The end of an era
On 4 August 1598, just short of his seventy-eighth birthday, one of the greatest men of the Elizabethan era, Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley died. Working tirelessly until the end, even though the gout which addled his body made the simple act of holding a pen painful, he addressed one of his last letters to his son Robert (who would soon assume all his offices of state) saying, “If I may be weaned to feed myself, I shall be more ready to serve her on the earth; if not I hope to be in Heaven a servitor for her and God’s church.” The Queen was devastated by the passing of the man whom she had first appointed at her accession and who had served her so loyally and so brilliantly for most of his life. So overcome was Elizabeth that, in floods of tears, she shut herself off from everyone to grieve in private.

It is not known what Edward de Vere’s reaction was to Burghley’s death. The two men had never really understood each other and perhaps Edward could be forgiven if he had often viewed the man as his nemesis. As a Royal ward, he had stood helplessly by while Burghley, under the Queen’s prompting, had handed out his estates to the Earl of Leicester to profit from during his minority – estates that he’d found almost impossible to reclaim once he’d come of age. He must have wondered too how it had come about that when he had agreed to marry Anne Cecil, the dowry offered by her father for the privilege of marrying the noblest Earl in England had fallen so far short of the marriage fee claimed, on behalf of the Queen, by the master of the Court of Wards – leaving him in massive debt.

It is perhaps more surprising that when Queen Elizabeth herself died at Richmond just a few years later, on 24 March 1603, Edward did not capture the solemn public mood and mark her passing with a great panegyric poem extolling her remarkable reign – perhaps the memory of her role in crippling his estate was still too sore in his mind. It is notable, however, that among his first acts, King James I renewed the Privy Seal annual grant of £1000 to the man whom he would describe in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil (then Earl of Salisbury) in 1604 as “Great Oxford”.

Edward de Vere only outlived the Queen by just over a year, breathing his last on the 24th June 1604. His burial at St. John’s at Hackney is recorded in the Parish Register, “Edward de Veare Erle of Oxenford was buryed the 6th daye of Iulye Anno 1604.” It is often written that he died from the plague – however, in the Bagot archive there are many letters from around this period in which the writers note the weekly death toll from the plague in London and, only three days after Edward de Vere’s death, William Brown, in a letter to Walter Bagot (LA297), states: “London very clear of the plague.” Edward’s son and heir Henry de Vere was just eleven years old and, happily for him, history did not repeat itself and Elizabeth, now Countess Dowager of Oxford, had no difficulty in retaining his wardship as is made clear by a clause in a Private Act of Parliament of 1610 sought by Countess Elizabeth to sell the Manor of Bretts (of which more later) which states, “the said Henry, Earl of Oxenford, was and yet is in ward to your Majesty and his wardship and marriage is granted over to your suppliant [Countess Elizabeth]”. No doubt the Court of Wards had sufficient confidence in Elizabeth and her brother ffrancis to let them manage the young Earl’s estate.

Managing young Henry’s estate was one thing, but managing “...a young nobleman neither of years nor judgement to advise himself, wanting the guidance of a father and past the government of a mother...”, in the words of Countess Elizabeth, was evidently quite another once the sixteen year old Henry had fallen into the wayward company of his second cousin John Hunt. In an extraordinary letter (one of many that illustrate what a truly gifted writer she was) addressed to both Sir Robert Cecil and Lord Henry Howard on 22 July 1611, Elizabeth seeks their urgent help over the “apparent danger of my son’s ruin”, calling on them to discipline Hunt whom she not only accuses of leading her son “by continual use of cursing, swearing, filthy and ribaldry talk, and all other lewd and licentious courses to corrupt and poison my son’s tender years with the like infection...” but also of running up huge debts in her son’s name. Furthermore, it appears that Hunt had such a hold over Henry de Vere that he had begun to neglect his duties as an esquire serving both the King and his son Prince Henry. In the following passage, Elizabeth seems to have reached the end of her tether:

“And am therefore absolutely resolved, unless I shall presently obtain the absolute banishment of him [Hunt] and his confederates from my son ... forthwith to renounce and disclaim any further charge or government of him [son Henry], as being loath (besides my daily private objects of grief) to draw upon myself a general and public imputation that his ruin hath happened in his nonage and under my charge and by consequence through my want of care or respect unto him, for the world will never believe (except I make it known by a public renouncing of his further government) but I might with suit unto his great and powerful allies and friends have easily procured this ivy to be plucked away from this young oak whose growth is so much hindered by it.”

However much her authority may have weakened when it came to her son during his troublesome teenage years, when it came to securing the ancient rights of the Earldom of Oxford, Elizabeth was capable of being both assertive and surpassingly eloquent. In 1609, the members of a commission examining “the state and employment of lands given to charitable uses” addressed a number of concerns to her regarding the management of Earls Colne Grammar School (the Priory of Earls Colne being the ancient burial ground of the Earls of Oxford, having been founded by them in the twelfth century). Elizabeth’s response is masterful and it reads:

"My very good Lords. I am informed that whereby a late commission you are to examine the state and employment of lands given to charitable uses, and among other lands of that quality are informed that the free school now kept in Earls Colne ought to be kept at Coggeshall and Messing by three years together, what the intent of the founder was or the words of his donation is unknown to me, but in all probability those that first disposed of those lands observed the giver’s purpose which hath been ever constantly kept in Earls Colne, where changing or removing the same to any other place which in common reason must needs be inconvenient both to the schoolmaster and to the preferring of the scholars.

“Also I must advertise you that the choice and nominating of the schoolmaster is a right invested in my late Lord and his ancestors ... so as I hope in your honourable endeavours you will not impeach or diminish an ancient possessed right, or alien anything belonging to him in his minority.

“And whereas some exception, I hear, is taken against the insufficiency of the schoolmaster whom I commended to that place in my son’s minority and who in better judgments than mine own is sufficiently learned, honest, and industrious in that office, wherein if upon your just advisements I shall find myself mistaken, I will give such speedy remedy therein as shall testify how far I prefer the public good education of youth before any man’s private preferment.

“And whereas also, as I hear, it is suggested that the lands given to the maintenance of this school are misgoverned and converted to our particular profit, I do assure you that neither my Lord nor myself have made any advantage thereof, but where we found them rented at 20 nobles a year, have raised them to 20 pounds, the which is yearly paid to the schoolmaster. And I doubt not but that when that grant is ended my son out of his further care will increase the rent for the better maintenance of the school if the time require it and the land will yield it.

“Whereupon I presume in your just considerations having no cause to distrust my son’s discharge of this charitable trust, you will not upon malicious information of his adversaries call in question during his minority a right sealed in him and his heirs.

Your assured friend,

Elizabeth Oxenford"

A couple of years earlier, Elizabeth and ffrancis had decided that it was time to bring the ancient family seat of Castle Hedingham back into the possession of the Earldom of Oxford. Having already received the consent of Oxford’s three daughters for the sale, Elizabeth then opened negotiations regarding the price with their uncle and trustee Sir Robert Cecil. As purchaser, a notable feature of the following letter to Cecil of 16 March 1608 is that Countess Elizabeth dwells heavily upon the dreadful state of repair of the castle and grounds as well as pleading relative poverty – talking the price down, of course, being a perfectly understandable ploy:

“Be not displeased with my present request, proceeding from my disabled estate, and a conceit that the most noble minds have the most sensible impression of a noble family's ruin. The price I tender, with the aid of a worthy kinsman to my son [ffrancis Trentham], is a great sum ... not thinking it worth to another above £10,000. The place we purchase has the face of a fatal desolation, only affected by us as being my son's ancestors' ancient, native, first foundation. The parks and places of pleasure are so much defaced as they cannot be repaired; the house and the necessary provisions thereto so destroyed, as woods, meadows, waters, which can with no small charge be resupplied.”

It is, of course, a great tragedy that Castle Hedingham today is but a shadow of its former self – with only the magnificent Norman keep still standing. The question of who was resposible for this destruction, however, is not easily solved in spite of Oxford’s detractors blaming it all upon the 17th Earl. Shortly after clear title to the Castle had passed to the Queen, in 1587, Burghley was certainly concerned about saving the place from “utter spoil”, yet in 1592 when Burghley took possession of the castle as trustee for Oxford’s three daughters, he commissioned a pictorial survey of the extant buildings and I reproduce a copy of this which GE Cokayne prepared as a bookplate illustration. The Great Tower and the Brick Turret of the outer Gatehouse are clearly identified as ‘undefaced’, the Hall and Pantries, the Great Chamber, the inner Stone Gatehouse, the Stable, Barnyard, Granary and a sizeable stretch of the curtain walling are all clearly still standing. The only building identified as damaged is the Great Brick Tower from which the lead, timber, iron and glass had been “taken awaie”. The only buildings that are identified as demolished are the Chapel, New Stable, Kitchens and Stone Lodgings.

If the “place we purchase has the face of a fatal desolation”, as Countess Elizabeth declared in 1608, then the person who had been responsible for it over the sixteen years since the survey, namely Burghley, must surely bear some responsibility for its neglect as must the Earl of Leicester who had held the castle during Edward de Vere’s minority. The Queen too, in her obsession with showering her beloved Leicester with wealth and in her less than honest treatment of Oxford’s wardship and marriage during his minority as a Royal ward, cannot remain blameless in seeing Oxford’s estate as an easy target for rich pickings – with the result that the young Earl’s estate was virtually crippled by the time he came into possession of it. In part three of this essay, however, I will advance some circumstantial evidence which may allow historians to pin the blame elsewhere for the demolition of everything in Burghley’s survey except for the central keep.

In order to repurchase the manor of Castle Hedingham – which occured on 8 July 1609 – Elizabeth and ffrancis made a very interesting decision about how to raise the money. First of all, in June 1609, Elizabeth sold King’s Place to the poet ffulke Greville for £5,000 and secondly, they began to seek a buyer for the manor of Bretts in Essex. Although there is some confusion about exactly when Bretts was sold (as Christopher Paul has pointed out), the clear purpose of seeking the Act of Parliament to sell it, some time in 1610, is clearly stated in the preamble:

“AND whereas your said suppliant [Countess Elizabeth], being very desirous to uphold and raise the ancient and most honourable house of Oxenford what in her doth lie, to that end hath lately bought the castle and manor of Hedingham in the said county of Essex which was the ancient inheritance and chief seat of the said Earls of Oxenford and hath continued in their name and possession almost from the time of the Conquest until the same was lately sold by the said Edward, Earl of Oxenford...”

That Elizabeth sold her well-loved family home in order to buy Castle Hedingham is only one of a number of clues that she fully intended the castle to become her new home – from this date onwards, in her correspondence, it is clear that she divided her time between Hedingham and her London home at Cannon Row, Westminster. And also the phrase, “being very desirous to uphold and raise the ancient and most honourable house of Oxenford”, quoted above, makes it clear that she viewed preserving the ancient family seat an integral part of the very nobility of her son’s Earldom. These facts alone should allow historians to conclude that, of all the people who had possessed Castle Hedingham since the death of the 16th Earl, Countess Elizabeth, with the help of her brother, were the most likely to have invested time and money into restoring and maintaining the fabric of the place.

Establishing that Castle Hedingham did indeed became Elizabeth’s principal home after the sale of King’s Place is, of course, of vital importance to any Oxfordian trying to follow the trail of Oxford’s literary papers which, we can assume, had become a considerable archive in the eighteen years that they had accumulated in the ‘proper lybrayre’ at King’s Place.

The clearest summary of the repurchase of Castle Hedingham is contained in a document dated 30 March 1668 written in answer to a petition to the House of Lords by the sisters and co-heirs of Countess Diane [née Cecil], the deceased wife of Henry de Vere, in which they seek to claim the honour and manor of Hedingham against Bryan Lord Viscount Cullen and his wife Lady Elizabeth Cullen who was the great-grandaughter and ultimate heiress of ffrancis Trentham. The Cullens’ reply contains:

"...the manor of Hedingham alias Henningham in the Countie of Essex ... had bin for many yeares the inheritance and seat of the noble ffamily of the Earls of Oxford, and that Elizabeth late Countess Dowager of Oxford, the relict of Edward late Earl of Oxford, and sister of ffrancis Trentham of Rocester ... repurchased the same in her own, or her Trustees names, and by ffine & recovery settled the same on her self for her life, and to Henrie late Earl of Oxford, being the onlie son of the said Earl Edward ... And the ground of this settlement by the said Countess Elizabeth in that mannor was not onely for that the said ffrancis Trentham was her brother and heire in case the said Earl Henrie her sonne dyed without issue, but because the said ffrancis Trentham had taken very great care and paines in managing the estate and affairs of the said Countess Elizabeth, and became bond for her in very great sumes of money which the said Countess was forced to take up for the purchasing of the said mannor and premises.” After detailing the Private Act of Parliament request to sell Bretts, also the sale of “400 pound of her owne inheritance”, the answer continues: “And the respondents believe that the said Countess Elizabeth paid £13000 att least for the said mannor and premises which they believe was a full consideration for the same...”

The House of Lords, on the same day, dismissed the petition on behalf of the heirs of Countess Diane, their judgement containing the following:

“the Possession of the said Manor hath continued for near Threescore Years with the Title of the Heirs of Francis Trentham, of Rocester, in the County of Stafford, Esquire, Brother to Elizabeth late Countess Dowager of Oxford, according to a Settlement made by her, under which Settlement the said Lord Viscount Cullen and Elizabeth Viscountess Cullen his Wife now hold and enjoy the same...” *

There is one final twist in the passage of Hedingham down the Trentham line which I will come to later.

* Full transcripts of the documents relating to this petition to the House of Lords can be downloaded here.

Copyright 2007 Jeremy Crick.