John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford

John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford (c. 12 March 1312 – 24 January 1360) was the nephew and heir of Robert de Vere, 6th Earl of Oxford. He succeded as Earl of Oxford in 1331, after his uncle died without issue. John de Vere was a trusted captain of Edward III in the king's wars in Scotland and France, and took part in both the Battle of Crécy and the Battle of Poitiers. He died campaigning in France in 1360. Throughout his career he was closely associated with Citation">last=Tuck|first=Anthony|authorlink=Anthony Tuck|contribution=Vere, John de, seventh earl of Oxford (1312–1360)|date=2004-09|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|place=Oxford|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28212|accessdate=2008-07-15] John de Vere was the only son of Alfonso de Vere, and Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Foliot. Alfonso was a younger son of Robert de Vere, 5th Earl of Oxford, and brother of Robert de Vere, 6th Earl of Oxford. When the younger Earl Robert's son died without issue in 1329, the earl obtained licence from the king to entail his estates on his nephew, John. [cite book|first=May|last=McKisack|authorlink=May McKisack|title=The Fourteenth Century: 1307–1399|edition=|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|year=1959|pages=p. 260|id=ISBN 0-19-821712-9] It was in this way that John de Vere, when his uncle died 17 April 1331, became Earl of Oxford. He had made homage and received livery by 17 May. [cite book|first=Maurice|last=Powicke|coauthors=E.B. Fryde|authorlink=F. M. Powicke|title=Handbook of British Chronology|edition=2nd ed.|publisher=Royal Historical Society|location=London|year=1961|pages=p. 442|id=]

In 1336 he married Maud, who was the second of the four daughters and coheir of Giles, Lord Badlesmere, of Badlesmere in Kent. When Giles died in 1338, this brought a significant part of the Badlesmere inheritance into de Vere's hands. The marriage also forged a strong bond with William Bohun, earl of Northampton, who had married Badlesmere's third daughter, and thus became Oxford's brother-in-law. [citation|last=Ormrod|first=W.M|contribution=Bohun, William de, first earl of Northampton (c.1312–1360)|date=2004-09|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|publisher=Oxford University Press|place=Oxford|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2778|accessdate=2008-07-15] The two campaigned together, sat on the same commissions and died the same year.

Career

De Vere's military career began with service on Edward III's Scottish campaigns, in the 1330s Second War of Scottish Independence. He took part in the Roxburgh campaign of 1334–5, and in the summer campaign of 1335. Later in the decade, England's military efforts turned towards France, with the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. In March 1340, de Vere served in Flanders, and was therefore out of the country during Edward's disputes with Archbishop John Stratford. Oxford was not forced to take sides in the conflict, and has been described as a "political neutral". [cite book|first=W.M|last=Ormrod|authorlink=|title=The Reign of Edward III|edition=|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven and London|year=1990|pages=pp. 113–4|id=ISBN 0-300-04876-9]

After a period in England, de Vere returned to the Continent in 1342, where he served with Northampton, who had been made lieutenant of Brittany. They both took part in the Battle of Morlaix that year. The next year the two earls were sent to Scotland to relieve Lochmaben Castle, and in 1345 they were again campaigning in Brittany. Tradition has it that, returning to England, their ships were forced ashore by bad weather, and the party was robbed of their possessions by the locals. In the summer of 1346 de Vere was campaigning with the king in Normandy, and took part in the Battle of Crécy. According to the chronicler Froissart, de Vere was fighting with the Black Prince, and was among the captains who sent a request to Edward III for reinforcements when the king famously answered 'Let the boy win his spurs'. Oxford was also at the Siege of Calais, but reportedly fell ill in 1348, and did not take part in any major campaigning until 1355.

In 1355 he was again in the company of the Black Prince, and took part in the prince's great raid in Languedoc. 19 September 1356, at the Battle of Poitiers, Oxford was in command of the vanguard together with the earl of Warwick. de Vere's attack on the flank of the French cavalry, with a group of archers, did much to secure the English victory. His last campaign was Edward III's Rheims campaign in 1359–60. Here he died, probably during the raid into Burgundy, on 23 or 24 January 1360. [His year of death was not, as claimed in some sources, 1359: cite web|url=http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/VERE.htm|title=De Vere Family|last=Castelli|first=Jorge H|date=|publisher=tudorplace.com|accessdate=2008-07-15 Based on "The Complete Peerage", vol.X, p.222–224.] He was buried in the de Vere family's burial place Colne Priory in Essex.

Descendants and assessment

Maud de Vere died in 1366. The couple had four sons and two daughters. The eldest son, John, married the daughter of Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, but died before his father, in 1350. Also another son, Robert, died in his father's lifetime. The oldest remaining son was then Thomas, born around 1336–7, who succeeded his father in 1360. Thomas's son Robert succeeded at his father's death, but with Robert's forfeiture in 1392, the earldom was given to Robert's uncle Aubrey – the seventh earl's fourth son. The eldest daughter, Margaret, married three times, while of the second, Matilda, little is known. [Margaret's three husbands were, in order, Henry, Lord Beaumont (d. 1369), Sir Nicholas Loveyn of Penshurst, Kent, (d. c. 1375), and John Devereux, Baron Devereux (d. 1393); Tuck (2004).]

John de Vere, in the family tradition of the "fighting de Veres",cite web|url=http://www.earlofoxford.com/eo02.htm|title=EO7 - John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford (1313 - 1360)|last=Brazil|first=Robert|date=2003|publisher=earlofoxford.com|accessdate=2008-07-15] was active in almost all major military engagements in the years from 1340 to 1360. [McKisack (1959), p. 256.] On the Roxburgh campaign he brought a retinue of twenty-eight men-at-arms and twelve mounted archers. In Brittany in 1342, the retinue had grown to forty men-at-arms, one banneret, nine knights, twenty-nine esquires, and thirty mounted archers. His retinue was of a diverse composition, and also included foreign mercenaries. [A "John de Ispaynea" is recorded as part of his retinue in 1336: cite book|first=Andrew|last=Ayton|authorlink=|title=Knights and Warhorses|edition=|publisher=The Boydell Press|location=Woodbridge|year=1994|pages=p. 187|id=ISBN 0-85115-568-5] At one point, in the Battle of Poitiers, John Hawkwood, who was later to make his fortune as a "condottiero" in Italy, also served with de Vere. [cite book|first=William|last=Caferro|authorlink=|title=John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy|edition=|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|year=2006|pages=pp. 39–42|id=ISBN 9780801883231] Yet in spite of this, de Vere never distinguished himself particularly as a military commander. Neither did he receive a great amount of royal patronage, and was never made a member of the Order of the Garter. This was largely a consequence of the de Vere family's relatively modest resources among the English peerage. As an example can be mentioned that in the late 1340, £349 were owed to Oxford in arrears for his services, yet at the same time the king owed Northampton two debts of £782 and £1237. [cite book|first=Michael|last=Prestwich|authorlink=Michael Prestwich|title=Plantagenet England 1225–1360|edition=|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|year=2007|pages=p. 330|id=ISBN 9780199226870] This obstacle of resources and status John de Vere was unable to overcome either by marriage or warfare.

De Vere family tree

References