Bedchamber Ladies and Maids of Honour at the Late Stuart Court

by Margaret Porter

Readers of historical novels set in a royal court will be familiar with the terms “lady of the bedchamber” and “maid of honour.” But what were the responsibilities required of these positions, their advantages and disadvantages?

Fans of Tudor history and fiction know that several ladies-in-waiting became Queen of England. Anne Boleyn served Queen Katherine of Aragon, as did Jane Seymour—who was also Anne's lady-in-waiting when King Henry began to fancy her. And her successor, Anne of Cleves, had flighty Catherine Howard as a maid of honour. 

The Stuarts preferred marrying royalty, but their princes and kings routinely slept with female members of the royal household. Stuart queens had their favourites as well. But royalty were nothing if not fickle, and deep affection could sometimes transform into enmity.

A bedchamber lady who rose high & fell far

Aristocratic ladies and gentry women of the late 17^th century coveted a position at court for many reasons. Proximity to eligible gentlemen—the rich, the powerful, the landed—meant they might marry well, gaining wealth or a title or both. It was a means of promoting family interests, and quite a few courtiers inherited positions held by their parents or grandparents. Often a member of a queen’s retinue became the king’s pampered mistress. By giving birth to a royal bastard, she ensured financial support for her lifetime. Another reason court service was a desirable career for a well-born woman—it ensured an annual salary, room and board, and sometimes even a generous dowry. She wore pretty clothes and received ample attention from male courtiers. She also gained material goods—gifts from the sovereign might include jewellery, lace, clothing, and valuable mementos. On the death of a queen, her clothing and possessions were distributed to those who had served her.

The disadvantages were just as numerous. Salaries and stipends came irregularly and were often in arrears. Providing the monarch with aristocratic companionship was an arduous duty. One had to stand for hours on end, attain perfection in dancing and manners, assist at the royal toilette and robing, determine which visitors were welcome and properly introduce them. Those who had no taste for dalliance fended off libertines intent on seduction. Those who dallied with courtiers ran the risk of an unwanted pregnancy—an ordinary bastard hadn’t the cachet of a royal one. Miss Trevor, said to be the prettiest of the Duchess of York’s maids of honour, abruptly left the court before delivering her bastard child. According to one intimately familiar with Charles II’s household, “the Queen’s and Duchess’s maids of honour…bestow their favours to the right and left, and not the least notice is taken of their conduct.”

Ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour served on a rotating basis, one week at a time. They had lodgings in each royal residence. At the top of the hierarchy was the Groom of the Stole, responsible for all the bedchamber staff, and was sometimes also styled First Lady of the Bedchamber. In addition to the ladies and the maids, there were bedchamber women or dressers, of lowlier status, who performed more menial bedchamber tasks.

Charles II

His was the golden age of the bedchamber lady as royal mistress—or vice versa. Upon his marriage, the King foisted his mistress Barbara Palmer, neé Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, upon his Portuguese bride, sparking a domestic crisis. Later he chased after the beautiful and elusive Frances Stewart, who returned to the Queen's service after marrying the Duke of Richmond. Even the actress Nell Gwyn, “the indiscreetest and wildest creature that was ever in a court” was given a nominal position in the Queen’s service as a Lady of the Privy Chamber. Her French rival Louise de Kerouaille began as a maid of honour to Charles’s sister, Henriette, Duchess of Orleans, at the French court. Later, as the English king’s mistress, she was assured of a place as a Lady of the Bedchamber, although the Queen would not let her enter it. Her apartments at Whitehall were grander than Her Majesty’s.

The "golden" Jane, Mrs Myddelton, in gold

It was, in a sense, the beginning of the “professional beauty,” whose portrait was painted to hang in royal palaces, and adorned humbler abodes in the form of an engraving. Jane Myddelton, described as “all white and golden,” and “the most beautiful woman in England, and the most amiable,” falls into that category. Frances Jennings, sister of the future Duchess of Marlborough, inspired Anthony Hamilton to write, “Her face reminded me of the dawn, or of some Goddess of the Spring.” On one occasion she and her fellow maid of honour Goditha Price, disguised as orange girls, sold fruit at the theatre. They went unrecognised by the male courtiers who accosted them, or their mistress the Duchess of York.

Diarist Samuel Pepys is a rich source of information on the exploits and amours of ladies of the court, several of whom fired his admiration and his secret passion.

James II

A Catholic convert, James’s devotion to his religion never inhibited him from sleeping with ladies of the court. As Duke of York, he preyed upon the ladies who served his first and second wives, such loose-moralled creatures as Diana Kirke, Lady Denham, and many others. Arabella Churchill, who served his first duchess, bore him four children.

The wild and witty Catherine Sedley

Catherine Sedley, his most famous mistress, resisted all attempts to dislodge her from his court and his bed, much to the consternation of Mary of Modena, his jealous young queen. Despite the fact that Catherine was Protestant and claimed to be far cleverer than he, James would not set her aside, no matter how his wife and priests urged him. Lord Dorset addressed these lines to her: “Dorinda’s sparkling wit, and Eyes/United, cast too fierce a Light.”

Mary II

When Mary and her husband William succeeded her de-throned father, they imposed a new sedateness and propriety upon the court. Her bedchamber ladies and maids of honour were faithful, respectable wives and chaste young maidens. The Countess of Derby, as Groom of the Stole, received £800, with a further £400 as Mistress of the Robes, for a total annual salary of £1200—no mean sum in those days. Her five Ladies of the Bedchamber were paid £500 per year, and usually there were six maids of honour, receiving £200 per year.

Mary, Countess of Dorset

Mary commissioned Godfrey Kneller to paint a series of portraits of the loveliest and most virtuous ladies, known as the Hampton Court Beauties. Among them was the Countess of Dorset, her favourite Lady of the Bedchamber, who died soon after sitting to Kneller. Another attendant, Lady Diana de Vere, whose Hampton Court portrait graces my novel’s cover, bore Mary’s train at her coronation and became the bride of Nell Gwyn’s son Charles, 1st Duke of St Albans. At their marriage, the Queen granted the couple an annuity of £2000.

At the palace, Mary’s ladies joined her in needlework (her favourite occupation), escorted her to chapel prayers, and read aloud to her. In public they accompanied her to the theatre, on walks and promenades, and even to St. James’s Fair, their identities concealed by black vizard masks.

Queen Anne


Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, wearing her
gold key of office

On assuming England’s throne, Anne designated her longtime companion and confidante Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Groom of the Stole and Keeper of the Privy Purse. It was this all-powerful aristocrat who “prepared a list of ye ladies of ye best quality, ye nearest ye Queen in age and most suited to her temper to be Ladies of the Bedchamber.” In addition to Sarah there were ten—two of them, not surprisingly, were her own daughters. Each received a salary of £1000. The six maids of honour had a stipend of £300 per annum. The Queen was a firm Tory and Sarah strongly Whig, thus the party affiliation of Her Majesty’s attendants was balanced. By the last years of the reign, the number of bedchamber ladies had dropped to eight.

The royal account books reveal that in 1707, the Master of the Great Wardrobe was given £24 10s to purchase “umbrellas for the Maids of Honour.”

Perhaps in no other reign was the relationship of the bedchamber ladies and the monarch so closely scrutinised, or their political powers—real or presumed—so discussed. Sarah, through her firm—some might even say bullying—management of the Queen, soon put herself out of favour. And it was her own cousin Abigail Masham, neé Hill, who supplanted her as Anne’s caretaker and Keeper of the Privy Purse. But because she was a mere “Mrs,” and of a lower class, she couldn’t have Sarah’s position of Groom of the Stole. It was bestowed upon the extremely aristocratic Duchess of Somerset, who had served at court for many a year and whom Anne greatly respected.

Sarah embarked on her long career at court in the 1670s as a maid of honour to Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, and it lasted till her dismissal in the early days of 1711. Her history demonstrates the heights to which a determined female could climb—and also how she could descend, on losing the royal favour.

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Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, nonfiction and poetry. Lady Diana de Vere's association with Queen Mary's court is featured in A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers the 1st Duke and Duchess of St. Albans (available in trade paperback and ebook). Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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The First Duke of St Albans: His Early Years

by Margaret Porter
On this date, the eighth of May, in 1670 actress Nell Gwyn bore a son and named him Charles—for his father, whose identity was no secret. As one letter-writer reported, "Elianor Quin, one that belongs to the King’s play hous, was brought to bed of a boy in her house in Lyncoln’s Inns fields . . . the King’s bastard.” Unlike the other illegitimate offspring, the infant had no surname and no title. Within months the royal mistress returned to the stage, for she received no income from the royal purse. Before long her protector provided a grand new residence close to St. James’s Palace and its gardens, which he eventually deeded to her.

When the court painter Peter Lely portrayed her on canvas as Venus, her little son was included in the portrait as Cupid, kneeling at her side. The next time she posed as the goddess of love, she was attended by a pair of cherubs—she had borne a second son.

The boys wore the costliest of children’s garments and had a pet donkey in the garden which provided milk for His Majesty's bastards. In his sixth year, young Charles received at last from his father a surname—Beauclerk—and a pair of titles, Baron Heddington and Earl of Burford. At age 10 he became an only child again after his little brother died at school in France. Despite this tragedy, Charles was also sent there for his education, academic and social. On his birthday in 1683 he was presented to King Louis XIV—his cousin—and was at that time described as “le duc de Saint-Alban, fils du roi d’Angleterre et de Mademoiselle Gouin, comédienne.” His father had bestowed the dukedom earlier that year. He divided his time between England and France, for in March of the following year John Evelyn observed him at the Royal Chapel, and his mother wrote from Burford House, her mansion in Windsor, “The Duke brought me down with him my crochet of diamonds, and I love it the better because he brought it.”

In February 1685 the fates of Charles and his mother altered drastically. The young man received a ring from his dying father, and was still in London six weeks later, when the Gazette reported, “Lost in the King’s Garden near St. James's Park, a black and white Spaniel Bitch, near a year old, her Legs white, with some mottled black Spots, most white about her Neck, with a little white up her Face, and the top of her Tail white. Whoever brings her to the Duke of St. Albans in the Pall-Mall, shall have a Guinea reward.” Perhaps the runaway spaniel was another legacy from the King, who was remarkably devoted to his dogs.

By November Charles had resumed his studies at L’Académie du Sieur Coulon near Versailles, where in 1686 he contracted smallpox and promptly recovered.His education was intended to prepare him for a career in the military—his elder half-brothers had served with distinction in the army. But he was also attending balls in his spare time, for early in 1687, Princess Anne wrote to her sister Princess Mary in Holland to report her fondness for a dance “called the Rigadoon which the D[uke] of St Albans brought out of France . . . mightily liked and indeed it was a very pretty one I thought.” But soon thereafter she reported with regret, "I have no reason to like it now, for I believe it was the dance that made me miscarry, for there is a great deal of jumping in it.”

His mother had been suffering from ill health for some time, and after a period of prolonged illness during 1687, she died in November. Unaware of the extent of her debts, everyone assumed that Charles inherited a vast fortune. At the end of the month his uncle, King James II, wrote to his daughter Mary, “she hath not left the Duke of St. Albans so much as was believed.” James had settled the mortgage on Bestwood Park, the Nottinghamshire hunting lodge King Charles had granted Nell, but her income had never adequately supported her spendthrift ways and lavish lifestyle. Unlike the other royal mistresses, she had made no financial demands of the King. His widow, Dowager Queen Catherine, was fond enough of Charles Beauclerk to provide him with an allowance of £2000 per year to augment his other stipends from the Privy Purse.

Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St Albans

As the product of an irregular liaison between a monarch and a play actress, a proud young man, and a firm Protestant, Charles would not have felt comfortable at a newly Roman Catholic court. He’d firmly resisted King James’s unrelenting efforts to bring about his conversion. Apparently the prospect of becoming a soldier was more to his liking, and he not only received his uncle’s permission to return to the Continent for that purpose, he received a recommendation. Shortly before Charles’s eighteenth birthday, King James wrote in French to the Duke of Lorraine declaring his nephew’s interest in supporting the war against the Turks, who had recently been driven from Vienna but now occupied Hungary.

And there the Duke of St. Albans would seize the opportunity to escape the shadow of scandal cast by his parents and begin to establish his own identity and reputation.

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Images: National Portrait Gallery, Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Manuscript Letters in the British Library; The London Gazette; Oxford Dictionary of English Biography; Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King by Charles Beauclerk; Right Royal Bastards: The Fruits of Passion by Peter Beauclerk-Dewar and Roger Powell; The House of Nell Gwyn by Peter Beauclerk-Dewar; Journal de Philippe de Courcillon de Dangeau.

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Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of several historical fiction genres, and is also published in nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, was recently released in trade paperback and ebook. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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Sir Godfrey Kneller, the de Veres, and the Beauclerks

by Margaret Porter

Such are thy pictures, Kneller, and such thy skill,

That Nature seems obedient to thy will;

Comes out and meets thy pencil in the draught,

Lives there, and wants but words to speak her thoughts.

                                                       ~~ John Dryden



Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford

In 1678, two years after arriving in England with his brother, the German artist Godfrey Kneller produced a magisterial, much-admired portrait of King Charles II. As a result, "his reputation daily increased so that most noblemen and ladies would have their pictures done by him," irrespective of their political affiliation or religious preferences. Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford, a soldier and courtier boasting one of the longest pedigrees in the land, was among the artist's subjects. Kneller painted his illustrious client in battle armour. 

the first portrait

When the Earl's daughter Lady Diana de Vere first posed for Kneller, she was no more than ten years old. Holding up a floral garland, she stands beside her younger sister Mary, seated beside her. By the early 1680s, when this double portrait  was completed, the German artist was at the pinnacle of prominence.

Nell Gwyn, with her son and without, with or without her clothes on, was often painted by renowned portraitists Peter Lely and Simon Verelst. Kneller succeeded them as the most fashionable artist of the day, remaining so after Nell’s death in 1687 and the Glorious Revolution of the following year. King William III and Queen Mary II shared the deposed James II's preference for Kneller's work.

Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St Albans

By 1690 Nell's son and heir, the Duke of St Albans, had embarked upon a military career. At about that time the handsome young man posed for a three-quarter length portrait. This would be the first of many Beauclerk portraits produced by Kneller, now a naturalised Englishman. He'd established a residence and studio in the north east corner of Covent Garden. Not only the nobility flocked there--the Duke’s father, King Charles II, had also visited the artist to sit for his portraits, a mark of great favour.

One of Kneller's most memorable and presumably enjoyable commissions came a year after the double coronation of William and Mary. As the former battled foreign enemies on the Continent, the Queen decided to imitate her own mother's gallery of beauties at Windsor Castle, produced by Lely. Mary proposed a set of paintings for Hampton Court Palace, being altered by Sir Christopher Wren to suit her and William's architectural tastes. Her plan was mocked by her father’s former mistress, Lady Dorchester, who famously quipped, "Madam, if the King was to ask for portraits of all the wits in his court, would not the rest think he called them fools?"

Diana, a Hampton Court Beauty

Undeterred, Mary put Kneller to work, and her loveliest and most virtuous attendants made their way to his studio to have their charms preserved as life-sized canvases. Of the twelve original paintings only eight remain. The most admired of the set is that of Lady Diana de Vere, who at that time was either officially or unofficially attached to the court as maid of honor. She poses with an orange tree, holding an orange in her hand—doubtless designating the de Veres’ fealty to the new rulers from the House of Orange. The paintings of Diana and the other ladies were positioned in the narrow spaces between the tall windows of Hampton Court's riverside Water Gallery (later demolished). Each was set within a blue-and-white painted frame to complement the Queen’s extensive Delftware collection. Diana's portrait currently hangs in the King’s Dining Room, and is now surrounded by giltwood frame. Duchess of St Albans, the title she gained at her marriage to Charles Beauclerk, was inscribed at a later date. (A detail of this work appears on the cover of my novel A Pledge of Better Times.)

The 20th Earl of Oxford 
in Garter Robes

 Having pleased the monarchs with portraits of beauties and military men, on 3 March 1691/2, Kneller became Sir Godfrey. “His Majesty, to shew his Kingly approbation of his Art and Manners, was pleas’d to confer the Honour of Knighthood upon him…and as an extraordinary Mark of his Grace and Favour, Honour’d him with the Present of a Sword, by the Hands of the Right Honourable Lord Chamberlain." The artist also became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford. An acquaintance reported, "In June 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller told me he has had fourteen persons sett to him in a day." Some of those persons sat to him as many as a dozen times for a single portrait! Diana’s father, Lord Oxford, a Knight of the Garter, a member of the Privy Council, a Lieutenant General, and a Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber, commissioned a splendid full-length Kneller likeness at approximately the time his daughter was posing for her Beauty portrait.

Diana, 1694

Author's collection

Upon her marriage in 1694, Diana became Duchess of St Albans and again sat to Kneller—for a third time. The painting was promptly delivered to engraver John Smith, who revised her features and hair somewhat when producing prints for public sale. One of these holds a special place in my personal art gallery!

 In 1695, the Crown granted Kneller an annuity of £200 per year. Two years afterwards he received additional proofs of William’s admiration, a large gold medal stamped with the King’s image and a golden chain worth £300. It appears in most of the later self-portraits (as seen below) and on the bust attached to his burial monument.

After her accession to the throne, Diana’s friend Queen Mary would sit only to Kneller. A copy of her portrait, or the King’s, could be purchased for the price of £50, and judging from their wide dissemination this was a reliable source of income for Kneller and his assistants. Not only were the paintings acquired for civic and government buildings, they went abroad as presents to fellow rulers, territorial governors, ambassadorial residences, and so forth. And Kneller even travelled with—or without—the King, to make portraits of foreign allies and friends in the Low Countries.

1st Duke of St Albans, 1704

Kneller produced a Kit-Kat style portrait of Charles Beauclerk wearing a blue coat in 1704, as the the Duke was falling out of favour with Queen Anne—not that he ever really had it. Probably at her husband's instigation, Kneller created additional pictures of Diana: seated in a landscape wearing “a dark blue dress with red scarf,” and an oval half-length in which she appears in a “white dress with red mantle and holding a chalice.” These two passed through auction houses and are privately owned. Lord Cholmondeley’s Houghton Hall holds another Kneller portrait of “the Duchess of St. Albans ... in a blue dress, her son in a brown coat and a purple mantle, at her side.”

Duke of St Albans

The private family apartments of a Gloucestershire castle contain large three-quarter sized portraits of both Charles and Diana, and I greatly appreciate the owners’ invitation to view and photograph these paintings. They appear to have been created in 1718, after Charles became a Knight of the Garter—he wears a handsome crimson coat crossed with a blue sash from which hangs a jewel-studded Lesser George medallion.

Diana, Duchess of St Albans

Diana sits serenely in a white dress, fingering a blue ribbon. By my count this later painting represents the seventh time she posed for Kneller, indicating that she must have got to know him rather well!

Kneller's Self-portrait

Kneller was a companion of Dryden, Addison, Swift, and Pope, most of whom wrote verses proclaiming his talent and fame and what they regarded as his genius. He died aged seventy-four on 19 October, 1723, three years ahead of his regular client the Duke of St Albans. Two days before his death his friend Pope visited him, and declared, “I believe, Sir Godfrey, if Almighty God had had your assistance, the world would have been formed more perfect.”

These laudatory lines were composed by Addison:

Thou, Kneller, long with noble pride,

The foremost of thy art hast vied

With nature in a generous strife,

And touched the canvas into life.

Though later critics were less enamoured of Kneller’s style and works than his contemporaries, I remain forever grateful to him for touching those canvases and presenting my characters as they appeared to him in life!

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Images: thepeerage.com, National Portrait Gallery, Wikimedia Commons, author's collection and personal photo archive

Sources: Documents in the British Library; Sir Godfrey Kneller: His Life & Times, Lord Killanin; Beauty, Sex, and Power: A Story of Debauchery and Decadent Art at the Late Stuart Court, Brett Dolman, David Souden, Olivia Fryman; Oxford Dictionary of English Biography

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Margaret Porter, who can claim a few tiny drops of de Vere blood, is the award-winning and bestselling author of several historical fiction genres, and is also published in nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, the story of courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, and of Diana's father Aubrey de Vere, was just released in trade paperback and ebook. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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The De Vere Family in the 17th Century

by Margaret Porter
The blood of the English de Veres, which still flows through the veins of Britain’s noble families—and some members of the present royal family—can be traced backwards in time to a Frenchman, Alberic de Vere. He accompanied William the Conqueror to England and in 1066 fought at the Battle of Hastings. Not long afterwards he was granted lands in Essex, the county most closely associated with his descendants. His grandson Aubrey, Count of Guines, was further ennobled as First Earl of Oxford by Empress Matilda when she was Queen of England. And down the centuries, through every reign, the de Veres were prominent as royal chamberlains, courtiers, and favourites.

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

The passage of five hundred years brings us to the 17th century and the waning days of the Seventeenth Earl—by far the most famous and illustrious member of his family. Edward de Vere was a shimmering star in Queen Elizabeth’s court, who referred to himself in his signature variously as "Oxford" or "Oxenford". For those who doubt that the genuine author of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry was a common glover’s son from Stratford, de Vere is most frequently proposed as their probable creator. He was a warrior-poet, in addition to being well-travelled, a gifted dancer, and a court officer. And, in the opinion of his wife Anne Cecil and her powerful father Lord Burghley, a terrible husband! It was his second wife, Elizabeth Trentham, who in 1593 provided an heir to his earldom.

Ten years later, at the death of his beloved Queen, Lord Oxford wrote to his brother-in-law of his grief, saying, “In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest.” On the accession of King James I, he asserted his hereditary claim as Lord Great Chamberlain and received from the King’s Wardrobe “forty yards of crimson velvet for the Earl’s own robes” to wear at the coronation on 25 July, 1603. Among his many duties on that date: delivering the uncrowned monarch's shirt, stockings, and underclothing to his bedchamber and dressing him for the coronation. As a perquisite, the Earl received “the bed on which the King had slept the night before the coronation and all his bedding, the coverlet, curtains, pillows, and hangings of the whole room, with the King’s nightgown.” During the coronation banquet, he presented the King's food. Oxford had but a year to enjoy his new possessions, for he died on 24 June, 1604.

Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford

His son and successor Henry was only eleven years old, the inheritor of a wasted estate. The boy's mother struggled to reclaim Hedingham, the de Veres’ ancestral castle in Essex, and other property in East Anglia. On attaining his majority he departed on a grand tour and spent five years in the Low Countries, France, and Italy. He later became Vice-Admiral of the Fleet, perhaps in order to keep him away from Parliament, where he was reportedly “one of the free-est speakers . . . .” He didn’t last long as a naval commander: disputes with the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham landed him in the Tower more than once. Like his father, he married a Cecil, but she bore him no children. He died at The Hague from a battle wound in 1625, two months after King James I, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Robert de Vere, 19th Earl of Oxford

As preparations began for Charles I’s coronation, Henry’s cousin Robert’s right of succession was disputed by another lord, preventing the presumptive Nineteenth Earl from taking part in the ceremony. Nearly a year later the House of Lords affirmed Robert’s status, and he took his seat in April 1626. In February of the following year his countess, Beatrice van Hemmema of Friesland, delivered their son Aubrey.

History repeated—like Edward and Henry de Vere before him, Aubrey became an earl when very young after his father fell at the Siege of Maastricht. Inheriting his title at the age of five, the Twentieth Earl of Oxford spent his childhood and early adolescence in Friesland with his mother’s family.

Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford

By the time Aubrey returned to England at age fourteen with his mother and sister, the de Vere properties were nearly all lost. He attended university at Oxford and began his long and rather distinguished career as a soldier—he loved a good fight on and off the battlefield and was a notorious duelist. In 1647 he took as his bride the ten-year-old heiress Anne Bayning, who brought him much-needed funds and a life interest in her Essex estates. A bright and promising future was dimmed by the execution of Charles I. Aubrey, a devoted royalist, fled to the Netherlands to join the court in exile. His estate was sequestered in 1651. Three years later he returned to England and landed in the Tower after being accused of plotting against Cromwell. This did not deter him--after his release, under the code name "Mr Waller" he participated in further royalist conspiracies and in 1659 was again imprisoned. His wife voluntarily joined him in the Tower, sickened, and died there. He was released a fortnight afterwards.

With the fall of the Commonwealth, the widower Aubrey, premiere earl of the realm, was among the six peers who invited Charles II to return to England. His good friend, the king he’d supported in exile, made him a Knight of the Garter, Lord Lieutenant of Essex, and gave him command of the regiment that was known as the “Oxford Blues.” He became a Privy Councillor and a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.

Aubrey, “the first of his Dignity in the Realm tho’ low in fortune,” was a gallant and courtly man, a gambler, and as lusty as Charles II’s other cronies—in other words, a very typical nobleman of the Restoration court. He arranged a false marriage to an actress who stirred his lust, employing one of His Majesty’s trumpeters to serve as “priest”. Despite the deception, the lady remained with him and in 1664 bore him a son. The mother referred to the boy Lord Bolbec, the courtesy title granted to an Earl of Oxford’s heir apparent, although he was the product of an unlawful marriage. Not surprisingly, the liaison didn’t last.

Aubrey proved himself a friend of the theatre in another way, by loaning out his coronation robes for a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV!

Diana Kirke by Peter Lely

His next mistress of note was the beautiful and immoral Diana Kirke, daughter of Whitehall Palace’s keeper and granddaughter of Aurelian Townsend, who composed court masques for King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. When Di fell pregnant, the King offered the couple an annual pension of £2000 if they married. And so they did, in April 1673. Their first child, Charlotte, arrived not many months later.  She and her brother Charles, the true Lord Bolbec, died very young. Of the Oxfords' three surviving daughters, only one had an unblemished reputation—Lady Diana, the future First Duchess of St. Albans, who married Charles II’s son by Nell Gwyn. Lady Mary and Lady Henrietta, who were very possibly sired by Di's paramours, were as scandalous as their mother but did not succeed in marrying any of their lovers.

At James II’s accession in 1685, Aubrey was appointed Privy Councillor. At the coronation on 23 April his responsibilities were the same as when Charles II was crowned, and his wife took precedence over the other countesses. The Lord Chamberlain's instructions for the coronation clearly outline their positions: In procession of Countesses, four abreast, excepting Diana Countess of Oxford, alone….In procession of His Majesties regalia: The Sword of State in the Scabbard, born by Aubrey de Vere Earl of Oxford, Premier Earl of England, in his Robes of Estate, and Collar of the Order. 

Aubrey and James eventually fell out—the Earl refused to submit to the new King’s pro-Catholic policies and his stubborn intention to abolish the Test Act. Aubrey and his regiment supported the Protestant cause embodied in Prince William of Orange, and he welcomed the Dutch invader to England. After the accession of William and Mary, Aubrey participated in their coronation (his daughter Diana was one of the Queen’s train-bearers), and his former offices and honours were restored to him. He and the Oxford Blues fought against James II’s forces in Ireland, most notably at the Battle of the Boyne. In 1700 and and the following year he was commissioned as Speaker of the House of Lords, serving until William III revoked his privilege in September 1701.

Queen Anne was the last of the many monarchs Aubrey helped to crown. He succumbed to a serious illness in the winter of 1703 and died at his house in Downing Street, aged seventy-six. He was buried with his first wife Anne and many of his ancestors in Westminster Abbey's Chapel of St. John the Evangelist. The historic earldom of Oxford (first creation) died with him, as he had no legitimate son.

His daughter Diana, Duchess of St Albans, was a renowned beauty. Not long after her father's death, a member of the Kit-Kat club (a Whig drinking and discussion society) paid tribute to her and the de Veres' martial exploits by engraving these verses on a toasting glass:

1st Duchess of St Albans, 1694

Author's Collection

The line of Vere, so long renown’d in arms,
Concludes with luster in St. Albans’s charms;
Her conquering eyes have made their race complete,
It rose in valor, and in beauty set. 

Through Diana, the de Vere bloodline extended through her numerous offspring (eight of her nine sons survived) to the present day. Although the Beauclerks are more often described as direct descendants of King Charles II, they are equally connected to Aubrey the great 17th century courtier and his forbears. Murray de Vere Beauclerk, the current and Fourteenth Duke of St Albans, bears the name that Alberic brought to England in the 11th century, as does his eldest son, an author--and biographer of their ancestress Nell Gwyn.

Members of the royal family who carry de Vere DNA are William, Duke of Cambridge (through his mother Diana, Princess of Wales) and his son Prince George.

Sources:

The de Veres of Castle Hedingham, Verily Anderson

Manuscript letters written by Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford, held by the British Library

Beauclerk family papers held by the London Metropolitan Archive

A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire, Sir Bernard Burke

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

The Fighting Veres, Sir Clements Robert Markham

Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Alan H. Nelson

Dictionary of National Biography

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Margaret Porter, who can claim a few tiny drops of de Vere blood, is the award-winning and bestselling author of several historical fiction genres, and is also published in nonfiction and poetry. A Pledge of Better Times, the story of courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, and of Diana's father Aubrey de Vere, will be available in April 2015. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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