Thomas de Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford

Thomas de Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford (* between 1336 and 1338; † between 12 and 18 September 1371 in Great Bentley , Essex ) was an English magnate and military.

Origin, marriage and inheritance

Thomas de Vere came from the Anglo-Norman family de Vere . He was the second son of John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford and his wife Maud de Badlesmere. After the death of his older brother John in 1350, he became the heir of his father, who promptly married him to Maud , a daughter of Sir Ralph Ufford and Matilda of Lancaster . His bride was a niece of Robert de Ufford, 1st Earl of Suffolk , but a child at the time of their engagement. While his father was fighting in the service of the king in the Hundred Years War , Thomas came to the royal court in Westminster . During his father's lifetime the king granted him an annual pension of £ 40 to cover his expenses in August 1357. In late 1359 Thomas accompanied the king and his father on the campaign to Reims , in which his father died in early 1360. Thomas inherited most of the family estates, the title Earl of Oxford and the inheritance of the Chamberlain of England . The family holdings, however, were quite modest for a magnate family, despite the age and reputation of the family. Since his father had given Thomas' younger brother Aubrey seven estates in his will and his mother traditionally received a third of the family estates as Wittum , Oxford had relatively little income until her death. His wife, too, came from a very poor family and had brought only one good into the marriage as a dowry. After his mother died in 1366, he inherited her Wittum. His income was now enough to raise £ 1,121 within two years so that he could buy back the two goods his mother had donated to charity on her deathbed.

Service as courtier and military

The war with France was interrupted in 1360 by the Peace of Brétigny , which was confirmed on October 24, 1360 in Calais Oxford. As a result, Oxford took over various offices in his native Essex, but above all he held the office of Lord Chamberlain at court, where between 1362 and 1368 he witnessed 50 of the 97 known royal documents.

When the war with France flared up again in 1369, Oxford took part in a campaign to France under John of Gaunt . He provided a contingent of 40 men in arms and 80 archers and was sent to Calais along with the Earl of March . The campaign was unsuccessful, however, and Oxford's military career soon ended, because by July 1370 at the latest he was seriously ill. He returned to England, where he drew up his will on August 1, 1371 in his Great Bentley residence in Essex. His early death was a major setback for his family. His main heir was his son Robert , his armor and other items he bequeathed to his brother Aubrey. As early as April 1370, he had bequeathed the Market Overton estate in Rutland to his closest follower, Sir William Wingfield, in gratitude for his services . Oxford was buried in the Earls Colne Priory family foundation in Essex, to which he had donated the patronage of West Wickham in Cambridgeshire in 1361 .

Before the abbey church was demolished, his funerary monument was moved to St Stephen's Chapel in Bures , Suffolk , where it has been preserved.

Web links

• James Ross: Vere, Thomas de, eighth earl of Oxford (1336x8-1371). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
• Thomas de Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford on thepeerage.com , accessed January 31, 2016.

predecessor	Office	successor
John de Vere	Earl of Oxford 1360-1371	Robert de Vere