Over the years many Oxfordians have been mystified by what appears to be a “crown signature” that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford used at age nineteen at the end of a letter to his guardian William Cecil (the future Lord Burghley) on November 24, 1569.
Edward de Vere's "crown" signature that he used on letters to William and Robert Cecil from 1569 until the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603
He referred to himself as “Edward Oxenford” and continued to use the same crown-shaped signature on letters to William and Robert Cecil for more than three decades until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, after which he reverted to a different form of signature.
What did it signify? Why did he stop using it after the Queen died? Couldn’t such a signature have amounted to a claim that he deserved to be a King or at least a King Consort? Was he taunting both Cecils, father and son, with extremely sensitive information of which they were aware? Otherwise, couldn’t they have accused him of treason? What do you think?
In Oxford’s letter of November 1569 he requests Cecil’s permission to take part in the military campaign against the uprising of the powerful Catholic earls in the north of England. He reminds the chief minister that “heretofore you have given me your good word to have me see the wars and services in strange and foreign places,” but that Cecil had been unable to “obtain me license of the Queen’s Majesty.”
“Now you will do me so much honour,” he adds, “as that by your purchase of my License I may be called to the service of my prince and country as at this present troublous time a number are.”
“If your father will do me any honour” – 1 Henry IV, 5.4
“I come to thee for charitable license” – Henry V, 4.7
“That in your country’s service drew your swords” – Titus Andronicus, 1.1
“And showed how well you love your prince and country” – 2 Henry VI, 4.9
“But in this troublous time, what’s to be done?” – 3 Henry VI, 2.1
“So are a number more” – 2 Henry IV, 3.2
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The following spring Oxford was allowed to accompany the Earl of Sussex as the campaign was winding down and they pursued the fleeing rebels and their allies into Scotland.
A terrified Elizabeth commanded barbarous reprisals, to the point where some 90 fortified castles were razed and 300 villages were savagely pillaged and destroyed and 800 captives were hanged — and we are left to wonder about how this harsh reality of war affected the young man who, more than two decades later, at age forty-three in 1593, would adopt the warrior-like pen name “Shakespeare” on his dedications to nineteen-year-old Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, his son by the Queen who deserved by blood to succeed her on the throne.
PS – The lines from the plays with matching words or phrases come from the magnificent book SHAKESPEARE REVEALED IN OXFORD’S LETTERS by William Plumer Fowler, Peter E. Randall, Publisher, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1986 — one of the great Oxfordian works, with 872 pages showing how Edward de Vere’s letters are filled with Shakespearean language and unique Shakespearean forms of expression.
I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Fowler a few years before he died, in his nineties, and he recited Sonnet 33 while expressing his belief that Southampton was the son of Oxford and the Queen. A retired lawyer and recognized poet, he was a graduate of Roxbury Latin School, Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, not to mention that he had been an ardent Stratfordian and, for twelve years, president of the Shakespeare Club of Boston!
Now, there was a man who trusted his head and his heart, his mind and his gut instincts; and there, I might add, was a man of courage.
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