to Robert do Vere upon his liege homage only.[1] To do him further honour, permission was granted to him to bear as his arms, so long as he should live and hold the said lordship, these arms, viz.—Azure, three golden crowns within a bordure,[2] which he was authorised to bear, quartering the arms of Vere, in all shields, banners, penons, coats of arms, and all other his equipments which were capable of being adorned with cognizances of arms, wherever he chose to display them, either in actions of war or elsewhere. But, after this extravagant exaltation, the favourite's career was brief. He was attainted by parliament in the year 1388; and, whilst in exile at Louvaine, was killed by a wild boar when hunting, on the 22nd November, 1392. He died without issue.[3]
His uncle Aubrey de Vere was his heir; and in the parliament held at Winchester, in January following, he was, for the good service done to the king and his father, restored to the estates of his family, and to the dignity of Earl of Oxford, with remainder to his heirs male for ever.[4] Whereupon the said earl did his homage to the king, and then was put and sat with his peers in parliament, "right humbly thanking our lord the king for his good and gracious lordship." This act of parliament, and its limitation of the dignity to heirs male, became the authority upon which the succession of the Earldom was decided in the reign of Charles the First. This earl, however, was not restored to the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, which the earls of Oxford
- ↑ Cart. 10 Ric. II. p. 1. m. 2.
- ↑ Patent. 9 Ric. II. pars 1. m. 1. (MS. Cotton, Julius C. vii. f. 237 b.) From the terms of this patent it would seem that these were then regarded as the Arms of Ireland. It may be that they were intended to be so constituted by this royal charter, and that they originated as follows: The king had himself assumed the arms of King Edward the Confessor, and impaled them with those of France and England; and he had granted to some of his peers of the blood royal the same, with differences; for instance, his nephew, Thomas Holand Duke of Surrey, bore them with a bordure argent. In like manner he appears to have assigned to his favourite Vere the arms usually attributed to Saint Edmund the King (and which, like those of the Confessor, were usually earned in the royal host), viz., Azure, three crowns or, differenced by a bordure argent. See an essay on the Ancient Arms of Ireland, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1845, vol. xxiii. p. 603. The coat of the three crowns occurs on an encaustic paving tile, found in Essex, which is engraved in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1818, p. 305. It exhibits three crowns, two and one, quartered with the usual coat of Vere.
- ↑ See a memoir of this royal favourite in Beltz's Memorials of the Garter, p. 299.
- ↑ "nostre dit sieur le Roi … de sa grace especiale restitut, done, et grante par assente du Parlement, al dit sieur Aubrey, le noun, title, estat et honour du Count d'Oxenford, a avoir les ditz noun, title, estat et honour a dit sieur Aubrey, et sesheirs madles a toutz jours, et luy fist Count d'Oxenford en plein parlement." Rot. Parl. iii. 303.
