Poet, patron, and member of a faction hostile to Mary and Philip Sidney and their circle at court Anne Cecil de Vere, countess of Oxford, was the eldest (and favorite) daughter of William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and his second wife, Mildred Cooke. She married (1571) Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, a match considered advantageous on both sides because Oxford was a significant matrimonial prize and Cecil’s fortune would rescue the unstable finances of the de Vere family. It seems, at least on her side, to have been a love match. The marriage did not prosper, mostly on account of de Vere’s famously uncertain temper, which caused him in 1576 to repudiate his wife, slander her virtue (by disclaiming paternity of their daughter, born in 1575), and go on a ruinous spending spree, reputedly because Cecil failed to save de Vere’s uncle (Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk) from execution. Reconciled in 1582, Anne bore de Vere a son, Lord Bulbeck (May 1583), who lived only hours, and three more daughters.
Four sonnets and two quatrains were published in John Southern’s Pandora (1584), which he claims were “made by the Countes of Oxenford, after the death of her young Sonne” (Moody 1989, 154). This authorship has been contested, it being suggested after stylistic analysis that the verse is Southern’s and the exercise one of prosopopoeia (May 1992, 15). It has been further noted that the poems contain translations from Desportes, to whose work Southern’s own poetry is deeply indebted (Smith 1994, 446). A British Library manuscript (Landsdowne MS 104, ff.195v-214r) contains elegiac verses preceded by Latin notes on Anne’s character (my translation): “Very much beloved by a Prince, parents, brothers and the whole royal court for her piety, prudence, patience, modesty and outstanding affection in marriage" She died at Greenwich on 6 June 1588.
Teresa Grant
See also Cecil, Mildred Cooke; Literary Culture and Women; Sidney, Mary Herbert.
Bibliography
Primary Work
De Vere, Anne Cecil.“Four Epitaphs."In Women Poets of the Renaissance. Edited by Marion Wynne-Davies. London:J. M. Dent, 1998.
Secondary Works
May, Steven W.“The Countess of Oxford’s Son-nets:A Caveat.” English Language Notes 29, no.
3 (March 1992): 9-18.
Moody, Ellen.“Six Elegiac Poems, Possibly by Anne Cecil de Vere, Countess of Oxford.”
English Literary Renaissance 19, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 152-170.
Payne, Helen.“The Cecil Women and Court.” In Patronage, Culture and Power:The Early Cecils. Edited by Pauline Croft. New Haven, CT, and London:Yale University Press, 2002.
Smith, Rosalind. “The Sonnets of the Countess of Oxford and Elizabeth I:Translations from Des-portes.” Notes and Queries 41, no. 4 (1994): 446-450.
World History
