that time being privy not only of his public dealings, but also his private doings and secret
intents, found and knew him indued with special piety, perfect integrity, great care to discharge
all trust imposed in him, and no less desire to do good in the commonwealth.
(cited in Slater 1931 199: emphasis
supplied)
This reference to Oxford’s “private doings and secret intents” ²
is,
of course, particularly
intriguing. The aura of mystique communicated in this phrase hangs about Oxford in many
contexts; he often earned the respect and discreet praise of the creative and intellectual figures
with whom he came in intimate contact, and their admiration for his "secret intents,” often
echoed in the documentary record of the period, seems to have endured on some level at least
until 1827, when the anonymous roman à clef entitled
De Vere, Or The Man of Independence
remembers the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford in a series of chapters each introduced with a
quotation from Shakespeare. The novel, constructing an elaborate series of allegorical
identifications between Oxford and his fictional descendent, the novel’s protagonist Mortimer de
Vere³, remembers him, somewhat curiously, as one who “in the days of Elizabeth, united in his
single person, the character of her greatest noble, knight and poet” (Ward 1827 I: 88: emphasis
added).
4
Abundant contemporary testimony also corroborates Trollope's witness. In his earliest extant
letter Oxford himself, aged thirteen, begs off from extensive correspondence with Burghley
because “quant
5
à l’ordre de mon estude pour ce que il requiert un long discours à l’expliquer par
le menu, et le temp est court à ceste heure” (Fowler 1986 1: emphasis added). A 1599 letter from
his seventeen-year-old nephew Robert Bertie refers to the writer’s previous inability to “trouve
encores aucun subject (sic) assez digne de vous divertir de vos plus serieux affaires” (Ogburn
1984 749: emphasis added). Even Lord Burghley noted that “there is much more in him of
understanding than any stranger to him would think” (cited in Jenkins 167).
Finally, after his
death Percival Golding reaffirms the mystique, the sense of things which cannot be spoken
directly, which clings to Oxford's memory:
Edward de Veer, the only son of John….: Of whom I will only speak what all men’s voices
confirm; he was a man in mind and body absolutely accomplished with honourable
endowments….
2
Although the grammatical antecedent could be either Thomas Gent or Oxford, the content unambiguously identifies the individual as
Oxford, whose doings with respect to “the commonwealth” would of course concern Burghley.
3
The character is apparently based on the historical personages of Robert (1661-1724) and Edward (1689-1741) Harley, 1st and 2nd
Earls of Oxford (2nd creation). According to the inscription attached to George Vertue's 1745 engraving made after Michael Dahl's
1728 portrait of him, the latter also bore the title Earl of Mortimer. Vertue's engraving is published in Arthur Collins' Historical
Collection of Noble Families (1752). The DNB has Robert Harley assuming both titles in 1711. This father and son were the greatest
English antiquarians of the 18th century. Their bequest to the British Museum is known as the Harleian Collection. I am indebted to
Andrew Hannas for drawing attention to the significance of the Harleys' investiture with the Mortimer title.
4
It should be noted that this characterization of Oxford as the greatest poet of Elizabeth’s reign, while it has abundant support from
contemporary documentation, is apparently contradicted at another point in De Vere: The Man Of Independence, where we read that de
Vere “was a poet, and not a very good one, but ranked with those of his time” (I: 22).
5
Archaic quand.
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