From 1586 – two years before the Spanish Armada – to his death in 1604, Edward de Vere received a thousand pound annuity from the Elizabethan state. After the death of Elizabeth I in April, 1603, James I renewed the grant.
Edward de Vere’s thousand pound annuity and Shakespeare
Does the annuity have any connection to the theory of de Vere as Shakespeare?
What about Dromio of Ephesus: “I buy a thousand pound a year: I buy a rope!” (Errors 4.1).
What about Hamlet: “O good Horatio! I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pounds! Didst perceive?” (3.2)
What about Falstaff: “Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?” (2 Hen. IV 1.2).
Are we starting to get the picture?
Edward de Vere’s thousand pound annuity may a be key element of the Oxfordian fact pattern.
There is no better introduction to the important of the annuity than this 2016 lecture by Bonner Cutting.
Coming up in a future post: Edward de Vere’s thousand Pound Annuity and the de Vere Geneva Bible.
October 14, 2026 at 12:50 pm
O good grief. So any time someone says ‘a thousand pounds’ it’s because they just personally received a thousand pounds! It’s almost as if it’s a nice round number. It’s almost as if it’s the kind of number you might reach for simply to signify alot of money. It’s almost as if the Earl of Southampton is said, according to William Davenant, to have given Shakespeare (that man who wrote the plays and poems, not the dilletante doggerel-dealing pederast de Vere) a thousand pounds. Do you have the slightest idea how silly this makes you look?
October 15, 2026 at 10:21 pm
O holy heavens. Someone comes rolling in off the internet like washed up puppy confusing a key piece of the jigsaw puzzle with his own face and hurling insults that tell you more about the hurler than the objects of his fastidious ignorance.
Did you even watch the video? Can’t make an actual argument? If you want to have a conversation here, Sir, get real and stop flinging insults from the cave of your monumental ignorance!