The Twilight of the de Veres: Politics, Scandal, and the Last Earl of Oxford - Paperback
Pay over time for orders over $35.00 with
Offers & Perks
Earn 19 points with this purchase
Added to your rewards balance after checkout.
100 points welcome bonus
Create an account and start with extra points.
The Twilight of the de Veres: Politics, Scandal, and the Last Earl of Oxford
For five and a half centuries, the earls of Oxford held the most ancient title in England, and for five and a half centuries, they were destroyed by it. The Twilight of the de Veres traces the extraordinary arc of one of England's greatest noble dynasties, from the Norman knight who appeared in the Domesday Book of 1086 to the last English earl who died in a Downing Street house in 1703, the premier earldom extinct for want of a legitimate heir.
At the centre of this story stands Aubrey de Vere, twentieth Earl of Oxford, a man raised in Friesland, forged in the Dutch professional army, returned to a kingdom in civil war, and shaped by decades of royalist conspiracy, Tower imprisonment, Restoration scandal, and constitutional crisis. He built the Oxford Blues. He refused a king's demand on grounds of conscience and paid the price. He chaired the Hungerford conference at the hinge of the Glorious Revolution. He deceived a woman in a chandler's shop with a fraudulent wedding ceremony. He carried the sword of mercy at four coronations and never recovered the hereditary office that was his family's oldest distinction.
Drawing on contemporary sources including the diary of Samuel Pepys, The Twilight of the de Veres is narrative history at its most intimate, the biography of a name that began in conquest and ended in conscience.
Ricardo Mickles was born in Dublin and educated in history and literature at University College Cork, where he developed a lasting interest in the intersection of constitutional politics and aristocratic decline in the British Isles. He has spent more than two decades researching the great noble families of Norman and Stuart England, with particular attention to the mechanisms by which hereditary power was constructed, maintained, and ultimately lost. The Twilight of the de Veres is the product of years of engagement with the primary sources of seventeenth-century English political and social history, from the records of the church courts to the diary of Samuel Pepys. He is the author of several works of narrative nonfiction spanning medieval and early modern British history.
Contributor(s)
Author
Free shipping on orders over $75. Standard shipping takes 3-7 business days. Eligible items may be returned within 30 days of delivery. Conditions apply.