plot to rescue from the Tower Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, with whom he was distantly connected. In IS79 he insulted Sir Philip Sidney by calling him a “puppy” on the tennis-court at Whitehall. Sidney accordingly challenged Oxford, but the queen forbade him to fight, and required him to apologize on the ground of the difference of rank between the disputants. On Sidney’s refusal and consequent disgrace Oxford is said to have schemed to murder him. The earl sat on the special commission (1586) appointed for the trial of Mary queen of Scots; in 1589 he was one of the peers who tried Philip Howard, earl of Arundel, for high treason; and in 1601 he took part in the trial of Essex and Southampton. It has been suggested that Oxford was the Italianated Englishman ridiculed by Gabriel Harvey in his Speculum Tuscanismi. On his return from a journey to Italy in 1575 he brought back various inventions for the toilet, and his estate was rapidly dissipated in satisfying his extravagant whims. His first wife died in 1588, and from that time Burghley withdrew his support, Oxford being reduced to the necessity of seeking help among the poor men of letters whom he had at one time or another befriended. He was himself a lyric poet of no small merit. His fortunes were partially retrieved on his second marriage with Elizabeth Trentham, by whom he had a son, Henry de Vere, 18th earl of Oxford (1503–1625). He died at Newington, near London, on the 24th of June 1604.
His poems, scattered in various anthologies—the Paradise of Dainty Devices, England’s Parnassus, Phoenix Nest, England’s Helicon—and elsewhere, were collected by Dr A. B. Grosart in vol. iv. of the Fuller Worthies Library (1876).
OXFORD, JOHN DE VERE, 13th Earl of (1443–1513), was
second son of John, the 12th earl, a prominent Lancastrian,
who, together with his eldest son Aubrey de Vere, was executed
in February 1462. John de Vere the younger was himself
at tainted, but two years later was restored as 13th earl. But his
loyalty was suspected, and for a short time at the end of 1468
he was in the Tower. He sided with Warwick, the king-maker,
in the political movements of 1469, accompanied him in his
exile next year, and assisted in the Lancastrian restoration of
1470–1471. As constable he tried John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester,
who had condemned his father nine years before. At the
battle of Barnet, Oxford was victorious in command of the
Lancastrian right, but his men got out of hand, and before
they could be rallied Warwick was defeated. Oxford escaped
to France. In 1473 he organized a Lancastrian expedition,
which, after an attempted landing in Essex, sailed west and
seized St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. It was only after a
four months’ siege that Oxford was forced to surrender in
February 1474. He was sent to Hammes near Calais, whence,
ten years later, in August 1484, he escaped and joined Henry
Tudor in Brittany. He fought for Henry in high command at
Bosworth, and was rewarded by restoration to his title, estates
and hereditary office of Lord Chamberlain. At Stoke on the
16th of June 1486 he led the van of the royal army. In 1492
he was in command in the expedition to Flanders, and in 1497
was foremost in the defeat of the Cornish rebels on Blackheath.
Bacon (Hist. of Henry VII. p. 192, ed. Lumby) has preserved
a story that when in the summer of 1498 Oxford entertained the
king at Castle Hedingham, he assembled a great number of his
retainers in livery; Henry thanked the earl for his reception,
but fined him 15,000 marks for the breach of the laws. Oxford
was high steward at the trial of the earl of Warwick, and one of
the commissioners for the trial of Sir James Tyrell and others
in May 1502. Partly through ill-health he took little part afterwards
in public affairs, and died on the 10th of March 1513. He
was twice married, but left no children.
Oxford is frequently mentioned in the Paston Letters, which include twenty written by him, mostly to Sir John Paston the younger. See The Paston Letters, ed. J. Gairdner; Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (1905); Sir James Ramsay, Lancaster and York; and The Political History of England, vols. iv. and v. (1906). (C. L. K.)
OXFORD, ROBERT DE VERE, 9th Earl of (1362–1302),
English courtier, was the only son of Thomas de Vere, 8th earl of
Oxford, and Maud (d. 1413), daughter of Sir Ralph de Ufford
(d. 1346), and a descendant of King Henry III. He became
9th earl of Oxford on his father’s death in 1371, and married
Philippa (d. 1412), daughter of his guardian Ingelram de Couci,
earl of Bedford, a son-in-law of Edward III., quickly becoming
very intimate with Richard II. Already hereditary great
chamberlain of England, Oxford was made a member of the
privy council and a Knight of the Garter; while castles and
lands were bestowed upon him, and he was constantly in the
company of the young king. In 1385 Richard decided to send
his friend to govern Ireland, and Oxford was given extensive
rights in that country and was created marquess of Dublin for
life; but although preparations were made for his journey he
did not leave England. Meanwhile the discontent felt at
Richard’s incompetence and extravagance was increasing, one
of the contributory causes thereto being the king’s partiality
for Oxford, who was regarded with jealousy by the nobles and
who made powerful enemies about this time by divorcing his
wife, Philippa, and by marrying a Bohemian lady. The king
however, indifferent to the gathering storm, created Vere duke
of Ireland in October 1386, and gave him still more extensive
powers in that country, and at once matters reached a climax.
Richard was deprived of his authority for a short time, and
Vere was ordered in vain to proceed to Ireland. The latter was
then among those who were accused by the king's uncle Thomas
of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, and his supporters in November
1387; and rushing into the north of England he gathered an
army to defend his royal master and himself. At Radcot Bridge
in Oxfordshire, however, his men fled before the troops of
Gloucester, and Oxford himself escaped in disguise to the Netherlands.
In the parliament of 1388 he was found guilty of treason
and was condemned to death, but as he remained abroad the
sentence was never carried out. With another exile, Michael
de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, he appears to have lived in Paris
until after the treaty between England and France in June 1389,
when he took refuge at Louvain. He was killed by a boar whilst
hunting, and left no children. In 1395 his body was brought
from Louvain to England, and was buried in the priory at
Earl’s Colne, Essex.
See T. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, edited by H. T. Riley (London, 1863–1864); J. Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869–1897); H. Wallon, Richard II. (Paris, 1864); and W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1806).
OXFORD, ROBERT HARLEY. 1st Earl[1] of (1661–1724), English statesman, commonly known by his surname of Harley, eldest son of Sir Edward Harley (1624–1700), a prominent landowner in Herefordshire, and grandson of the celebrated letter writer Lady Brilliana Harley (c. 1600–1643), was born in Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, on the 5th of December 1661. His school days were passed at Shilton, near Burford, in Oxfordshire, in a small school which produced at the same time a lord high treasurer (Harley), a lord high chancellor (Simon Harcourt) and a lord chief justice of the common pleas (Thomas Trevor). The principles of Whiggism and Nonconformity were instilled into his mind at an early age, and if he changed the politics of his ancestors he never formally abandoned their religious opinions. At the Revolution of 1688 Sir Edward and his son raised a troop of horse in support of the cause of William III., and took possession of the city of Worcester in his interest. This recommended Robert Harley to the notice of the Boscawen family, and led to his election, in April 1689, as the parliamentary representative of Tregony, a borough under their control. He remained its member for one parliament, when he was elected by the constituency of New Radnor, and he continued to represent it until his elevation to the peerage in 1711.
From the first Harley gave great attention to the conduct of public business, bestowing especial care upon the study of the forms and ceremonies of the House. His reputation marked him out as a fitting person to preside over the debates of the House, and from the general election of February 1701 until the dissolution of 1705 he held with general approbation the office
- ↑ I.e. in the Harley line.
