eat name of Plantagenet had not yet
been heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high
command at Hastings: another had marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over
heaps of slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl
of Oxford had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been
conspicuous among the Lords who extorted the Great Charter from John.
The seventh Earl had fought bravely at Cressy and Pointiers. The
thirteenth Earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been the
chief of the party of the Red Rose, and had led the van on the decisive
day of Bosworth. The seventeenth Earl had shone at the court of
Elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place among the early
masters of English poetry. The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for
the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls
of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most
illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals,
but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant
of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious; and his
interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate
was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned
to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was
demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your Majesty
against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter
of conscience, and I cannot comply." He was instantly deprived of his
lieutenancy and of his regiment. [314]

Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the
house of De Vere alone, was the house of Talbot. Ever since the reign of
Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The
earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on
John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. He had been long
remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of
the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great
English empire on the Continent of Europe. The stubborn courage which he
had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of interest
greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had
furnished a singularly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity
had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The