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Elizabeth
and ffrancis Trentham of Rocester Abbey Part one of a short account of the family history of Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford’s second wife and the strategic importance of the Trentham archive in the search for Oxford’s literary fragments. Accompanied by the Trentham family tree incorporating the de Veres and the Sneyds. First
published in the November 2006 edition of the Introduction Being
a passionate Oxfordian these past twenty-odd years, I’m as
fascinated as all Oxfordians are by the remarkable scholarship that
has illuminated the ‘Shakespearean’ canon with concordances
from Oxford’s life, alongside the broader question of whether
the Stratford or the Oxford biography delivers the better candidate.
Viewed dispassionately, the sheer weight of this scholarship tilts
the scales ineluctably away from the Stratfordian pretension. But
are Stratfordians convinced? Worried even? The simple truth is:
not at all. Until
documentary proof of Oxford’s authorship is found, Stratfordians
will never relinquish their tight grip on academia, publishers will
overwhelmingly support the Stratfordian position, and the general
public will always remain indifferent to Oxfordian scholarship. Of
course, ever since J Thomas Looney first identified Oxford as a
prime candidate, the search for manuscript evidence of Oxford’s
literary work has been undertaken by many researchers and one might
assume that all the obvious places have been examined in detail.
And yet one of the most obvious lines of enquiry has been largely
ignored - searching for the family papers of the Trentham family. Oxford’s widow, Elizabeth Trentham, was in possession of all the material in Oxford’s study on his death and she outlived him by nine years. Oxford’s study at King’s Place in Hackney must have been the original source for all the material that was gathered for the First Folio that hadn’t already been published in various Quarto editions - at least nineteen plays. The study would have contained notebooks, masses of loose leaves, working drafts, polished drafts, copies in the hands of Oxford’s secretaries, prompt copies with notes on stage direction, literary correspondence as well as extensive marginalia in Oxford’s source books. Whether
it was Oxford’s son-in-law, Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery,
and his brother William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke - the ‘incomparable
brethren’ - who were given access to Oxford’s papers (and
which may later have been consumed by fire in the library at Wilton),
or whether it was another son-in-law, William Stanley, Earl of Derby,
who began the process of preserving Oxford’s life’s work
for posterity, we may never know. It
is very unlikely, however, that Elizabeth Trentham divested herself
of all of Oxford’s literary papers for the preparation of the
First Folio - to the last scrap of paper. Assuming that the best
drafts were identified, collected and eventually handed to the printers,
what did Elizabeth Trentham, and her executors, do with all the
remainder? One
thing that is clear from the archive record is that Elizabeth Trentham’s
brother, ffrancis Trentham of Rocester Abbey, took over the management
of the de Vere estate (alongside his own considerable estate) upon
the marriage of his sister to Oxford in 1591, that he continued
in this capacity after Edward’s death, through the years of
Henry de Vere’s minority and even himself inherited and passed
down the manor and castle of Hedingham and other lands and properties
once owned by Edward de Vere. That ffrancis spent hours poring over
the de Vere estate papers at King’s Place on his frequent visits
to London as a Knight of the Shire and also at Hedingham, that he
was as familiar with the inside of Oxford’s study as anyone,
is, I believe, born out by the evidence. ffrancis
died in 1626, twenty-two years after Edward de Vere, thirteen years
after his sister Elizabeth and one year after Henry de Vere - the
last in the Oxford direct line. Also three years after the publication
of the First Folio. My
current researches proceed on the possibility that the discovery
of archive material by following the Trentham line is, perhaps,
one of the richest unploughed furrows in the quest to solve the
Authorship Question. As will be shown in the second part of this
article, it was largely thanks to ffrancis Trentham that during
the last thirteen years of his life, Oxford had all his money worries
lifted from his shoulders. Among the treasures in the Trentham archive,
I discovered a remarkable reference to ffrancis Trentham settling
an extremely generous £10,000 upon Edward when they became
brothers-in-law. Thanks to this, Oxford had more ready cash than
at any time in his life and it certainly puts his £1000 annual
disbursement from the Queen’s coffers into perspective. Perhaps
more crucially, with ffrancis Trentham as his trusted brother-in-law
- a wealthy landowner, not only skilled in estate management but
also a minor courtier with considerable political weight in running
the affairs of Staffordshire - Oxford was also freed from the irksome
burdon of managing his estate. By the time of his second marriage,
the de Vere estate was a complete shambles and the worst part for
Oxford was that, as a result, the estate barely yielded the sort
of income that Oxford had grown accustomed to. On a dynastic level
too, the restructuring that ffrancis Trentham performed on the de
Vere estate gave Oxford great confidence that his son Henry’s
inheritance would indeed be fit for a future Earl and Lord Great
Chamberlain of England. And Oxford was ever mindful of dynastic
considerations, as we all know. I believe that when Edward de Vere is finally recognised as the true bard, Elizabeth and ffrancis Trentham will also become acknowledged as the greatest patrons of the arts in history. Copyright 2006 Jeremy Crick. |
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