Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/230

 a grant of sixty pounds a year in 1380, and of the lands of the seigneur d'Albret in the Bordelais and Medoc in 1381 (ib. i. 542; ). Early in the latter year Vere appears as chamberlain of the royal household and member of the privy council, and the negotiations with the ambassadors of King Wenzel were entrusted (29 March) to him, along with the Earl of Cambridge and Hugh Segrave (ib.; Fœdera, iv. 108, Record ed.). In October 1383 he was chief commissioner to treat for a truce with France, and took part in the Scottish campaign two years later (ib. vii. 412;, i. 194). The Merciless parliament of 1388, which condemned his nephew, the Duke of Ireland, as a traitor, included Aubrey among the partisans of Richard who were required to abjure the court, and he consequently lost his post of chamberlain of the household (, p. 116). Shortly after his nephew's death in exile [see, ninth and ], the king, with the consent of the parliament, which met in January 1393, revived in Vere's favour the dignity of Earl of Oxford, on which the new earl did homage and took his seat in parliament, ‘right humbly thanking our lord the king for his good and gracious lordship’ (Rot. Parl. iii. 303). As the forfeiture of 1388 was not reversed (though the entailed estates were restored on the ground that they were not affected by it), and a special limitation to heirs male was introduced, peerage authorities lean to the view that this must be looked upon as a new creation. The subsequent reversal of the forfeiture in 1397 might be supposed to have revived the old limitation to heirs general, but the judges in 1626 decided that it did not. This decision has been much criticised ( Complete Peerage, vi. 166; cf. art..

Oxford petitioned in vain for the restoration of the lord-chamberlainship of England, which had been given (1390) to Richard's half-brother, John Holland, earl of Huntingdon (Rot. Parl. iii. 166). There is some reason to believe that Oxford married his eldest son to a daughter of Huntingdon, possibly with a view to smoothing the way for the recovery of the chamberlainship (Testamenta Vetusta, p. 192; Rot. Parl. iii. 441). Huntingdon was deprived of it after the fall of Richard. In the first parliament of Henry IV the commons petitioned for its restoration to the old line, pleading that the earl was too poor to maintain himself, and that he had only abandoned the rights of his family under menaces from King Richard, and had ever since suffered from such feebleness and sickness as one who languished from palsy, having no health or discretion (ib.) He had been unable to attend the parliament of 1397, which reversed the measures of 1388 against his nephew (, i. 195). Henry returned an unfavourable answer, intending the dignity for his half-brother, John Beaufort, and the attainder of the Duke of Ireland was revived (, i. 75). Oxford is said to have given shelter to the unfortunate Huntingdon after the abortive rising of January 1400 (ib. i. 102). He died on 23 April in that year.

Oxford married, about 1380, Alice, daughter of John, seventh lord Fitzwalter, by whom he had two sons and a daughter. His eldest son, Richard, succeeded him as eleventh Earl of Oxford, was one of the commanders at Agincourt (, ii. 188), and died on 15 Feb. 1417, leaving a son, John de Vere, twelfth earl (1408?–1462), father of John de Vere, thirteenth earl (1443–1513) [q. v.] The tenth earl's younger son, John, died unmarried; the daughter married Sir John FitzLewis. Oxford's widow is sometimes said to have married a certain Nicholas Thorley, but this is a mistake; it was her elder son's widow who became Thorley's wife (, i. 196; Ordinances of Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, iii. 145).

 VERE, AUBREY, twentieth (1626–1703), born in 1626, was the eldest son of Robert de Vere, nineteenth earl, by Beatrice de Banck, daughter of Sjierck Hemmema of Nufen in Friesland.

(1599?–1632) was the only son and heir of Hugh de Vere, grandson of John de Vere, fifteenth earl of Oxford [q. v.], by Eleanor, daughter of William Walsh. Hugh de Vere, who was first cousin of Sir Francis Vere [q. v.], and to Horace, lord Vere [q. v.], of Tilbury, served as a volunteer in Leicester's first campaign in the Netherlands. His son Robert followed in his footsteps, serving under Horace, lord Vere. In April 1625 Robert claimed the earldom of Oxford, and also the office of lord chamberlain in succession to Henry de Vere, eighteenth earl [q. v.] A rival claim was