

[10] Ranger, 18.

[11] Tipping, 9

[12] Ranger, 15.

[13] See my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof.  159.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/  Citing Nicolas, Sir Harris, History of the battle of Agincourt, and of the expedition of Henry V.  (London: Johnson and Co., 1832).  339.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Connections: Henry II, Toulouse, 1159.  November 27, 2018.  “Once he became Chancellor, Becket never looked back.  He abandoned his duties as Archdeacon and preaching duties attached to his other positions.  He outfitted a lavish  household and lived like a secular lord.”
• Medieval Scavagers: First, what they were not. November 18, 2018. ‘The fact that the professor quoted Riley — regardless that neither he nor Riley were able to give a single citation to support their claim — began a now venerated commonplace that Medieval “Scavagers” began by collecting the English tax called the “Scavage”.’
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.