ing of the enemy. On 28 July 1667 he represented to Arlington the necessity of reinforcements, and especially of gunners for the fort of Harwich (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1667, p. 335). In October 1668 he was there attending the Duke of York. On 22 May 1667 he had been made warden of the New Forest, and on 6 Nov. 1670 a warrant for 2,000l. as a free gift from the king was issued to him. On 18 June of the same year he was named one of a commission to act under the Duke of York ‘to consider all military matters’ (ib. 1670, pp. 282, 518).
Oxford was sworn of the privy council on 5 Jan. 1669, but was left out on its reconstitution ten years later. On 4 May 1678 he had been gazetted lieutenant-general of the forces, and in the same year became a lord of the bedchamber. On 12 July 1680 he went to Calais ‘to compliment the French king on his arrivall in those parts’ (Luttrell, i. 52). He was readmitted to the privy council in the following January (ib. p. 64). He acted as one of Danby's sureties when in February 1684 he was released from the Tower on a writ of habeas corpus (ib. p. 300).
Oxford's pension of 2,000l. was continued by James II (see List in Append. to Clarendon's Diary); but, in spite of his encumbered estates and his dependence on the court, he gradually joined the opposition to the king's measures. When commanded to use his influence in his lieutenancy ‘for the taking off of the penal laws and the test,’ Oxford ‘told the king plainly he could not persuade that to others which he was averse to in his own conscience,’ and his regiment was thereupon given to Berwick (Reresby, Memoirs, ed. Cartwright, p. 390); and in February 1688, after an explanation had taken place in the royal closet, the lord-lieutenancy of Essex was given to Petre. Both, however, were restored to Oxford, the latter in October and the former in December (Luttrell, i. 421, 470, 489). In November 1688 Oxford refused to join in the petition for calling a free parliament, ‘as he knew it would not please the king’ (Clarendon's Diary, ed. Singer, ii. 209); but in the following month he went in to the Prince of Orange at Salisbury (Luttrell, i. 484). At the meeting on 8 Dec. at the inn at Hungerford between the representatives of James and William, Oxford, who was among the latter, ‘was persuaded to take the chair’ (Clarendon , ii. 221). William III reappointed him to his former offices, and on 13 Feb. 1689 made him lieutenant-general of horse and foot, with a day's precedency over Marlborough. Oxford was present at the battle of the Boyne, and in November 1690 was described as ‘making great preparations to attend his majesty into Holland’ (Luttrell, ii. 134). In 1691 he was to be ‘a lieutenant-general to command in Flanders next year’ (ib. p. 318). On 24 Oct. 1692 he went to Kensington at the head of the officers of the army ‘to congratulate the king's safe return’ (ib. p. 601; cf. p. 624).
During the reign of William III Oxford usually acted with the whig lords. Thus he signed protests against the rejection of a proposal for giving equal validity to the taking of the sacrament in all protestant places of worship, and against the refusal to give longer time to the city for preparing their case for reversing the quo warranto. In the controversy with the commons over the impeachment of Somers he favoured the rights of the lower house. In April 1697 he obtained a grant of ‘the quitt rents in Ireland’ (Luttrell, iii. 30). On several occasions he was one of the commissioners for the prorogation of parliament. On the accession of Anne he was again sworn of the privy council. He died on 13 March 1703. With him expired the earldom of Oxford, so long held by his family.
Oxford is described by Macaulay as ‘a man of loose morals, but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners,’ of a nature not factious. In person he was handsome, and he shone at court. A full-length portrait in oils, by Verelst, is at Welbeck Abbey. A portrait of him, drawn by S. Harding, was engraved by Schenker for Harding's edition of the Grammont ‘Memoirs.’
By his first wife, Anne (d. 1659), daughter and coheir of Paul, second viscount Bayning, he had no issue; but by the second, Diana, daughter of George Kirke, groom of the bedchamber to Charles II [see under Kirke, Percy], he had a son and three daughters. A portrait of the second countess was painted by Lely (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. viii. 461). The son predeceased his father. Two daughters, Margaret and Henrietta, were buried in Westminster Abbey. A third, Diana, married Charles Beauclerk, first duke of St. Albans. Their third son was on 28 March 1750 created Baron Vere of Hanworth; the barony afterwards reverted to the dukes of St. Albans, who now quarter the De Vere arms.
The ‘Aubrey de Vere’ who was baptised at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, on 15 May 1664, and buried from Gray's Inn at St. Andrew's, Holborn, on 4 June 1708, as ‘Earl of Oxford,’ was probably an illegitimate son of Vere by an actress (probably Elizabeth Davenport) with whom he went through a
