(1448) See Hume’s History of England, vol. iii. p. 399. ["The Earl of Oxford, his favourite general, having splendidly entertained him at his castle of Henningham, was desirous of making a parade of his magnificence at the departure of his royal guest; and ordered all his retainers, with their liveries and badges, to be drawn up in two lines, that their appearance might be the more gallant and splendid.  ‘My lord,’ said the King, ’I have heard much of your hospitality; but the truth far exceeds the report:  these handsome gentlemen and yeomen whom I see on both sides of me are no doubt your menial servants.’  The Earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was too narrow for such magnificence.  ‘They are most of them,’ subjoined he, ’my retainers, who are come to do service at this time, when they know I am honoured with your Majesty’s presence.’  The King started a little, and said, ’By my faith! my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I must not allow my laws to be broken in my sight:  my attorney must speak with you.’  Oxford is said to have paid no less than fifteen thousand marks, as a compensation for his offence.”)

(1449) Daughter of the Earl of Granville.

(1450) Harriot, wife of Richard Elliot, Esq., father of the first Lord St. Germains, and a daughter of Mr. Secretary Craggs.  For a copy of verses addressed by Mr. Pitt to this lady, see the Chatham Correspondence, Vol. iv. j. 373.-E.

(1451)) Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the favourite of Richard the Second; who created him Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland, and transferred to him by patent the entire sovereignty of that island for life.

(1452) Alberic de Vere was an Earl in the reign of Edward the Confessor.

(1453) Daughter of Thomas Chambers, Esq., and married to Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans by his wife Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

558 Letter 258 To George Montagu, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, Aug. 11, 1748.

I am arrived at great knowledge in the annals of the house of Vere but though I have twisted and twined their genealogy and my own a thousand ways, I cannot discover, as I wished to do, that I am descended from them any how but from one of their Christian names the name of Horace having travelled from them into Norfolk by the marriage of a daughter of Horace Lord Vere of Tilbury with a Sir Roger Townshend, whose family baptised some of us with it.  But I have made a really curious discovery! the lady with the strange dress at Earl’s Colne, which I mentioned to you, is certainly Lancerona, the Portuguese-for I have found in Rapin, from one of the old chronicles, that Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been Maid of Honour, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads, which is the very attire on this tomb, and ascertains it to belong to Robert de Vere, the great Earl of Oxford, made Duke of Ireland by Richard II., who, after the banishment of this Minister, and his