[4] A stream of dedications praised Oxford for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works,[5] and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies,[6] as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals.

[7] He fell out of favour with the Queen in the early 1580s and was exiled from court and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London when his mistress, Anne Vavasour, one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, gave birth to his son in the palace.

He was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife, Margery Golding and was probably named to honour Edward VI, from whom he received a gilded christening cup.

[12] Both his parents had established court connections: the 16th Earl accompanying Princess Elizabeth from her house arrest at Hatfield to the throne, and the countess being appointed a maid of honour in 1559.

[15] Because he held lands from the Crown by knight service, his son became a royal ward of the Queen and was placed in the household of Sir William Cecil, her secretary of state and chief advisor.

[16] At 12, de Vere had become the 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, and heir to an estate whose annual income, though assessed at approximately £2,500, may have run as high as £3,500 (£1.48 million as of 2025).

[17] While living at the Cecil House, Oxford's daily studies consisted of dancing instruction, French, Latin, cosmography, writing exercises, drawing, and common prayers.

In November 1579 the husband of Oxford's first cousin Anne Vere, John Stubbs, and William Page had their right hand publicly cut off for the pamphlet critical of the Queen's proposed marriage to Prince François and therefore judged seditious.

[49] In the summer of 1574, Elizabeth admonished Oxford "for his unthriftyness", and on 1 July he bolted to the continent without permission, travelling to Calais with Lord Edward Seymour, and then to Flanders, "carrying a great sum of money with him".

His request for a place on the Privy Council was rejected, but the queen's anger was abated and she promised him a licence to travel to Paris, Germany, and Italy on his pledge of good behaviour.

In the second, to prevent his estates passing by default to his sister Mary in the event of his dying abroad without heirs, he entailed the lands of the earldom on his first cousin, Hugh Vere.

He is recorded by John Stow as having introduced various Italian luxury items to the English court which immediately became fashionable, such as embroidered or trimmed scented gloves.

"[57] In January 1576 Oxford wrote to Lord Burghley from Siena about complaints that had reached him about his creditors' demands, which included the Queen and his sister, and directing that more of his land be sold to pay them.

[59] At this point the Italian financier Benedict Spinola had lent Oxford over £4,000 for his 15-month-long continental tour, while in England over a hundred tradesmen were seeking settlement of debts totalling thousands of pounds.

[73] In April 1578, the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, had written to King Philip II of Spain that it had been proposed that if Anjou were to travel to England to negotiate his marriage to the Queen, Oxford, Surrey, and Windsor should be hostages for his safe return.

[77] In the summer of 1580, Gabriel Harvey, apparently motivated by a desire to ingratiate himself with Leicester,[78] satirized Oxford's love for things Italian in verses entitled Speculum Tuscanismi and in Three Proper and Witty Familiar Letters.

[80] Like many members of older established aristocratic families in England, he inclined to Roman Catholicism; and after his return from Italy, he was reported to have embraced the religion, perhaps after a distant kinsman, Charles Arundell, introduced him to a seminary priest named Richard Stephens.

[81] But just as quickly, by late in 1580 he had denounced a group of Catholics, among them Arundell, Francis Southwell, and Henry Howard, for treasonous activities and asking the Queen's mercy for his own, now repudiated, Catholicism.

A young cook named Powers reported being subjected to multiple assaults at Hampton Court in the winter of 1577–78, at Whitehall, and in Oxford's Broad Street home.

In testimony to the Venetian Inquisition dated 27 August 1577, Coquo explained that he was singing in the choir at Venice's Santa Maria Formosa on 1 March 1576 when Oxford invited him to work in England as his page.

[11] Coquo arrived with Oxford in Dover on 20 April 1576 and fled 11 months later on 20 March 1577,[15] aided by a Milanese merchant who gave him 25 ducats for the journey: He "told me that I would be corrupted if I remained," Orazio testified, "and he didn't want me to stay there any longer."

[citation needed] On 6 April 1584, Oxford's daughter Bridget was born,[115] and two works were dedicated to him, Robert Greene's Gwydonius; The Card of Fancy, and John Southern's Pandora.

[126] In December 1588 Oxford had secretly sold his London mansion Fisher's Folly to Sir William Cornwallis;[127] by January 1591 the author Thomas Churchyard was dealing with rent owing for rooms he had taken in a house on behalf of his patron.

[129] In the spring of 1591, the plan for the purchasers of his land to discharge his debt to the Court of Wards was disrupted by the Queen's taking extents, or writs allowing a creditor to temporarily seize a debtor's property.

Harlekenden contrived to undervalue the land, then purchase it (as well as other parcels that were not meant to be sold) under his son's name;[145] the suits Oxford brought against Harlakenden for fraud dragged out for decades and were never settled in his lifetime.

[156] In October 1595, Oxford wrote to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Cecil, of friction between himself and the ill-fated Earl of Essex, partly over his claim to property, terming him 'the only person that I dare rely upon in the court'.

[161] In July 1600 Oxford wrote requesting Sir Robert Cecil's help in securing an appointment as Governor of the Isle of Jersey, once again citing the Queen's unfulfilled promises to him.

Three of his poems, "When wert thou born desire", "My mind to me a kingdom is", and "Sitting alone upon my thought", are among the texts that repeatedly appear in the surviving 16th-century manuscript miscellanies and poetical anthologies.

[181] Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589), places him first on a list of courtier poets and includes an excerpt from "When wert thou born desire" as an example of "his excellance and wit".

[187] Oxford was sought after for his literary and theatrical patronage; between 1564 and 1599, twenty-eight works were dedicated to him by authors, including Arthur Golding, John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Anthony Munday.