..... and next, of the De Clares; and by each of them left a son. The eldest, another Alan, was renowned in arms under Edward III., and numbered among the heroes of Cressy. He died shortly afterwards, and was succeeded by two Hughs, his son and grandson, the latter of whom was childless, and the inheritance passed to a daughter, Joyce de Botetourt.

Vere.
No prouder name than De Vere has graced the annals of our English baronage ; none has been borne by a longer succession of Earls ; none has been more magnificently extolled, or more eloquently lamented. Its very sound is aristocratic, and carries with it the memory of its 567 years of nobility. Yet all its romance and illusion is lost in its original form ; for in French it is simply ver (worm), derived from Ver, between Bayeux and Caen, which, as part of the Ducal demesne, was included in the dowry of the Duchess Judith in 1026. It must, however, have been granted to this family within the next thirty years, for Aubri de Ver occurs in 1058 (Gall. Christ, xi. 108). He was the father of Aubri or Alberic de Vere, one of the great landowners of Domesday, who had his castle and caput baronice at Hedingham in Essex, and founded Colne Priory in that county, as a cell of Abingdon. He was there " shorn a monk " in his latter years, and ended his days in the cloister, having had five sons by his wife Beatrice,* of whom the first-born, Geoffrey, died before him. His successor and namesake — generally styled Albericus Junior — rose to eminence as the favoured minister of Henry Beauclerk, and was Viscount of no less than eleven different counties. *

The King, as a signal proof of his esteem, granted him one of the high offices of State in fee ; and he was made Lord Great Chamberlain of England, " with all dignities thereto belonging, to be held by him and his heirs as honourably as Robert Malet (then under banishment and forfeiture) or any other, before or after him, held the same ; and with such liveries and lodgings at Court, as belonged to that Office." He was afterwards employed by King Stephen, and was killed in a street riot in London in 11 40. His son and heir, Alberic IH., bore the title of Earl of Guisnes, having some years before married Beatrice de Bourbourg, the granddaughter and heiress of Manasses, Count of Guisnes — a match said to have been hastened on account of the precarious health of the bride. On her grandfather's death in 1137, he hurried over to take possession of his fief, and was duly installed by his suzerain the Count of Flanders. But he quickly wearied of his sickly wife and foreign domain, and, deserting both, chose to take up his abode at the English court. Beatrice, outraged by his neglect, sought and obtained a divorce, and re-married Baldwin de Ardres, but died not long after ; and as she left no posterity by either of her husbands, the county of Guisnes passed to Arnold de Gand, as next heir.

Alberic was, however, about to receive another title — the honoured and historic Earldom that, through storm and sunshine, fair breezes and foul weather, sailed triumphantly down the stream of Time for nearly six hundred years. Having become one of the most active partisans of the Empress Maud, he had a grant from her in 1141 of all the lands of William d'Avranches, together with the inheritance he claimed on the part of his wife as the heiress of William of Arques (her English grandmother was Emma de Arques), and the promise of the town and castle of Colchester, as soon as they should be in her power; also the reversion of the Earldom of Cambridgeshire and the third penny thereof, as an Earl ought to have, provided the King of Scots had it not : but in that case Alberic was to have the choice of four Earldoms — Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire — according to the decision of her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, Earl Geoffrey (of Essex), and Earl Gilbert (of Pembroke). His brothers, Geoffrey and Robert, were also made barons, and his brother William was a promised the Chancellorship of England. "

King Henry II, on his accession to the throne, made the famous Thomas Becket Chancellor, but performed that part of his mother's promise which related to an Earldom for Alberic, and gave him that of Oxford." — Planche. It was this Alberic who first bore on his shield the mystic star that was ever after the badge of the De Veres, and which, according to tradition, he brought home from the Holy Land. " This Albery the third, his Father yet living, was at the Conquest of the Cittes of Nicque (Nice), of Antioche, and of Hierusalem, in the Company of Sir Robert Courtois Duke of Normandy. In the yeare of our Lord 1098, Corborant, Admiral to the Soudan of Persia, was fought with at Antioch, and discomfited by the Christianes. The Night coming on in the Chace of this Bataile, and waxing dark, the Christianes being four Miles from Antioche, God, willing the saufte of the Christianes, shewed a white Starre or Molette of fyve Pointes, which to every Manne's Sighte did lighte and arrest upon the Standard of Albrey, then shining excessively.* This Albrey, for his greatnesse of Stature, and sterne Looke, was named Albry the Grymme." — Leland. He founded three religious houses, Hatfield-Broad-Oak Priory in Essex, a nunnery at Icklington, and another at Heningham, " Lucia his Wife being the first prioress there," and died in 1 1 94.

From this first Earl, who bore the title forty years, descended nineteen others, all more or less bound up with the history of their time, and eulogistically described by Macaulay " as the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen."t Though this assertion must be discarded as extravagant and overstrained, enough of sober truth remains to account for the glamour that surrounds the memory of " Oxford's famed De Vere." The third Earl, whose predecessor had been one of King John's evil counsellors, chose a nobler part, and was one of the illustrious conservators of Magna Charta, excommunicated by Innocent III. : the fifth Earl was knighted in the field by the hand of Simon de Montfort ; and the seventh Earl — a soldier from his seventeenth birthday — led forty spears under the Black Prince at Poitiers, where " Oxford charged the van."

The ninth Earl was Richard II.'s arrogant favourite, on whom every distinction that it was in his power to confer was lavished by the infatuated King, and who was hated and envied in proportion to the honours he received. Among various other grants, he obtained in 1386 " the Land and Dominion of Ireland" to hold by homage and allegiance " as the King himself ought to have the same," with the Marquessate of Dublin ; a title till then unknown in England, and bitterly