Hedingham Castle, the birthplace of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, and the author of the Shakespeare canon.
History is more interesting than myth. It is a richer resource than religion. Some history we may never be able to uncover because of the long distance of time, but the Elizabethan era is not that long ago.
Since Shakespeare was constructed as a national figure, the taboo of questioning his identity as the author of the plays runs deep across all layers of society.
A lot of people for whatever reason don't want to believe that an arrogant nobleman was the real progenitor of the Shakespeare canon. But all the facts say so. And thank God for that, because the real Shakespeare, the aristocratic Shakespeare with Norman lineage, is more fascinating than the image of Shakespeare we've been presented with all these years.
Reimagining Shakespeare means reimagining history. To learn that the great wordsmith of the English language was born not in a village hut to an obscure family, but, instead, in one of the greatest castles of the land, surrounded by scholarly works and historical personalities, makes all the sense in the world.
Positioning him at the heart of the royal court, close to the pulse of power, fits with the themes and settings of his extraordinary plays.
And recognizing his real birthplace matters. Situating him in the correct time and place would better explain, for example, the Calvinist bent in his dramas. To know that Arthur Golding, the translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses and John Calvin's treatises, was his uncle, is highly informative.
And this isn't knowledge for knowledge's sake. Knowing who the real Shakespeare was isn't useless information. A better understanding of his plays and their real origins ennobles us. A false reading of its author takes something away. It takes the history away. It removes the context, the subtleties, the life, the drama.
We must remember that in medieval and ancient times, long before universal literacy, great works of literature were largely created by individuals with means, a cultivated education, a great amount of leisure, a sense of patriotic duty, egotistic ambition, and access to power. The real Shakespeare, the man behind Shakespeare, had those attributes and qualifications in spades.
Poets like Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, or Virgil, had to be from well-off families. Writing and publishing poems was not a money making pursuit then or now. It was a creative pursuit, and, more importantly, a matter of state politics.
Royal patronage of poetry to disseminate court propaganda, imperial ideology, and religious dogma happened everywhere on earth. "Shakespeare's" legacy cannot be understood without this historical and political context.
Poetic epics and holy books were not penned by men in caves or small towns in the countryside. They were officially sanctioned state business, emanating from the throne.
Some researchers who have studied the origins of Islam now speculate that the production of the Koran text took the span of decades, even centuries, before it was finally standardized. It was a collaborative effort driven by military conquerors to solidify their rule on religious grounds, and not the inspiration of one man.
The development of a language, the awakening of a nation, the creation of a religion, and poetry is indispensable to all three, are all elite-driven activities.
The founding fathers of America were not average men. The original martyrs of any religious movement are the elite of a society. But, in their cases, they only founded a country, and popularized a religion. Edward de Vere aided in the discovery and development of a language. His accomplishments are greater because the consolidation of a language comes before nation and faith.
Undoubtedly a better knowledge of the man behind Shakespeare will help illuminate his works, thereby increasing our appreciation for his genius when we read them. Reclaiming him from the grave of falsehoods and honouring his memory is not a futile task or a mad fantasy.
Hedingham Castle, in the village of Castle Hedingham, Essex, is arguably the best preserved Norman keep in England. The castle fortifications and outbuildings were built around 1100, and the keep around 1140. However, the keep is the only major medieval structure that has survived, albeit less two turrets. It is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument. The keep is open to the public.
. . .Hedingham Castle may occupy the site of an earlier castle believed to have been built in the late 11th or early 12th century by Aubrey de Vere I, a Norman baron. Hedingham was one of the largest manors among those acquired by Aubrey I. The Domesday Book records that he held the manor of Hedingham by 1086, and he ordered that vineyards be planted. It became the head of the Vere barony.
Nestled in the Essex-Suffolk border in England, Hedingham Castle is a remarkable example of Norman architecture, with a history dating back almost a millennium. Constructed by the first Earl of Oxford, Aubrey de Vere, around 1140, the well-preserved keep is one of the best of its kind in the country. Aubrey was a prominent Norman nobleman who was granted the land by William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Edward de Vere was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and Margery Golding. After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth I and was sent to live in the household of her principal advisor, Sir William Cecil. He married Cecil's daughter, Anne, with whom he had five children. Oxford was estranged from her for five years and refused to acknowledge he was the father of their first child.
A champion jouster, Oxford travelled widely throughout France and the many states of Italy. He was among the first to compose love poetry at the Elizabethan court and was praised as a playwright, though none of the plays known as his survive. A stream of dedications praised Oxford for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works, and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies, as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals.
Video Title: HEDINGHAM CASTLE - England's Best Preserved Norman Keep! Source: Go Visit Castles. Date Published: July 27, 2022. Description:
The stone keep at Hedingham is arguably the best preserved Norman keep in England. It was constructed around 1141 by the De Veres, who had been awarded the land by William the Conqueror and who went on to be given the title Earls of Oxford. The keep owes its remarkable preservation to the little military action it saw, being attacked only once by King John. The 13th Earl, John de Vere, was commander of Henry Tudor's army at the Battle of Bosworth.
The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt is an Internet signing petition which seeks to enlist broad public support for the Shakespeare authorship question to be accepted as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The petition was presented to William Leahy of Brunel University by the actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance on 8 September 2007 in Chichester, England, after the final matinee of the play I Am Shakespeare on the topic of the bard's identity, featuring Rylance in the title role. As of 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and the original self-imposed deadline, the document had been signed by 3,348 people, including 573 self-described current and former academics. As of December 2022, the count stood at 5,128 total signatures.
Jacobi has been publicly involved in the Shakespeare authorship question. He supports the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, according to which Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the works of Shakespeare. Jacobi has given an address to the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre promoting de Vere as the Shakespeare author and wrote forewords to two books on the subject in 2004 and 2005.
In 2007, Jacobi and fellow Shakespearean actor and director Mark Rylance initiated a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, to encourage new research into the question.
Video Title: Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance discuss The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Source: DoubtAboutWill. Date Published: April 25, 2016.
This bookset is the culmination of a 24-year research project. Over its course, the author accessed 5500 books, papers and articles from Elizabethan and scholarly sources.
The author’s investigation uncovers inconsistencies and voids in conventional biographies of Elizabethan writers and within the era’s accepted literary canons and provides a framework that eliminates them. It concludes with complete lists of allonyms and pseudonyms employed by the Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) and the works he issued in those names, as well as lists of independent writers of the era and their literary works.
This project is a labor of love, designed to inform and delight enthusiasts. The text is meant to be read start to finish, although the preface suggests shortcuts for people with limited time.
This online presentation is in a new format we call BrightbookTM. The text is not cluttered with source citations, footnotes or endnotes, so reading flows freely. Every source is instantly available with a single click on the accompanying asterisk (*). Every term is searchable, providing a full, error-free index. After any search or reference check, a click or two on the Back button will bring you back to where you left off reading. Searching on a carat (^) takes you from one chapter or section to the next.
Video Title: Shakespeare's Other Pen Names Revealed! with Robert Prechter. Source: Phoebe_DeVere. Date Published: May 28, 2024. Description:
Robert Prechter took the Shakespeare Authorship world by storm with the publication of his twenty four-volume magnum opus "Oxford's Voices". Researched and written over the course of 25 years, "Oxford's Voices" offers the first ever comprehensive look at the man who wrote Shakespeare's entire catalog, from juvenilia and pranks, to song lyrics, state propaganda, and much more. I hope you'll enjoy our wide ranging conversation! Part 1 focuses on Edward de Vere's juvenilia, including song lyrics, practical jokes, and even the instructions for a highly complicated board game. Check back next week for part 2, and in the meantime, for more about Bob's book, check out oxfordsvoices.com.
Video Title: Shakespeare Wrote Propaganda! With Robert Prechter. Source: Phoebe_DeVere.
Video Title: How Shakespeare Was Erased: Edward de Vere's 3 Burials. Source: Phoebe_DeVere. Date Published: September 10, 2024. Description:
Welcome to The Three Burials of Edward de Vere: How the Real Shakespeare Was Erased and Replaced! The case for Edward de Vere as #Shakespeare has been well established by leading scholars since the 1920 publication of J. T. Looney’s “Shakespeare Identified”. But the questions I’m grappling with today are how exactly De Vere’s name got lost to history, and how his image was later intentionally replaced with the phony narrative of the man named Will from Stratford-Upon-Avon. I have some new discoveries that I’d like to share, but I’ll also be recapping some of the coolest work that other Oxfordian scholars have done in recent years. We’ll be debunking and fact-checking some conspiracy theories, and diving in head first into other ones :) Buckle up! If you’re new to Oxfordianism (the theory that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford wrote under the pseudonym “William Shake-Speare”) you can watch some of the introductory videos on my channel.
Moving forward to my teenage years, I had in high school what our evangelical friends would call a born-again experience, and for a time viewed with contempt the ritual and sacramental formalities of what I thought to be a spiritually comatose Lutheranism. For a time, I suppose I might have been a good candidate for the Baptist ministry, but it did not last. Missouri’s traditional hostility toward “pietism”—an exaggerated emphasis on the affective dimension of Christian faith—struck me as hostility toward piety. But after a period of frequently anguished uncertainty about the possibility of sorting out subjective experience and egotistic assertiveness from the workings of grace, I came to a new appreciation of Luther’s warnings against religious enthusiasm. Several years later, at Concordia, St. Louis, I was to discover the possible synthesis of piety, clear reason, and ecclesial authority in the person and teaching of Professor Arthur Carl Piepkorn.
The students most closely gathered around him called him—behind his back, to be sure—“the Pieps,” and those who in American Lutheranism today describe themselves as “evangelical catholics”—perhaps a fourth or more of the clergy—are aptly called the Piepkornians. Piepkorn was a man of disciplined prayer and profound erudition, and was deeply engaged in the liturgical renewal and the beginnings of Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue. At St. Louis he taught the Lutheran confessional writings of the sixteenth century, which he insistently called “the symbolical books of the Church of the Augsburg Confession.” They were, he insisted, the “symbols” of a distinctive communion within the communion of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. They represented a way of being catholic as the heirs of a Reformation that was intended to be a movement of reform within and for the one Church of Christ.
Piepkorn underscored the Church’s tradition prior to the Reformation, the tradition of which Lutheranism was part. The accent was on continuity, not discontinuity. Perhaps the sixteenth century break was necessary—although that was never emphasized—but certainly the Lutheran Reformation, unlike other movements that claimed the Reformation heritage, had no delusions about being a new beginning, a so-called rediscovery of the gospel, by which the authentic and apostolic Church was reconstituted. Lutheranism was not a new beginning but another chapter in the history of the one Church. The Church is not a theological school of thought, or a society formed by allegiance to theological formulas—not even formulas such as “justification by faith”—but is, rather, the historically specifiable community of ordered discipleship through time, until the end of time. Piepkorn emphasized that we are Christians first, catholic Christians second, and Lutheran Christians third. In this understanding, the goal was to fulfill the promise of the Lutheran Reformation by bringing its gifts into full communion with the Great Tradition that is most fully and rightly ordered through time in the Roman Catholic Church.
In this understanding, the conclusion of the Augsburg Confession of 1530 was taken to be normative. There the signers declare:
Only those things have been recounted which it seemed necessary to say in order that it may be understood that nothing has been received among us, in doctrine or in ceremonies, that is contrary to Scripture or to the church catholic. For it is manifest that we have guarded diligently against the introduction into our churches of any new and ungodly doctrines.
For us Piepkornians, everything was to be held accountable to that claim. In some streams of Lutheran orthodoxy, as well as in Protestant liberalism, a very different notion of normativity was proposed. In the language of the twentieth-century Paul Tillich, catholic substance was to be held in tension with Protestant principle, with Protestant principle having the corrective and final word. But a principle that is not part of the substance inevitably undermines the substance. And what is called the Protestant principle is, as we know from sad experience, so protean, so subject to variation, that it results either in the vitiation of doctrine itself or further schism in the defense of doctrinal novelty. Theology that is not in service to “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) turns against the faith once delivered to the saints. Ideas that are not held accountable to “the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15) will in time become the enemy of that truth. Such was our understanding of the normative claim of the Augustana to have received nothing contrary to Scripture or to the Catholic Church.
An excerpt from, "He Threw It All Away" By Robert P. George, First Things, March 20, 2009:
In the early 1970s, Lutheran pastor Richard John Neuhaus was poised to become the nation’s next great liberal public intellectual—the Reinhold Niebuhr of his generation. He had going for him everything he needed to be not merely accepted but lionized by the liberal establishment. First, of course, there were his natural gifts as a thinker, writer, and speaker. Then there was a set of left-liberal credentials that were second to none. He had been an outspoken and prominent civil rights campaigner, indeed, someone who had marched literally arm-in-arm with his friend Martin Luther King. He had founded one of the most visible anti-Vietnam war organizations. He moved easily in elite circles and was regarded by everyone as a “right-thinking” (i.e., left-thinking) intellectual-activist operating within the world of mainline Protestant religion.
Then something happened: Abortion. It became something it had never been before, namely, a contentious issue in American culture and politics. Neuhaus opposed abortion for the same reasons he had fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. At the root of his thinking was the conviction that human beings, as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God, possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity. This dignity must be respected by all and protected by law. That, so far as Neuhaus was concerned, was not only a biblical mandate but also the bedrock principle of the American constitutional order. Respect for the dignity of human beings meant, among other things, not subjecting them to a system of racial oppression; not wasting their lives in futile wars; not slaughtering them in the womb.
It is important to remember that in those days it was not yet clear whether support for “abortion rights” would be a litmus test for standing as a “liberal.” After all, the early movement for abortion included many conservatives, such as James J. Kilpatrick, who viewed abortion not only as a solution for the private difficulties of a “girl in trouble,” but also as a way of dealing with the public problem of impoverished (and often unmarried) women giving birth to children who would increase welfare costs to taxpayers.
At the same time, more than a few notable liberals were outspokenly pro-life. In the early 1970s, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for example, replied to constituents’ inquiries about his position on abortion by saying that it was a form of “violence” incompatible with his vision of an America generous enough to care for and protect all its children, born and unborn. Some of the most eloquent and passionate pro-life speeches of the time were given by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In condemning abortion, Jackson never failed to note that he himself was born to an unwed mother who would likely have been tempted to abort him had abortion been legal and easily available at the time.
The liberal argument against abortion was straightforward and powerful. “We liberals believe in the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the human family. We believe that the role of government is to protect all members of the community against brutality and oppression, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. We do not believe in solving personal or social problems by means of violence. We seek a fairer, nobler, more humane way. The personal and social problems created by unwanted pregnancy should not be solved by offering women the ‘choice’ of destroying their children in utero; rather, as a society we should reach out in love and compassion to mother and child alike.”
So it was that Pastor Neuhaus and many like him saw no contradiction between their commitment to liberalism and their devotion to the pro-life cause. On the contrary, they understood their pro-life convictions to be part and parcel of what it meant to be a liberal. They were “for the little guy” and the unborn child was “the littlest guy of all.”
After graduating from Concordia College, Milwaukee, in 1925, and Concordia Seminary, Clayton, Missouri, in 1928, Arthur wanted to become a missionary to China, but was too young to be ordained. Encouraged by Seminary professor and Lutheran Hour founder Walter A. Maier to study Oriental languages and literature, he earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago by 1932 with a specialty in Babylonian archaeology. His dissertation re-dated the fall of Thebes in Egypt by five years.
While at the University, he discovered on his own the catholicity of the Book of Concord of 1580, which he had only been required to read cursorily while at the Seminary, where greater emphasis was placed on Francis Pieper’s dogmatics. This discovery led him to describe himself as a Christian first, a Western Christian second, a Lutheran third and a Missouri–Synod Lutheran fourth. Noting that Martin Luther and his fellow reformers called themselves “evangelicals,” he described himself as an “evangelical catholic.
. . .While working for the Lutheran Hour, he also served as vacancy pastor for a church in St. Louis. In 1937 he became the pastor of Saint Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio. A chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserves since 1936, he accepted a call to active duty in November of 1940. After serving as the senior Chaplain of the XXIII Corps in early 1945, he was assigned in June to the personal staff of LTG Omar Bradley, commander of the Allied Occupational Forces. Two weeks later he was assigned to the personal staff of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, making him the Senior Chaplain in the European Theater. After the war he accompanied President Eisenhower to a conference in Switzerland where he served as Eisenhower’s interpreter.
Following the end of World War II he served as Commandant of the U.S. Army ChaplainSchool (1948-50), and President of the U.S. Army Chaplain Board (1950-51). His thirteen medals and decorations include the Legion of Merit. He retired from the Reserves in the rank of Colonel.
. . .His magnum opus was the four volume classic, Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada (Harper and Row, 1977ff), which is still the standard in the field (published posthumously under the editorship of John H. Tietjen).
Video Title: TLHP 03 Arthur Carl Piepkorn: Chaplain to the Greatest Generation with John Hannah. Source: The Lutheran History Channel. Date Published: February 28, 2024. Description:
Pastor Hannah has extensively researched the military service of Arthur Carl Piepkorn, calling him "the foremost of men who became Lutheran chaplains in WWII." While Piepkorn would later be known among Lutherans as a notable professor and theologian of the 20th century, very little work has been done on Piepkorn's remarkable service as a U.S. Army chaplain during and after WWII. Hannah's work sheds new light on this period of Peipkorn's work and helps us understand Lutheran chaplaincy.
