Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/41

Rh Such were the circumstances under which the dignity of comte first accrued to Aubrey de Vere. His apparent apathy in relinquishing it is explained by what was going on at the time in his own country. He had become one of the most active partisans of the empress Matilda in her claim to the English crown: and had received from her the promise of an English earldom. By a charter made after Milo of Gloucester had been created earl of Hereford at Oxford on the 25th July, 1141, and before the siege of Winchester in the following month, and which, from its being dated at Oxford, (though without date of the year) was probably contemporaneous with the former event, Matilda granted to him all the land of William de Abrincis, together with all the inheritance he claimed on the part of his wife, as the heiress of William of Arques; also the town and castle of Colchester, so soon as it should be in her power to deliver it: and further, the reversion of the Earldom of Cambridgeshire and the third penny thereof, as an Earl ought to have, provided the king of Scots had it not; but, in that case, the said Aubrey was to have the choice of four earldoms, namely, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, according to the decision of her brother the earl of Gloucester, earl Geoffrey (the earl of Essex), and earl Gilbert (the earl of Pembroke).

The political influence of earl Aubrey is further shown by the fact, that at the same time the empress gave baronies to his brothers Geoffrey and Robert, and promised the chancellorship of England to his brother William de Vere.

King Henry the Second, when he came to the throne in the year 1155, though he preferred Becket for chancellor, fulfilled the agreement made for an earldom with Aubrey de Vere. The earldom given him was that of Oxford, of which he was confirmed Earl by a grant of the third penny of the pleas of the county.