CHAPTER XIV.

HOLLAND HOUSE CONTINUED FAMILY OF DE VERE,

EARLS OF OXFORD-ORIGIN OF THEIR NAME-AN

DREW MARVEL'S VERSES ON FOUNDERS OF DUTCH

STATES THE BEAUCLERKS-SIR WALTER COPE-THE

RICH FAMILY-EARLS OF HOLLAND-PERFORMANCE

OF PLAYS-EARL OF ANGLESEA-SIR JOHN CHARDIN

-DUCHESS

OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE-ATTERBURY

SHIPPEN-WILLIAM III. THE RICHES, JOINT EARLS

OF WARWICK AND HOLLAND-WILLIAM EDWARDES,

FIRST BARON KENSINGTON.

We now come, not only to the possessors of the present house, but to those of the one that preceded it; and therefore must go

THE VERE PROPERTY.

271

a good way back, before we return to the Foxes.

We have seen, in a former chapter, that, with the exception of an Anglo-Saxon in the time of Edward the Confessor, of whom nothing further is mentioned, and of the Bishop of Coutances, to whom William the Conqueror gave it with power to alienate; the De Veres, Earls of Oxford, were the earliest recorded possessors of the manor of Kensington, and seated probably on the spot in question. It is not ascertained that such was the case; but as the property was valuable, was convenient for its neighbourhood to London, and seems to be implied as residential in the name of the adjoining locality, Earl's Court, that is to say, the court for administering the Earl's property or jurisdiction, it is extremely improbable that none of the

family ever occupied it. It was associated with their name from the time of William the Conqueror to that of James the First. Aubrey de Vere, its first holder under the Bishop, must needs have visited his property some time or other, or for what did he come with the Conqueror into England? The ancient manor-house that stood not far from the present Holland House, must have been built for somebody; and visions of Aubrey and his successors, however transient, naturally present themselves to the eye of the local antiquary.

This Aubrey de Vere came from Holland with the first William, as countrymen of his did afterwards with William the Third. He died, however, a monk; perhaps out of penitence for the wrongs which he had committed as a soldier. The title of Earl of Oxford came into the family with

THE

"STARRY" Vere.

273

his grandson.

Almost all his successors

were stirring soldiers and influential subjects. One of them was a Magna Charta baron; another a commander at the battles of Cressy and Poitiers; another at Agincourt; another was the great lord who received Henry the Seventh at his house with such a magnificent show of retainers, and who, notwithstanding his having been one of the chief instruments in setting that moneyscraper on the throne, was fined by his sharp-eyed and shabby visitor, for entertaining him at a cost beyond the law.

The family branched out into congenial worthies, a daughter of one of whom, the

starry Vere" of some noble verses by Marvell, was the Lady Fairfax, who gave that brave contradiction, in Westminster Hall, to the assertion that all the people of England were indicters of Charles the First ;

"No! not the hundredth part of them." In short, the word Vere was almost synonymous in English history with whatsoever was noble and dignified, when in its twentieth Earl of Oxford, it came to a sorry end in the person of a profligate time-server, who accommodated himself to every Court in succession-Tory, Commonwealth, and Whig, and who crowned his anti-heroical achievements by cheating an actress with a false marriage.

The Kensington property, however, was saved the disgrace of belonging to this scoundrel; for he died long after it had been carried, by a co-heiress, into the families of Argyle and others, who sold it to Sir Walter Cope, the builder of Holland House.

But before we part with the Veres, we have a quarrel to pick with the whole of