Elizabeth & Francis Trentham of Rocester Abbey

Elizabeth and ffrancis Trentham of Rocester Abbey
by Jeremy Crick

Part two 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 March 2007 edition of the
De Vere Society Newsletter.

Introduction
The marriage of Edward de Vere and Elizabeth Trentham, sometime in 1591, had a profound effect upon the forty-one year old Earl of Oxford and on the destiny of his new countess and her family.

Edward, from all the evidence, had had a torrid time over the last three years. He had lost his wife Anne (née Cecil) and seemingly his last chance of a legitimate male heir, and had seen his three daughters with Anne taken into care by their grandfather Burghley who was master of the Queen’s wards. Edward’s continued indebtedness to the Court of Wards, as a former ward, was already considerable and now there were three new marriages to purchase. All this meant that Burghley’s grip on Edward’s fast dwindling estate had become just that little bit tighter and, apart from his £1000 annual stipend from the Queen’s coffers, Edward’s finances were as good as holed below the water line. Whatever estates he still possessed were now mortgaged almost to the last acre in the desperate search for liquidity. For a man who had grown used to money being no object to his desire, staring over the brink into impoverishment must have been a terrifying prospect.

Missing his salon at Fisher’s Folly, feeling his age creeping up on him, mourning Anne to whom he’d finally become reconciled, in poor favour at court and in even lower credit, it is very believable that Edward de Vere may have begun to slide into a debilitating spiral of depression.

The remedy to almost all of these problems, his ageing limbs discounted, arrived in the form of Elizabeth Trentham and her brother ffrancis. The Trenthams had made some excellent marriages in their long history but none as illustrious as this. Yet it was not what the Trenthams gained but rather what they brought to the marriage that is most notable. Right from the start, ffrancis Trentham – with considerable support from his uncle Ralph Sneyd – made it clear that he was prepared to pour a large measure of Trentham family wealth into securing the de Vere estate for the benefit of his sister and his new brother-in-law.

With ffrancis Trentham taking Edward’s financial affairs into his very skilful hands, leaving the great man with funds at his disposal and unencumbered of the sheer misery of the account books, and with Elizabeth Trentham providing Edward with not only an ordered home life after years of bohemian living but also a male heir, from the date of their marriage Edward’s life moved into a new phase in which his genius was given a new freedom to flower.