His relatively modest wealth renders the claim that Aubrey de Vere married a sister or kinswoman of William the Conqueror, recorded in some late medieval and early modern sources, quite impossible. (footnote 5) That claim may be founded on other mistaken notions, such as the assertion that he was descended from Roman emperors. His fictitious family line supposedly passed through a kinsman of Charlemagne to the counts of Guînes, one of whom Aubrey was said to have been. These stories can be consigned to the realm of wishful thinking, most likely created by those hoping for patronage from the earls of Oxford, but they have unfortunately dazzled some genealogists and amateur historians to the present day. (footnote 6)

We know nothing of his parents, although many centuries after his death a monastery associated with the family claimed his father was named Alfonso de Vere and there is an Albericus de Ver who witnessed a charter issued by Conan II, duke of Brittany, in or soon after 1050. (Footnote 7)

John Weever’s Ancient Funerall Monuments of 1631 quotes an epitaph supposedly on Aubrey’s tomb: “Here lyeth Aulberye de Veer, the first erle of Gyney, the sonne of Alphonsus de Veer. the which Aubrey was the founder of this place [Colne Pr] and Bettys his wife systor of King Willia' the Co'querour. He had sons Albericus who in deed and charters is named only camerarius Angliae, Rogerus, and Robertus.” [quoted in Monasticon Anglicorum, IV, 98]. Aubrey II was often referred to as regis camerarius (king’s chamberlain). The list of Aubrey I’s sons excludes William, who was buried at Colne Priory. The information reported by Weever is flawed and probably reflects late medieval genealogical invention to elevate the origins of the Vere lineage. The epitaph given in the history produced by Colne priory’s mother house, Abingdon Abbey, is quite different

The witness was probably the father or close kinsman of Aubrey I, rather than Aubrey I himself. Scholars have revised the date range for the charter from 1056-66 to 1050-1055, and favor the early years of the latter range. Conan issued the charter near Tours on a journey to visit Blois. To be traveling in his entourage, the witness would have been about the same age or older than Conan, who was born c. 1032/33; K. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English

As mentioned above, Aubrey I had married by 1086. His unnamed wife is mentioned as holding Essex estates of the bishop of Bayeux in Essex in Domesday Book. She was probably the daughter and heir of a minor tenant of Bishop Odo, as her estates were small but held in her own right. Dowry land would probably not have been listed in Domesday Book in her name, having passed into the possession of her husband at their marriage. In or around 1111 he was married to a woman named Beatrice. As their eldest son had died before 1107 and that son was in his later teens or early twenties at the time of his death, Aubrey’s wife in 1086 was almost certainly the same Beatrice. It is unusual for a young woman to be listed in Domesday Book as holding in her own right; the most likely explanations are that she was the heiress or the widow of a minor tenant of the bishop. If the latter, she must have been a relatively young widow and the land was her dower property.