Edward de Vere (1550-1604)

Daphne Pearson has set out to build upon the foundations laid by H.E. Bell, Joel Hurstfield, and especially Lawrence Stone for a study of the fortunes of the nobility of Elizabethan England. Fairly she points out that there continues to be a great need for detailed case-studies against which to test Stone's broad claims for a Crisis of the Aristocracy, and in particular to illuminate the practice of wardship and its impact on landowners' incomes. A close examination of the experience of Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, who was only twelve when succeeding his father John de Vere, sixteenth earl of Oxford, promises to do just that. Pearson discusses his relationships, his religion, and presents him as more ‘renaissance courtier’ than ‘feudal baron’—a person consumed with self-interest who alienated almost all of his estate. But her main concern is with his finances, and the impact upon them of wardship. Unfortunately Pearson's book here rests upon shaky ground. The fundamental error is her claim that Oxford's inherited landed income on the death of his father in 1562 was as much as £3,500 per year. Yet there are several sources that show that it was much smaller: an indenture of 1 July 1562 made by his father referring to lands worth £2,000 a year (Huntington Library HAP o/s Box 3[19]); his father's inquisition post mortem taken on 18 January 1563 (TNA, C 142/136/12), giving a total net value of all the lands and offices that were inherited by Edward as £2,187 2s 7d per year; a manorial survey prepared by the feodaries of the Court of Wards and Liveries which gave the net value of the earl's lands and offices in 1563–64 as £2,228 8s 7d (TNA, WARD 8/13); a declaration of the account of the receipt and revenues of Oxford's lands and possessions in various counties over five years from 1562 to 1567 (TNA, SP 12/44/19), and another over seven years (TNA, SP 12/47/86). She considers some, but not all, of these sources, and repeatedly fails to cite the sum totals that are either given in these documents or can be easily calculated from them. Why does she confine her discussion of TNA, SP 12/31/29 fos. 53–55 to the estates set aside by Act of Parliament for twenty years for the performance of John de Vere's debts and legacies and ignore the Queen's portion, the Countess of Oxford's jointure, the lands assigned to the sixteenth earl's brothers by Act of Parliament and indenture, and the lands descended to Earl Edward in tail, all of which are given in detail here? Instead she tends to complain that ‘many of the records detailing revenue from various lands for the seventeenth earl of Oxford are either contradictory or it is impossible to comprehend their significance’ (p. 34). Tudor accounting was not as inept as this appears to suggest. The contradictions and confusions are Pearson's rather than those of the compilers of these accounts. An example is Pearson's treatment of TNA, SP 12/44/19 fos. 41–50, from which she cites only fos. 49–50;. Her assertion that it contains income received from Oxford's estates not in wardship is mistaken, as is her claim that ‘although supposed to be for all Oxford's lands it omits several’ (p. 59, note 20). Furthermore she is misleading in stating that it ‘is very unclear as some estates are included twice with different figures and cannot be relied on’. But this document comprises ten folios covering five years rather than just two covering a single year; each estate is listed year by year, and the ‘different figures’ are the revenues received in each of those years. The amounts in the document are re-calculated several different ways, and when cross-referenced, balance to the penny in every instance. Taken together, these sources offer a remarkably clear and consistent impression, confirming that there was no under-valuation in the assessment of the Oxford estates, contrary to Pearson's claims. Oxford's inherited income was not £3,500, but around £2,200 per year. Inescapably that error reduces confidence in Pearson's subsequent discussion of the fortunes of ‘the most profligate of Tudor nobles’ who always, in her view, ‘portrayed himself as more sinned against than sinner’ (p. 210). Above all, unwary readers will not readily grasp how misleading Pearson's presentation of her evidence is throughout: only scholars who have worked through the documents themselves will realise the imprecision of her reasoning and the many omissions and errors in this book

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