Parents of Henry de Vere. Part 2 

Another concern I have is why de Vere has such intense affection for Wriothesley as shown in the sonnets but seems to never show the slightest interest in his son, Henry, nor in Edward. One has to wonder if de Vere had less concern about his own line, but more concern for the Tudor line. Yet in the plays, he tends to show the Oxfordian earls in a favourable light, even amplifying their role. The apparent indifference to his own children set against the urgency of his appeal for Wriothesley to procreate in the sonnets seems at odds with no satisfaction with Wriothesley as the father of Henry whether with Penelope Rich, Elizabeth Trentham or any other woman, and no interest when he had children with Elizabeth Vernon. As always, your work is well thought out, enjoyable to follow, and, you appear open to cogent challenges to your hypotheses and have shown your willingness to alter your position as new evidence is turned up. This is the very type of scholarship not in evidence with the Stratfordians, which, to state the obvious, there is no new facts turned up that actually supports their position. And any backing away is academic suicide for them and wipes out the Stratford upon Avon financial circus.

Thank you David for another excellent presentation and for returning me to this fascinating subject after some time of absence from it. One small point: the cherub on the Clifton monument is not holding a ‘broom’ but an inverted torch, a common symbol of eternal life and resurrection. More importantly the Latin ‘aetatis suae XXIII’ does not mean that Penelope Clifton was 23 years old at the time of her death as I and you and others have erroneously suggested in the past, it means that she died in the 23rd year of her life. A child who dies before her first birthday can be said to have died ‘aetatis suae I” so according to the Clifton memorial Penelope Clifton was 22 years of age when she died (not 23) and must therefore have been born sometime between 24 October 159O and 22 October 1591. This means that the clashes you propose in conception/birth with Henry Rich, Penelope Clifton and Henry Vere are not as pertinent as you make them out to be. If the evidence of the monument is accepted - and as I have stated elsewhere I consider it most peculiar that anyone should lie or misrepresent someone’s age on a pious, family church monument for all living family members to see - one does not need a pregnancy calendar or a conception calculator to understand that Penelope Rich was capable of delivering three children one in August 1590 (Henry Rich), one in October 1591 (Penelope) and one in February 1593 (Henry Vere) with the last of these being followed by a miscarriage a year later. If the latest date for Penelope’s birth according to her memorial is correct then all that is left to ponder is the delay to the child’s baptism, which was at most five months after her birth. According to your presentation baptism could be delayed ‘upon reasonable cause’ and ‘higher status’ babies were ‘sometimes delayed’. Indeed Henry Vere was born on 24 February but not baptised until 31 March. Had you only his date of baptism to hand you would no doubt have said (as per 7:40) that it is ‘beyond reasonable doubt that Henry Vere’s baptism was within a week of his birth’ - and you would have been wrong! If you are correct that Henry Vere was conceived on 1 June 1592 and the monument inscription is correct that Penelope Clifton was not born later than 22 October 1591, then there were at least seven months between the birth of one and the conception of the next, not 10 weeks as you have it. I am in no doubt that the monument inscription and the baptism record are both correct and that until such time as one or other can be proved wrong, I have every confidence in the ability of both records to add further fuel to the elsewhere well supported theory that Henry Vere was the illegitimate son of Penelope Rich by Lord Southampton.

As ever, fascinating stuff! I have always been sceptical of the 'conception window' but I was a little confused in the 10th minute of this video when you said Penelope Blount had died in 1590, but I ran it back and realised you meant baptised. Thanks for all your work. Highly enjoyable!

David, could you tell me what program you are using to create these beautiful videos? Thank you!

I continue to be enthralled by your work on this subject David. I appreciate your research very much and always look forward to the next episode. Especially as I am not technically aware and so am not able to do my own research. I particularly enjoyed your visit to the church and you finding more than you intended with that particular black Prince. That gentleman seems to have been a valued member or those carvings would not have been made. Thanks again for giving us more food for thought on the parents of Henry de vere.

May I add to my previous rebuttal of the arguments David lays out in this video some further information which makes all theorising about a sly alteration of Penelope Clifton’s monument redundant? The claim (first advanced by Sylvia Freedman in her book ‘Poor Penelope’) is that the age of Penelope Clifton at the time of her death, as inscribed on her monument, was a lie - a great coverup done to hide the fact that she was too young to receive her marriage portion under the terms of her father’s will. One only has to look at the list of the will’s trustees to see how absurd this theory is. They included Sir Edward Blount, Sir William Godolphin, the Earls of Suffolk, Southampton and Salisbury and Lord Knollys - all of whom were (according to this theory) taken for a ride by the under-age Penelope and her young beau Gervase Clifton. The will stated that she was entitled to £5000 on attaining the age of eighteen. Her monument reveals that she died in the 23rd year of her age (i.e. when she was 22 years old) in October 1613 and that she had been married five years, suggesting that she espoused Gervaise Clifton in 1608. It matters not whether she was born as I contend c. October 1591, or as David contends in March 1592, for according to the learned online History of Parliament (sub Gervase Clifton) the marriage settlement “with £5000” was settled in December 1612 a year before her death aged 22. www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1604-1629/member/clifton-sir-gervase-1587-1666

First Rate David … Thank you 💯‼️

Commenting to help the analytics

Thank you very much

I really don't understand what you're saying, it's not at all clear. I don't mean to say I'm not familiar with the scandal involving WS and HW. I don't agree that XIII was not originally on the engraving, it actually appears to line up with the lines above and below. Alexander Waughs research is far more convincing than your argument. I would also like to point out that I really fail to see why it was necessary to go into such detail regarding baptism

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