Elizabeth Trentham, Countess of Oxford: What Shaped This Confident Commoner Who Outshone Diamonds?
To learn more about the capable woman who captured Edward de Vere’s heart, I searched for her childhood home in Staffordshire. I found clues in a sheep field.
Part 2 of a Series: Three Elizabethan Women, Three Houses, Three Days.
This summer, I visited the homes of three Tudor women on three consecutive days with one question: What can landscape, architecture and place tell us about the women who lived there?
Come with me to Staffordshire on the second day of my journey, to meet Elizabeth Trentham, Countess of Oxford.
Elizabeth Trentham (c. 1561-1612) was the Staffordshire-born daughter of Thomas Trentham and Jane Sneyd. She served Queen Elizabeth I as a maid-of-honor, then became the second wife of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and mother of his heir, Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford. But those bare facts tell us little about the woman herself.
According to one poet, Elizabeth was sober, wise, modest, fair, and diamonds looked dim when she walked into a room.
Those were dangerous qualities in a maid-of-honor at court, where covetous courtiers competed to seduce the Queen’s unmarried (and married) ladies, and a woman’s reputation could be ruined considerably faster than it could be repaired.
Although mere “Mistress Trentham” from the west Midlands, Elizabeth served the Queen for ten years, side-by-side with titled, aristocratic women. She refused to succumb to any of the court’s “wolves”, and kept her reputation, independence of mind and spirit, and sense of humor intact. She married the man she loved, and became one of the most capable and business-minded countesses in England. After she became a widow, many thought it would be easy to take advantage of her, a woman alone facing legal battles in court, managing complex real property, rebalancing an earldom's finances, pushing back against over-reaching government taxes and levies, defending against attempted fraud and attempted theft, and raising a teenage son alone.
Guess who won all those battles?
I have spent a decade researching and writing about Elizabeth, and I thought I knew her well. But I needed to know what made her so self-possessed and so capable in all these areas in which most Tudor women were never trained, let alone expected to succeed. Where on earth did she learn to manage all that?
I went to Rocester, Staffordshire hoping to find some clues at her childhood home.
What I found wasn’t a building.
It was a sheep field. And sheep.
The sheep, as it turned out, knew a thing or two.
“Ewe are looking for the wrong thing.”
What?! OK, then what should I be looking for?
🐑 Why I Was Out Standing in a Sheep Field
At wester side of Albion’s Ile,
Where Austine pitch his Monkish tent
Where shepherds sing, where Muses smile,
The graces met with one consent,
To frame each on in sundry part,
Some cunning work to show their art.
Willobie His Avisa, or, the true picture of a modest maid, and of a chaste and constant wife
Under hillocks of thick grass in the wide expanse of Rocester’s Abbey Fields, lie the ruins of a Roman fort. Medieval Augustinians built their monastic house from its stones. Henry VIII dissolved the abbey and gave it to Elizabeth’s grandfather, who turned it into a family manor house. Four centuries later, when I visited, the ruins of the house Elizabeth knew lay hidden with the Roman fort and the Augustinian abbey, and the sheep had inherited the lot.
Distantly related to the Earls of Essex, the Trenthams were commoners who acquired hundreds of acres of local farms and pastures. Today, the Trentham name survives on businesses, road signs, farms and even an amusement park.
My prior stop, Burghley House, where Anne Cecil grew up under constant observation, boasted extraordinary scale, and gaudy grandiosity. You can read more about that here: Anne Cecil, Countess of Oxford: How Burghley House Shaped the Woman She Became.
But Elizabeth’s childhood was spent among open fields, rivers, and miles of rolling Staffordshire countryside that beg for exploration on foot and horseback. Two rivers, the Dove and the Churnet, still sparkle and gurgle, oblivious to the centuries. Locals splashed and swam in the Dove’s deep pools on the day I was there. Choruses of birds celebrated from wooded river banks thick with wildflowers bending to kiss the current. Rippling wheat fields stretched in all directions. Clusters of apples tugged at orchard boughs. The air smelled of fresh hay, ripening fruit and warm earth.
Nothing in Rocester rivals Burghley House’s expanse or architectural magnificence. It has no need. It remains its unadorned self: graceful, verdant and stunning.
History is full of remarkable women. You just have to know where to look.
If you enjoy meeting the intelligent, courageous and often overlooked women who quietly shaped Tudor England, I'd love to introduce you to more of them.
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⛪️ St. Michael’s Church Bell Tower
A barely visible path meanders across Abbey Fields to the adjoining Anglican church of St. Michael’s, a Victorian replacement for the 14th century church where Elizabeth’s family worshipped.
Of the original church, only the Norman bell tower remains. Likely, it proved impregnable when the old church was demolished and illegible Tudor grave stones were uprooted and stacked in rows along the church’s outer walls. One thing remains certain: Elizabeth knew this tower of her faith.
📜 Thomas Trentham’s Will: What Elizabeth Trentham’s Father Tells Us About His Daughter
Thou beggar’s brat, thou dunghill mate,
Thou clownish spawn, thou country gill,
My love is turned to wreakful hate
Go hang and keep thy credit still . . .
I hope to see some country clown
Possessor of that fleering face
When need shall force thy pride come down.
The First Noble Suitor to Avisa in Willobie His Avisa, or, the true picture of a modest maid, and of a chaste and constant wife
Elizabeth’s father, Thomas Trentham (1538-1587), was one of the men responsible for Mary Queen of Scots during her long captivity. He also served in the House of Commons and as High Sheriff and Keeper of the Rolls of Staffordshire.
Thomas did something highly unusual in his will: rather than putting Elizabeth's dowry under the control of executors or Elizabeth’s brother, Thomas bestowed the entire £1000 dowry directly upon his unmarried daughter. [PROB 11/72/372]
That £1000 was a respectable amount. It was not, however, the sort of fortune that persuaded an Elizabethan earl to marry her for the money. Noble brides typically came with dowries three to thirty times that size. Elizabeth was beautiful, but neither noble, nor an heiress. Her brother Francis would inherit the Trentham estates, not her. As a result, certain gentlemen of the court had other propositions and arrangements in mind for her and repeatedly tried their luck.
Elizabeth was not interested in either their propositions or their arrangements.
Thomas Trentham’s will also left his daughter something considerably rarer and more valuable than money: the right to choose her own husband. This was almost unheard of for a never-married woman. That right belonged exclusively to male family members. Thomas also left her the possibility of managing two valuable wardships and the income from one of the Trentham properties if her brother failed to comply with the will’s terms.
The father who raised both children knew the measure of his daughter’s intelligence and business savvy.
🏰 From Rocester to Elizabeth I’s Court
If you will hope, then hope in this,
I’ll never grant that you require:
If this you hope, you shall not miss,
But shall obtain your hope’s desire.
If other hope you do retain,
Your labor’s lost, your hope in vain.
Avisa’s response to a would-be seducer in Willobie His Avisa, or, the true picture of a modest maid, and of a chaste and constant wife
Elizabeth was no country bumpkin. She served the touchy Queen without misstep throughout ten years of late night entertaining and tight quarters. While slews of other maids-of-honor surrendered to honey-worded seductions, and scandal rocked and ruined many reputations, Elizabeth remained above the fray, hotly pursued but never conquered. She knew exactly who she was, where she came from, and what she was worth.
And someone important noticed. Like he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
Want to know more about the scandals and sexual minefields at court during just one of the ten years Elizabeth Trentham was a maid-of-honor? Start with:
And then follow the links in my five part series on the infamous year of 1591, to:
💎 How Elizabethan Court Poets Saw Elizabeth Trentham
Elizabethan court poets paint a surprisingly consistent portrait of Elizabeth Trentham.
A 1591 poem in Britton’s Bowre of Delights spells her name and praises her virtue, grace, excellence rare, beauty, and honor, and in a highly risky line, deemed her even fairer than the Queen had been while young.
How did the poet get away with that right under the nose of a jealous queen?
Anonymity carries advantages.
T Time made a stay when highest powers wrought
R Regard of love where virtue had her grace,
E Excellence rare of everie beautie sought,
N Notes of the heart where honour had her place,
T Tried by the touch of most approved truth,
A A worthie Saint to serve a heavenly Queene,
M More faire than she that was the fame of youth,
E Except but one, the like was never seene.
After she had married Edward de Vere and become Countess of Oxford, in A Pleasant Conceite Penned in Verse, Thomas Churchyard described Elizabeth as sober, modest, fair, shining, and blotless, before he closed with these lines:
The Diamond dooth lose his daintie light,
And waxeth dim, when Oxford comes in sight.
💍 Elizabeth Trentham and Edward de Vere: The Man She Chose to Marry
But wisdom willed her choose her mate,
. . . .
Where rich in grace, where sound in health,
Most men do wed, but for the wealth.
Willobie His Avisa, or, the true picture of a modest maid, and of a chaste and constant wife
Period correspondence reveals that Elizabeth was an unusually capable and astute business partner. With her assistance, Edward de Vere stabilized his earldom’s finances, reducing the £150,000 in inherited debt, fines and penalties that the Queen had forced on him to 20 shillings.
Want to know more about how the couple pulled off that financial feat?
Five of Queen Elizabeth I's Most Powerful Courtiers' Lavish Lives and Hidden Debts poses the puzzle: Which of five well known courtiers died the deepest in debt?
Which of Queen Elizabeth I's Favorites Died With the Most Debt? The Answer to a Tudor Puzzle reveals the answer, and Elizabeth’s role.
⚔️ A Widow With a Very Merry Sense of Humor
There are at least a dozen stories of Elizabeth's sharp and effective responses to men trying to take advantage of her in business matters after she became a widow. This one offers a quite a bit of insight into Elizabeth's personality.
In 1608, Robert Cecil, Lord High Treasurer of England, demanded £8 in unpaid taxes from Elizabeth, the Countess of Oxford. Unfortunately for Cecil, he had billed the wrong Countess of Oxford. The debt had belonged to his own sister Anne Cecil, Oxford’s first wife.
Elizabeth merrily tweaked Cecil in her response:
“To Robert Cecil, the right honorable Lord High Treasurer of England:
As concerning the debt of eight pounds for subsidy demanded of the
said Countess of Oxenford, she is willing to pay the same as your
Lordship shall appoint, only she desireth that she may be discharged
. . . . because her name is mistaken as ‘Anne’ for ‘Elizabeth.’”
TNA SP 14/37/50, f. 102 (1608)
I suspect that Elizabeth never had to pay the tax, and that Cecil quickly resolved his difficulty in distinguishing Elizabeth from his own dead sister.
And, if you love the works of Shakespeare, you may also owe Elizabeth Trentham a thank you.
But that is an Elizabethan Secret for another day.
🌹 Why the Trentham’s House’s Disappearance Doesn’t Matter
Avisa:
I told you first what you should find,
Although you thought I did but jest,
. . .
Excepting him, whom free consent,
By wedlock words, hath made my spouse,
From others yet I am as free
As they this night, that born be.
The English Caveleiro:
Well give me then a cup of wine,
As thou art his, would thou were mine.
Exchange between Avisa and another would-be seducer, the English Caveleiro in Willobie His Avisa, or, the true picture of a modest maid, and of a chaste and constant wife
Unlike Burghley House, Elizabeth Trentham's childhood home didn't survive, so we will never know to what extent it made her who she was. But in light of her father’s extraordinary confidence in her judgment, the open fields, the Dove and the Churnet, the sturdy Norman bell tower, the practical lessons learned in her family’s businesses, and the Staffordshire landscape, the house doesn't matter.
Those sheep were right. I had been looking for the wrong thing.
📚 Want to know more of Elizabeth Trentham's story?
If you want to learn more about Elizabeth Trentham you can watch my illustrated talk about her here: 🎥 Upholding the Most Ancient and Honorable House: Elizabeth Trentham.
And, in Canterbury Cathedral, Tudor Heroines, and My Writing Life you can eavesdrop on a private encounter between Elizabeth and Mary de Vere, Edward de Vere’s sister, in two of my novels. Who was interviewing whom, exactly?
(Love a good Tudor mystery? Subscribe to: The Secret Lives of Elizabethans to come along on the next adventure.)
