Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The de Veres in Crisis, 1450–1485
- 1 The Earl's Familial Inheritance
- 2 The Thirteenth Earl: Sedition, the Readeption, and Imprisonment, 1462–85
- Part II The ‘Principal Personage in the Kingdom‘, 1485–1513
- Conclusion
- Appendix: The de Vere Affinity
- Select Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Thirteenth Earl: Sedition, the Readeption, and Imprisonment, 1462–85
from Part I - The de Veres in Crisis, 1450–1485
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The de Veres in Crisis, 1450–1485
- 1 The Earl's Familial Inheritance
- 2 The Thirteenth Earl: Sedition, the Readeption, and Imprisonment, 1462–85
- Part II The ‘Principal Personage in the Kingdom‘, 1485–1513
- Conclusion
- Appendix: The de Vere Affinity
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Oxford Call him my king by whose injurious doom
My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,
Was done to death? and more than so, my father,
Even in the downfall of his mellow'd years,
When Nature brought him to the door of Death?
No, Warwick, no; while life upholds this arm,
This arm upholds the house of Lancaster
(William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III, Act III, Scene III, lines 101–107Regaining the earldom and the early years, 1462–9
For all that the executions of 1462 were a tragedy for the young John de Vere, the irony was that it was this event that was the making of the man. Prior to the shocking death of his father and brother, John had been destined for a career as a second son, a member of the gentry. Born on 8 September 1442, and nineteen years old in February 1462, his father would presumably have been looking for a gentry heiress for his second son to marry, and although Aubrey had not yet had any children, his position as second in line to the comital title was precarious. Doubtless he would have given loyal service to his older brother, as his younger siblings were later to give to him, but his horizons would have been limited.
We know very little of John's upbringing, education or family relationships while his father was still alive. There is later evidence that he could read in at least three languages, English, French and Latin.
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- John de Vere, Thirteenth Earl of Oxford (1442–1513)'The Foremost Man of the Kingdom', pp. 48 - 86Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011