ix. The Earl of Oxford’s Men

John de Vere, s. of John, 15th Earl of Oxford; nat. c. 1512; succ. as 16th Earl and Lord Great Chamberlain, 21 Mar. 1540; m. Margaret Golding, 1547; ob. 3 Aug. 1562.

Edward de Vere, s. of John, 16th Earl of Oxford; nat. 2 Apr. 1550; succ. as 17th Earl and Lord Great Chamberlain, 3 Aug. 1562; m. (1) Anne, d. of William Lord Burghley, Dec. 1571, (2) Elizabeth Trentham, c. 1591; ob. 24 June 1604. Of his daughters by (1), Elizabeth m. William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, 26 Jan. 1595; Bridget m. Francis, Lord Norris; Susan m. Sir Philip Herbert, afterwards Earl of Montgomery, 27 Dec. 1604.

The Earls of Oxford had their players as far back as 1492. A company belonging to the 16th Earl caused a scandal by playing in Southwark at the moment when a dirge was being sung for Henry VIII in St. Saviour’s on 6 February 1547. It is probably the same company which is traceable in 1555–6 at Dover, in 1557–8 at Ipswich, in 1559–60 and 1560–1 at Maldon, and in 1561–2 at Barnstaple, Maldon, and Ipswich. Murray (ii. 63) adds a few notices. There is no sign of it at Court, and it is likely that the 17th Earl discontinued it soon after his succession. The last notices of it are at Leicester, Plymouth, and Ipswich in 1562–3.

At a later date, however, this Earl was clearly interested in things dramatic. He took part in a Shrovetide device at Court in 1579, and is recorded in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598) to have been himself a playwright and one of ‘the best for comedy amongst us’ (App. C, No. lii). In 1580 the Duttons and the rest of the Earl of Warwick’s men transferred themselves to his service, and thereby laid themselves open to satire upon their fickleness (cf. supra). I do not know whether it was their resentment at this that brought them into trouble, but on 12 April 1580 the Lord Mayor wrote to Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord Chancellor, about a disorder at the Theatre two days before, which he understood to be already before the Privy Council; and on 13 April we find the Council committing Robert Leveson and Laurence Dutton, servants of the Earl of Oxford, to the Marshalsea for a fray with the Inns of Court. On 26 May the matter was referred to three judges for examination, and on 18 July Thomas Chesson, sometime servant to the Earl, was released on bail (App. D, Nos. xliii, xliv). These notices suggest that the company had arranged, possibly during the absence of Leicester’s men from town, to occupy the Theatre. In view of their disgrace, it was no doubt better for them to travel, and on 21 June John Hatcher, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, wrote to Lord Oxford’s father-in-law, Lord Burghley, to acknowledge recommendations received from him, as well as from the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chamberlain Sussex, that Oxford’s men should be allowed to ‘show their cunning in several plays already practised by them before the Queen’s majesty’, and to explain that, in view of pestilence, the need for industry at commencement, a previous refusal to Leicester’s men, and a Privy Council order of 1575 against assemblies in Cambridge, he had thought it better to give them 20s., and send them away unheard. They are traceable provincially in 1580–3. At Norwich (1580–1) the payment was made to ‘the Earle of Oxenfordes lads’, and at Bristol (Sept. 1581) there were nine boys and a man. These were probably boys of the Earl’s domestic chapel, travelling either with the Duttons or as a separate company.

The Duttons joined the Queen’s company, John on its first establishment in 1583. It is in the following winter, however, that an Oxford’s company first appears at Court. Here the Earl’s ‘servauntes’ performed on 1 January and 3 March 1584. Their payee was John Lyly, who had probably been for some years in the Earl’s service. Provincial performances continue during 1583–5, and in the records the company are always described as ‘players’ or ‘men’. On 27 December 1584 Agamemnon and Ulysses was played at Court by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘boyes’. For this the payee was Henry Evans, probably the same who in 1600 set up the Chapel plays. I do not feel much doubt that the companies under Lyly and Evans were the same, or that in 1583–4 they in fact consisted of a combination of Oxford’s boys, Paul’s and the Chapel, working under Lyly and Evans at the Blackfriars theatre. This arrangement had, no doubt, to be modified when Sir William More recovered possession of the premises in the spring of 1584, and after the performance of December 1584 Oxford perhaps ceased to maintain boy players and contented himself with another company of his servants, who made an appearance at Court on 1 January 1585, under John Symons, in feats of activity and vaulting. These tumblers had apparently been Lord Strange’s men in 1583, and by 1586 had returned into the service of the Stanley family.

An Oxford’s company did not again perform at Court, but his ‘plaiers’ were at Norwich in 1585–6, and Ipswich in 1586–7, and players under his name were notified to Walsingham amongst others setting up their bills in London on 25 January 1587 (App. D, No. lxxviii). They were at York in June 1587 and Maidstone in 1589–90. Finally, at the end of the reign, comes a letter from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor on 31 March 1602, which informs him that at the Earl’s suit the Queen has tolerated a new company formed by a combination of his servants and those of the Earl of Worcester, and that they are to play at the Boar’s Head (App. D, No. cxxx). Oxford’s men had probably then been established for some little time, as they are indicated as having played The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (1600, S. R. 23 October 1600) by the title-page, and The History of George Scanderbarge by the entry in the Stationers’ Register (3 July 1601). Meres’s reference to Oxford in 1598 suggests that they may have been in existence still earlier, as it is natural to suppose that he wrote comedies for his own men. Some of the writers, however, with whom Meres groups him belong to the early years of the reign, although others are contemporary. From 1602 the company was no doubt merged in Worcester’s, which in its turn became Queen Anne’s.