Sir Francis. Sir Horace was a professional soldier pure and simple; in tactical skill he was in all probability Sir Francis's superior. No other individual exploit of the 'Fighting Veres' is perhaps quite on a par with the soldierlike promptitude and self-effacement of Sir Horace's action at Mulheim. Even more than was the case with the elder brother, the fame of Sir Horace attracted pupils in the military art from all quarters. The Earl of Essex was one of his lieutenants, and the Earls of Warwick, Peterborough, and Bedford served under him, as did the valiant royalist soldiers Lords Grandison, Byron, and Goring. Fairfax, Skippon, and George Monck were also in an especial degree his pupils in the art of war.
A half-length portrait of Lord Vere by Cornelius Janssen (engraved by Vertue for Collins's 'House of Vere') is in the possession of the Marquis of Townshend, and there is a copy at Wentworth. A full-length, also attributed to Janssen, belongs to Sir H. St. John Mildmay. Two anonymous portraits (busts) are at Welbeck (Cat. Nos. 315, 513).
[The exploits of Sir Horace occupy a third portion of Sir Clements R. Markham's monograph on the 'Fighting Veres,' two-thirds of which is devoted to Sir Francis. A reproduction of the half-length portrait is given on p. 364. To the authorities given at the end of this work, and under Vere, Sir Francis, add Harl. Misc. 1813, iii. 3 sq., v. 93; Nichols's Progresses of James I, 1828, iii. 170, 516, 611, 966; Brown's Genesis of the United States, 1890, ii. 1037-8; Majendie's Castle Hedingham and the Veres; Watson's Philip III; Motley's Life of Barneveld. 1874, ii. 71; Carleton Letters, 1780, pp. 32, 44, 54, 272, 310, 487 sq.; Gindely's Thirty Years' War, 1885, chap. Vii.; Pauli's Allgemeine preussische Staats-Geschichten, Halle, 1762, iii. 502 sq.; Hennequin de Villermont's Tilly, 1859, i. 209 sq., and Ernest de Mansfeldt, 1865, chap. xvii. Some of Vere's letters to Lord Doncaster are in Egerton MSS. 2593-4.]
VERE, JOHN de, seventh Earl of Oxford (1313–1360), hereditary great chamberlain of England, was son and heir of Sir Alfonso de Vere (d. 1328), younger brother of Robert de Vere, sixth earl (d. 1331), by his wife Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Foliot. Robert de Vere, third earl of Oxford [q. v.], was his great-great-grandfather. Born in 1313, John succeeded his uncle, who left no issue, in April 1331.
Oxford took an active part in Edward III's wars. He fought in the Scottish campaigns of 1333 and 1335, in support of Edward Baliol. When war broke out with France he accompanied the king to Flanders in 1339, and three years later joined in the first Breton campaign of William de Bohun, earl of Northampton [q. v.], and was doubtless present at the hard-fought battle of Morlaix (Le Baker, pp. 76, 248; Murimuth, pp. 125–8). He had in his train forty men-at-arms, one banneret, nine knights, twenty-nine esquires, and thirty mounted archers, with an allowance of fifty-six sacks of wool as wages (Dugdale, i. 192). In 1343 he was with the Earls of Derby and Northampton in the expedition for the relief of Lochmaben (Walsingham, i. 254). Northampton being sent to Brittany again in June 1345, Oxford once more accompanied him (Murimuth, p. 162; Fœdera, ii. iv. 175, iii. i. 40, Hague ed.). Jean le Bel (ii. 41) and Froissart (iii. 42) must therefore be mistaken in taking him to Gascony with the Earl of Derby if their ‘Comte de Kenfort’ was meant for Oxford. On his return from Brittany ‘about the feast of the Blessed Virgin,’ his ship was driven out of its course, and wrecked upon the shores of Connaught, where the ‘barbarous people’ robbed the party of all they possessed (Leland, Collectanea, i. 560). Oxford served immediately after in the campaign of Crécy (where he was one of the commanders of the first division) with a following of 160 men, including three bannerets and twenty-seven knights (Le Baker, p. 79). In the following year he was again in France (Fœdera, v. 562). Accompanying the Black Prince to Bordeaux in October 1355, Oxford took part in his celebrated raid into Languedoc, and subsequently shared with the Earl of Warwick the command of the first division at Poitiers, when it fell to his lot to execute a timely manœuvre which saved the English archers from being ridden down by the enemy's cavalry (Le Baker, pp. 127, 143, 148; Avesbury, p. 447). He did not live to see peace made, dying on 24 Jan. 1360, during the invasion of Burgundy (Walsingham, i. 288; Froissart). His body was brought to England, and interred in the family burial-place in Colne Priory. Before starting he had made his will (1 Nov. 1359), which contained bequests to Colne church and the chapel (called the New Abbey) at Hedingham, and an instruction to his executors to pay with all convenient speed a sum of four hundred marks sterling left by his ancestors in aid of the Holy Land (Dugdale, i. 193; Testamenta Vetusta, p. 62).
By his wife Maud (b. 1310), widow of Robert Fitzpayne, second sister and coheir of Giles, lord Badlesmere (d. 1338) of Badlesmere in Kent, whom he married in 1336, Oxford had four sons and at least one daughter.