In coming weeks and months I hope to bring you many letters of Edward de Vere, of which well over 40 survive in various archive. Transcriptions of these letters are available on Nina Green’s archive, but nowhere on the web is there any serious body of commentary on the letters or any archive of their material features.
De Vere was only thirteen years old when he wrote this, his first surviving letter, to his legal guardian William Cecil, Master of the Court of Wards. The Court of Wards was a notoriously corrupt institution responsible for raising the sons of deceased nobles and managing their estates until they achieved their legal majority.
It was Cecil, and his wife Mildred Cook Cecil, an accomplished classical scholar, who took over de Vere’s education at the age of 12 and provided him with tutors such as the Latinist theologian and translator Arthur Golding and the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alexander Nowell, who then held the sole MS copy of Beowulf.
Oxford was still legally indebted to the Court well into his 30s. Cecil has long been identified by Shakespeare scholars as the historical inspiration and prototype for the satirical portrayal of the sometimes wise but bumbling Polonius in Hamlet.
The letter shows his fluency in French by this age and also his use of the most current style of accent marks as taught by the linguistic and spelling reformer, John Hart.
Translation by W.P. Fowler
My very honorable Sir,
Sir, I have received your letters, full of humanity and courtesy, and strongly resembling your great love and singular affection towards me, like true children duly procreated of such a mother, for whom I find myself from day to day more bound to your honor.
Your good admonishments for the observance of good order according to your appointed rules, I am resolved (God aiding) to keep with all diligence, as a thing that I may know and consider to tend especially to my own good and profit, using therein the advice and authority of those who are near me, whose discretion I esteem so great (if it is convenient to me to say something to their advantage) that not only will they comport themselves according as a given time requires it, but will as well do what is more, as long as I govern myself as you have ordered and commanded.
As to the order of my study, because it requires a long discourse to explain it in detail, and the time is short at this hour, I pray you affectionately to excuse me therefrom for the present, assuring you that by the first passer-by I shall make it known to you at full length. In the meantime, I pray to God to give you health.
Edward Oxinford
For Oxford’s last surviving letter, you know what to do.
Sir Derek Jacobi reads the de Vere letters.
January 5, 2023 at 1:10 am
Friends,
I am hoping that one day we will be able to read the letters of Anne de Vere (nee Cecil) and Edward de Vere.
Not only would their correspondence likely settle the authorship question (Anne would likely have written about Edwards plays), but their letters (love-letters and otherwise) would be a sheer delight to read.
I can’t wait.
Sincerely,
Jock Doubleday
January 9, 2023 at 2:13 pm
No such letters are known to survive. If you know of any, please let me know. In such absence, your speculation that Anne wrote the plays would appear to be groundless.
January 10, 2023 at 1:22 am
I don’t know what you mean by “your speculation that Anne wrote the plays.” Were you replying to someone else on another thread?
January 10, 2023 at 11:25 pm
My apology, I read in haste and misread your post.
Unfortunately, those letters appear to be lost. But I would add to this that I think Edward’s authorship of the plays was sufficiently taboo that even those around him like Anne would not speak of it unguardedly, but rather would be using the kinds of literary indirection that are seen throughout the materials that Alexander Waugh and I studied for the Allusion Book, where we found that nearly every mention of “Shakespeare” was accompanied by a literary context that makes it more or less obvious (depending on the case) that the author either
1) knows of an authorship controversy, or
2) knew that the real author was de Vere.
But they don’t shout it from the rooftops; they require being listened too carefully.
August 20, 2023 at 6:30 am
This may be a silly question, but one I can’t seem to find an answer to.
Do you happen to know if Edward De Vere ever referred to himself as De Vere and/or did his contemporaries call him Edward De Vere? Or was he only know by Edward Oxenford and the De Vere name came later as we are referencing him historically.
No alternative motivation behind this, just curious if you knew. Thank you!!
September 1, 2023 at 3:52 pm
Hi Jeanine,
De Vere is the family name. Oxford, usually spelled Oxenford in de Vere’s own letters, is the noble title. de Vere was the 17th Earl of Oxford, meaning that de Veres had held the title for seventeen generations, making it the longest enduring noble family in 16th Century England, something in which he no doubt took pride and which made his title more coveted by “new men” like William Cecil.
His contemporaries called him a wide range of things, depending on circumstance, from Lord Great Chamberlain of England (a highly important ceremonial title) at the most formal, to “Ned” at the least formal and everything in between. He was also known under a bewildering variety of sobriquets like “Euphues,” “Ignoto,” “Shepherd Tony,” “Master Apis Lapis,” or “Pasquill Cavaliero of England.”