Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/419

 ii s. VIIL NOV. 22, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

413

the * D.N.B.' And in 1626, by an extra- ordinary judgment, the hereditary Chamber- lainship of England was awarded to a cousin, Lord Willoughby d'Eresby.

The Duke of Atholl is senior representative both (1) of the eldest line of the Veres, as senior coheir of Lady Latimer, eldest sister and coheir of John IV., fourteenth Earl of Oxford (d. 1526), and (2) of the succeeding branch (descended from a younger son of the eleventh earl) as heir-general of the Countess of Derby, eldest step -sister and coheir of the eighteenth earl. This double descent seems to have confused the law lords, sitting as the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords, in the Lord Great Chamberlain case of 1902. I do not know who is the heir- general, or senior coheir (as the case may be), of the last two earls, who descended from a younger son of the fifteenth earl.

St. Cross, Harleston, Norfolk.
 * G. H. WHITE.

Alberic de Vere, who is supposed to have derived his surname from Ver, near Bayeux, obtained from the Conqueror vast estates chiefly the property of Wulfwine, a great English thegn in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridge, with two manors in Huntingdonshire and that of Kensington in. Middlesex. His grandson or great- grandson, Aubrey de Vere (d. 1194), ob- tained from the Empress Maud, at Oxford in 1142, a remarkable charter, granting him lands and dignities, including an earl- dom, either of Cambridge, or, if that was impossible, of Oxford, Berkshire, Wiltshire, or Dorset. The title he adopted was that of Oxford, and in January, 1156, Henry II., by a fresh charter, granted him its " third penny " as earl.

Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth and last Earl of Oxford (1626-1703), left by his second wife Diana, daughter of George Kirke, Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles II.. a daughter Diana, who married Charles Beauclerk, first Duke of St. Albans, son of the King and Nell Gwynn. She was a celebrated beauty, and bore the Duke eight sons, the third of whom was created Baron Vere of Hanworth on 28 March. 1750. This barony afterwards reverted to the Dukes of St. Albans, who now quarter the De Vere arms.

Sir Aubrey de Vere the poet (1788-1846) was the eldest son of Sir Vere Hunt of Curragh Chase, co. Limerick, created a baronet in 1784, and descended from Vere Hunt, a Cromwellian officer who settled in Curragh in 1657, and whose grandmother.

Jane de Vere, was daughter of Aubrey de Vere, second son of the fifteenth Earl of Oxford (John, the first Protestant earl). The poet was Aubrey Hunt at Harrow, succeeded as second baronet 1818; and assumed name of De Vere in 1832.

Hedingham Castle is to-day the most beautiful and best preserved of tall Norman keeps. A. R. BAYLEY.

Henry de Vere, eighteenth Earl of Oxford, died s. p. 1625, but he was not the last earl, as he was succeeded by his second cousin, Robert de Vere, who became nineteenth earl, and was killed at the siege of Maestricht in 1632.

Robert's son and heir, Aubrey, succeeded his father before the age of six as twentieth earl, but dying 12 March, 1703, s.p.m., the earldom expired.

The family in England which is the nearest representative of the De Veres is that of the Duke of St. Albans, descended from Lady Diana de Vere, who died 15 Jan., 1741/2, daughter and eventual heiress of Aubrey, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of that family. FRANCIS H. RELTON.

9, Brought on Road, Thornton Heath.

According to ' The Norman People,' pub- lished by H. S. King & Co., 65, Cornhill (1874), the name Vere is a baronial one derived from Ver, near Bayeux and Caen. Ver was part of the ducal demesne, and was included in 1026 in the dowry of the Duchess Judith. It was afterwards granted to this family, of whom Alberic de Ver occurs in 1058 (' Gall. Christ,,' xi. 108). He had issue (1) Alberic de Ver, Chamberlain, a baron of 1086, ancestor of the Earls of Oxford (see Dugdale) ; (2) Humphry Fitz- Alberic, a baron in Norfolk and Suffolk (1086), ancestor probably of the Barons Hunt- ingfield ; (3) Erneis de Ver of Holdernesse and Lincoln, ancestor of the families of De Ver, Gousell, and Thorold. Under ' Mandeville or Manneville ' the same authority adds :

" The De Veres appear from the arms (which are those of Magneville with a mullet for differ- ence) to have been a branch of this family."

HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter.

LAND'S END, CORNWALL (US. viii. 349). YGREC'S suggestion is of the class that tempts one to despair of place-names ever being made the subject of serious study. With such analogues as Finisterre and Can- tyre before one, why confuse issues by listening to an anonymous " Celtic