VERE, Sir Robert de

Robert was born between 1408 and 1417 as a younger son of Richard, earl of Oxford. He was thus about eight years old or younger when his father died on 15 Feb. 1417 and his brother John, himself aged less than nine, succeeded to the earldom. Custody of the young earl and his lands was first granted to Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and after his death in December 1426 to the King’s uncle, the duke of Bedford. Although no specific provision was made, it is probable that the heir’s younger brother, who might yet have to take his place, should the earl die under age and childless, was brought up with him.11 CP, v. 200; x. 236-7; CPR, 1416-22, p. 110; 1422-9, pp. 395-6. As wards of one of the great Lancastrian princes, the two de Veres were included among the young nobles knighted by the young King during his own knighting ceremony at the Leicester Parliament in May 1426.

In July 1429, the earl of Oxford had livery of his lands. Robert had to wait rather longer to come of age, and his fate during much of the 1430s is obscure, but it is clear that his upbringing in the households of two of the greatest magnates and military commanders of their day predestined him for a career on the battlefields of France. His early experience of the wars was evidently not a happy one. The circumstances of his first journey to France are uncertain, but by December 1435 he found himself a prisoner in French captivity, and two men of Blois had to be dispatched to pay his ransom.12 DKR, xlviii. 308. It was probably his family who had to find the necessary money and in subsequent years Robert maintained close connexions with them. Thus, at Easter 1439 he was associated with his mother, the dowager Countess Alice, and her new husband, Nicholas Thorley, in a collusive action designed to record the non-villein status of one Richard Josep.13 CP40/713, rot 330. Yet, he soon prepared to set out for France once again. In July, along with his brother John, he joined the retinue of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, the lieutenant of Bordeaux, with a contingent of archers drawn from Essex for a campaign in Gascony.14 E101/53/22. Robert equipped himself for this expedition at a cost commensurate with his status, running up a bill for some £19 7s. 6d. with a London armourer, John Devyas.15 C1/74/36.

The campaign was a successful one and in the course of 1440 the fortress of La Roquette and the town of Bazas were recaptured from the French.16 E28/65/47; Livre des Coutumes (Archs. Municipales Bordeaux, v), 691. De Vere had evidently impressed Huntingdon, who in August 1441 appointed him seneschal of Guyenne in place of Sir Thomas Rempston†, an appointment which was confirmed by the King in the following month. However, he was unable to take up the office, which presumably continued to be exercised by Rempston, and may have returned to England, as on 15 Aug. 1442 the three estates appointed Sir Robert Roos regent and governor of Guyenne, following Rempston’s capture by the French. By the end of 1442 Sir William Bonville*, later Lord Bonville, had been granted the office, suggesting that de Vere had left Gascony during the course of the year.17 C61/131, m. 16; 132, m. 3; 134, mm. 3, 4. Yet, if de Vere had indeed returned to England, it was not long before he crossed the Channel once more. He served under John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, in the second half of 1442, and in 1443 he was one of the few men of knightly rank to join the army led by John Beaufort, duke of Somerset.18 E101/54/5; Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 92, 100. In June 1444 he was appointed captain of St Lô for one year.19 Add. Ch. 3979. When this term of office expired he petitioned for redress of his old grievance over the office of seneschal of Guyenne and in recognition of his services received a renewed grant of the post during good behaviour on 15 Nov. 1445. It is unclear whether the renewed royal grant was any more effective than the original one, as Bonville continued to act as seneschal. De Vere returned to England by early 1447.20 C61/134, mm. 3, 4; 135, m. 11.

At some point before then de Vere had established ties with the King’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, although the nature of these ties and the way in which they came about, are uncertain. Perhaps, not long after regaining his freedom from French captivity, he had joined his elder brother in Gloucester’s expedition for the relief of Calais in 1436. Certainly, he was a member of the ill-fated duke’s retinue at Bury St. Edmunds in February 1447, and although he was not among the first wave of Gloucester’s servants taken into custody on the same day as their master, he was arrested three days later, on 21 Feb., while at dinner.21 English Chron. 117. Fortunately for de Vere he cannot have been kept in custody for long and was probably pardoned with Gloucester’s other servants by September.22 John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 194. Almost immediately, he returned to service in France, and in December sued out letters of protection to go abroad in the retinue of Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset.23 DKR, xlviii. 376.

It seems that de Vere’s links with Gloucester were not held against him, and before long he was once more entrusted with independent command. Nevertheless, his actions proved controversial. On 24 Mar. 1449 the Breton fortress of Fougères was taken for the English by an assaulting force led by the Arragonese knight François de Surienne. In response to the efforts of Duke Francis I of Brittany to recapture it, in September Sir Robert was indentured to take a much needed relief force of 100 men-at-arms and 300 archers, but instead of leading this body of men directly to the siege, he advanced only as far as Caen and stayed there, causing Surienne to complain bitterly of being abandoned.24 Wars of English, i. 278-93; E404/65/223, 225. In default of relief, Fougères was forced to surrender to the Bretons on 5 Nov. The renewal of the war in Normandy by the French meant that de Vere had little choice but to stay in the duchy with Edmund Beaufort, now duke of Somerset, who after the fall of Rouen on 29 Oct. was forced to retreat to Caen. There, de Vere was to witness the final chapter in the English occupation of Normandy. When reinforcements under Sir Thomas Kiriell* arrived from England on 15 Mar. 1450, de Vere marched from Caen with some 500 men to lend support to the successful siege of Valognes. But the English advance soon came to a halt. On 15 Apr. at Formigny the French joined open battle with the English for the first time since the 1420s, the English were routed and the surviving leaders, including de Vere, fled the battlefield. The Norman chronicler Robert Blondel afterwards claimed that when confronted by Somerset, de Vere excused his flight by reporting the portent of a white chalice which had appeared in the sky and a voice which had cried ‘Vengeance’.25 Narratives of Expulsion of English ed. Stevenson, 160, 175-6, 331, 336. Whatever the truth of this matter, de Vere rejoined Somerset at Caen and was serving as captain of the castle when it surrendered on 24 June.26 Ibid. 219, 353; Wars of English, i. 631-2; J. de Waurin, Chrons. ed. Hardy, v. 157.

The loss of Normandy left the life that de Vere had built for himself in ruins. It may have been all too apparent to him that English Gascony also was likely to fall before long, or he may have been disinclined to settle for less than the office of seneschal that he had pursued in the 1440s. Whatever the case, he did not return to France. As his elder brother had by now fathered several sons, his chances of succeeding to the earldom were diminished, and he needed to find an advantageous marriage for himself. Such a match presented itself in the person of the widowed Joan Carew, one of the two daughters of Sir Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe by his third wife, Philippa Archdeacon. At Sir Hugh’s death in 1425 his own lands had descended to his elder son by his fourth and final marriage, but Philippa’s lands had been divided between their daughters, Joan and Eleanor. As the latter died shortly afterwards, Joan brought to her successive husbands her mother’s manors of Haccombe, Ringmore, Combhall (in Drewsteignton), Comb Netherton (in Combe in Teignhead), Shobrooke and South Milton, and lands in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Essex.27 CIPM, xxii. 456-62, 679, 710-13; CFR, xv. 148; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 668-70; Cornw. RO, Rashleigh mss, R3026; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Wollcombe mss, 710/53. In addition, she held extensive dower lands from her first marriage, to Sir Nicholas Carew, which stretched across much of southern England and included the manors of Moulsford (Berkshire), Amport (Hampshire), and Mamhead and Weston Peverel (Devon).28 CFR, xviii. 45; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 377-8; C47/9/14.

Crucially, de Vere’s marriage also provided him with a tie to another family of comital rank, the Courtenay earls of Devon, a connexion which would do much to shape the final decade of his career. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Normandy, Richard, duke of York, had begun to position himself as a figurehead for those discontented with the conduct of the war by Henry VI’s government, now headed by none other than the duke of Somerset whom many blamed for the loss of Normandy. Among York’s earliest partisans among the lords was Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, who continued to be disgruntled at having been denied the stewardship of the duchy of Cornwall in favour of his local rival, the recently ennobled Lord Bonville, a gripe with which de Vere, who had been forced to surrender the sénéchaussée of Gascony ostensibly in Bonville’s favour, could sympathise. It nevertheless seems that he took no part in the earl’s early campaign of score-settling which saw him lay siege to Bonville in Taunton castle in September 1451, even though his wife’s half-brother, Sir Hugh Courtenay*, was among the prominent leaders of the earl’s host. Nor did he, perhaps mindful of his experience in 1447, allow himself to be drawn into the more wide-ranging campaign against the King’s ministers, which saw both York and Devon arrested at Dartford early in the following year. Indeed, it is possible that even by this date he had entered the service of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, under whose father he had seen service in France. Henry had succeeded to the dukedom on his father’s death in 1447, and had been granted livery of his estates in the summer of 1450. These included holdings in the south-west focused on the Devon manor of Dartington, and de Vere went on to serve as receiver of these holdings, as well as assuming the more important office of the duke’s chamberlain.29 CAD, vi. C6133; C1/75/23. It was probably as the representative of Duke Henry, in his capacity as admiral of England, that de Vere was included as the only man below baronial status among the keepers of the sea appointed in Parliament in April 1454 for a term of three years. The scale of the operation is indicated by the considerable sums of money that were allotted to the commissioners: between 25 May and 3 July 1454 alone they received £2,783 6s. 8d.30 E403/798, mm. 3, 4, 6; E404/70/1/68-9.

In the meantime, however, de Vere had been occupied closer to home. By the end of 1453 the earl of Devon had regained his liberty, and set about settling his score with Bonville with renewed vigour. In the spring and early summer of 1454 the earl’s retainers rampaged through the Devon countryside. They twice occupied Exeter, and on the second occasion directly attacked the city’s mayor. It fell to Sir Robert to intervene and restore order, a service for which he was subsequently rewarded by the grateful citizens. Yet, in the absence of any official authority for doing so, he suffered the indignity of being treated like another law-breaker and was summoned alongside his brother-in-law, Sir Hugh Courtenay, two of the earl of Devon’s sons and Roger Champernowne* of Bere Ferrers, to appear in Chancery (now presided over by the earl of Salisbury) to answer for certain riots, presumably the events at Exeter.31 E28/85/36; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 166-73; Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receiver’s acct. 32-33 Hen. VI, m. 2.

The Courtenays’ activities were just one facet of the escalating feuding between rival lords that had been exacerbated by the King’s mental incapacity in the second half of 1453. In the spring of 1454 de Vere himself had clashed several times with the unruly Cornish branch of the Beauchamp family, apparently over property rights in Pengelly.32 CP40/779, rots. 577d, 636; 781, rot. 34. The duke of York had to relinquish his role as Protector and attempts to restore order at the end of the year when the King temporarily recovered, but renewed disagreements among the lords eventually found their outlet in May 1455 in a pitched battle in the streets of St. Albans, which saw York’s rival the duke of Somerset killed. The victors lost little time in summoning a Parliament, and on 10 June de Vere was returned to the Commons as a knight for the shire of Devon alongside his wife’s distant kinsman (Sir) Philip Courtenay*, a close friend and associate of Lord Bonville. Nothing is known of de Vere’s contribution, if any, to the deliberations of the Commons during the first session, which ended on 31 July, although it was on the penultimate day of that session that he and his fellow keepers of the seas were prematurely discharged. He presumably returned to Westminster for the second session, taking the opportunity to sue out the general pardon he was granted on 12 Nov., its first day.33 C67/41, m. 21. For much of this session he may have been bereft of his colleague, Courtenay, who was being besieged in his mansion at Powderham by the earl of Devon.34 KB27/781, rot. 33. The siege of Powderham was part of the earl’s wider campaign of violence against Bonville and his friends, and on hearing of the serious unrest in the south-west and the murder of Nicholas Radford* the Lords finally agreed to York’s reappointment as Protector. Even before setting out himself, York dispatched Sir Robert to Exeter, where he arrived on 19 Dec. Two days later the earl of Devon left for his castle at Tiverton and shortly afterwards submitted to the Protector’s authority.35 M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 312.

In the longer term, de Vere’s association with York may have done him no favours. In September 1456 he was omitted from the Devon commission of the peace, while Earl Thomas was restored to it, and although he served a further stint on the bench in 1457-8 other appointments came his way only occasionally. His public career became as erratic as the behaviour of his master, the duke of Exeter, with whom in some respects he was well matched. In his capacity as Exeter’s chamberlain, de Vere, who was said to have ‘all authority and power with the duke’, sold the marriage of the duke’s ward Thomas Deryng to William Durneford, the boy’s next of kin, for £20 and received payment in person, promising ‘by his knighthood’ to return the bond guaranteeing the transaction, or to issue a quittance. This he failed to do, forcing Durneford to make the payment a second time to avoid outlawry, as the hapless landowner complained to the chancellor.36 C1/75/23. At an earlier date, de Vere had been accused of the wrongful arrest of one Thomas Matthew, whom he had only set free on payment of a fine.37 C1/22/20A-B.

De Vere was granted the freedom of the city of Exeter in January 1459,38 Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 53. by virtue of his place in the household of the duke of Exeter, now ranked among the most senior lords siding with the Lancastrian court. It was thus natural that following the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge and their attainder in the Parliament at Coventry, the duke’s chamberlain should be accorded a prominent position on the commission of array issued in December to organize the defence of the realm against invasion by the exiles. This invasion came six months later, and on 10 July 1460 the Yorkist earls defeated a royal army at Northampton and took control of the King and the government. De Vere, who had been included in a general commission of oyer and terminer across the south-west just weeks earlier, was now excluded from office. His movements in the intervening months are uncertain, but it is probable that he had participated in the duke of Exeter’s unsuccessful naval campaign in March, and was at the duke’s side at Northampton.39 CP, v. 213. Although Duke Henry was summoned to attend the Parliament convened by the victorious Yorkists, he evidently absented himself, headed north, and began to assemble a fresh army at Hull. At this point, de Vere may have returned to Devon to raise men from the duke’s south-western estates. Although he does not seem to have taken any part in the battle of Wakefield, he may once again have been a leader of Exeter’s force at the second battle of St. Albans on 17 Feb. 1461, and ultimately at Towton on 29 Mar. The latter engagement spelled ruin for the Lancastrian cause and its leaders, many of whom took to flight. Duke Henry sought refuge in Scotland, while de Vere fled home to the south-west. Before long his pursuers caught up with him. The citizens of Exeter took the precaution of paying off the soldiers who were chasing him, but de Vere did not have that option. On 18 Apr. the Chancery clerk Thomas Playter reported to John Paston* that he had been slain in Cornwall.40 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 269; Exeter receiver’s acct. 39 Hen. VI-1 Edw. IV.

In the aftermath of Sir Robert’s death, it was his widow, Joan, who fell victim to repeated reprisals by the partisans of the new dynasty, such as Thomas Gille II*.41 CP40/808, rots. 331, 337; 810, rots. 127d, 438; 812, rot. 213d. She attempted to execute her late husband’s will, but died in 1465. De Vere’s heir was his son John, who inherited none of his mother’s extensive estates, which fell to her eldest son by her first husband. For much of his adult life, John’s prospects were further hampered by the activities of his first cousin and namesake, the earl of Oxford who by remaining steadfastly loyal to the Lancastrian cause eventually reaped his reward at Henry VII’s accession in 1485. In 1526 the failure of the senior line of the de Veres saw Sir Robert’s grandson, another John, succeed to the earldom as 15th earl.42 CP40/808, rot. 401; E150/149/12; CP, x. 245.