.................................................I am Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and was born on 12 April, 1550, at Castle Hedingham in Essex. Following the death of my father in 1562, I became the 17th earl of Oxford, a royal ward, and was sent to live with and study under the Queen's Private Secretary (and later Lord Treasurer of England), William Cecil. Under Cecil's tutelage and guidance. I was privileged to study with the best minds of the English Renaissance, including such learnéd men as Laurence Nowell, the Dean of Litchfield; Bartholomew Clarke; Thomas Fowle and Sir Thomas Smith. I enjoyed access to Cecil's library, one of Europe's most remarkable and extensive collections of books and manuscripts. At Cecil House, or, as Joel Hurstfield of University College, London, has put it—"the best school for statesmen in Elizabethan England, perhaps in all Europe"—I received an education incomparable amongst my peers . ............................................................
..................................................My maternal uncle was Arthur Golding, a well-known translator of Ovid, and my paternal uncle was Henry Howard, the "inventor" of the sonnet......................................................
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.....................................................It has been said of me:
"Given the public praise of contemporaries extending over 35 years, it is likely that De Vere's poems represent but a sampling of his total output. As an experimental lyric poet, De Vere used 11 different metrical and stanzaic forms in the two dozen poems, including fourteener couplets, the English sonnet, tetrameters, and trimeters...................................................
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Oxford spent his last sixteen years scrounging for money. He applied for the right to gauge vessels for beer and ale; for the exclusive right to import fruits, oils, and wools; for the governorship of the Isle of Jersey and the presidency of Wales; and, from 1595 to 1599, for the tin monopoly in Devon and Cornwall. In the early 1590s, he repaired his fortunes by marrying the wealthy Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen’s maids of honour. Their only child, Henry, heir to the earldom, was born in 1592........................................................
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..................................................He died on 24 Jun 1604, probably from plague, at King’s Place in Hackney, located in the London suburb of Stratford. He left no will and is presumed buried in St Augustine’s church in the same parish. Contemporary testimony that he may be buried elsewhere is provided by Percival Golding, the youngest son of Arthur Golding, the uncle of De Vere. Golding wrote twenty years after De Vere's death that the 17th Earl "died at his house at Hackney in the month of Jun 1604 and lies buried at Westminster [Abbey]"."
