This surname is derived from a geographical locality. 'of Ver,' 'a parish and chateau in the canton of Guvray, in La Manche, Normandy' (Lower). Clutterbuck, in his History of Hertfordshire, says, 'de Veer,' from a town so called in the island of Walcheren in Holland. All the early entries by their spelling confirm the former view, save the instance with Baldwin for a Christian name. One single Vere in the London Directory saves the name from complete extinction, save in the variant Vear or Veare.

Albric' de Ver, Cambridgeshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Baldewin de Ver, Oxfordshire, ibid.

Henry de Ver, Suffolk, ibid.

1581. Robert Vere, Essex: Register of the University of Oxford.

1605. Henry de Vere: ibid.

1780. Married — William Sercome and Jane Vear: St. George, Hanover Square.

(Anglo-French-Scand.) belonging to Ver (Calvados, Manche, Oise, Eure-et-Loir) = the Fishing-Station [Old Norse ver] Ver, Calvados, occurs a.d. 1066 as Ver and Ver-um.

Henry deVer.—Hund.-Rolls, A.D. 1274.

Hugo de Vere.—Charter-Rolls, A.D. 1289-90.

No prouder name than De Vere has graced the annals of our English baronage; none has been borne by a longer succession of Earls; none has been more magnificently extolled, or more eloquently lamented. Its very sound is aristocratic, and carries with it the memory of its 567 years of nobility. Yet all its romance and illusion is lost in its original form; for in French it is simply ver (worm), derived from Ver, between Bayeux and Caen, which, as part of the Ducal demesne, was included in the dowry of the Duchess Judith in 1026. It must, however, have been granted to this family within the next thirty years, for Aubri de Ver occurs in 1058 (Gall. Christ. xi. 108). He was the father of Aubri or Alberic de Vere, one of the great landowners of Domesday, who had his castle and caput baroniæ at Hedingham in Essex, and founded Colne Priory in that county, as a cell of Abingdon. He was there “shorn a monk”in his latter years, and ended his days in the cloister, having had five sons by his wife Beatrice, According to Dugdale, this Beatrice was Countess of Guisnes in her own right; but Mr. Stapleton has proved that he confounds her with another Beatrice, who married her grandson. of whom the first-born, Geoffrey, died before him. His successor and namesake - generally styled Albericus Junior - rose to eminence as the favoured minister of Henry Beauclerk, and was Viscount of no less than eleven different counties. The King, as a signal proof of his esteem, granted him one of the high offices of State in fee; and he was made Lord Great Chamberlain of England, “with all dignities thereto belonging, to be held by him and his heirs as honourably as Robert Malet (then under banishment and forfeiture) or any other, before or after him, held the same; and with such liveries and lodgings at Court, as belonged to that Office.” He was afterwards employed by King Stephen, and was killed in a street riot in London in 1140.

His son and heir, Alberic III., bore the title of Earl of Guisnes, having some years before married Beatrice de Bourbourg, the granddaughter and heiress of Manasses, Count of Guisnes - a match said to have been hastened on account of the precarious health of the bride. On her grandfather’s death in 1137, he hurried over to take possession of his fief, and was duly installed by his suzerain the Count of Flanders. But he quickly wearied of his sickly wife and foreign domain, and, deserting both, chose to take up his abode at the English court. Beatrice, outraged by his neglect, sought and obtained a divorce, and re-married Baldwin de Ardres, but died not long after; and as she left no posterity by either of her husbands, the county of Guisnes passed to Arnold de Gand, as next heir.

Alberic was, however, about to receive another title - the honoured and historic Earldom that, through storm and sunshine, fair breezes and foul weather, sailed triumphantly down the stream of Time for nearly six hundred years. Having become one of the most active partisans of the Empress Maud, he had a grant from her in 1141 of all the lands of William d’Avranches, together with the inheritance he claimed on the part of his wife as the heiress of William of Arques (her English grandmother was Emma de Arques), and the promise of the town and castle of Colchester, as soon as they should be in her power; also the reversion of the Earldom of Cambridgeshire and the third penny thereof, as an Earl ought to have, provided the King of Scots had it not: but in that case Alberic was to have the choice of four Earldoms - Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Wilt­shire, and Dorsetshire - according to the decision of her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, Earl Geoffrey (of Essex), and Earl Gilbert (of Pembroke). His brothers, Geoffrey and Robert, were also made barons, and his brother William was promised the Chancellorship of England.

“King Henry II., on his accession to the throne, made the famous Thomas à Becket Chancellor, but performed that part of his mother’s promise which related to an Earldom for Alberic, and gave him that of Oxford.” - Planché.

It was this Alberic who first bore on his shield the mystic star that was ever after the badge of the De Veres, and which, according to tradition, he brought home from the Holy Land. “This Albery the third, his Father yet living, was at the Conquest of the Cittes of Nicque (Nice), of Antioche, and of Hierusalem, in the Company of Sir Robert Courtois Duke of Normandy. In the yeare of our Lord 1098, Corborant, Admiral to the Soudan of Persia, was fought with at Antioch, and discomfited by the Christianes. The Night coming on in the Chace of this Bataile, and waxing dark, the Christianes being four Miles from Antioche, God, willing the saufte of the Christianes, shewed a white Starre or Molette of fyve Pointes, which to every Manne’s Sighte did lighte and arrest upon the Standard of Albrey, then shining excessively. This miraculous star, the pride and boast of De Vere, is remorselessly declared by Planché to be neither more nor less than “a mullet for difference,” always used to distinguish a younger from an elder son; and as the coats of De Vere and Mandeville are, with this exception, absolutely identical, it follows that the former must have been a junior branch of the latter house. Their celebrated badge proved fatal to the Lancastrian cause at the battle of Barnet. “The erle of Oxford’s men” (arrayed for the Red Rose) “had a starre with streames booth before and behind on their lyverys,” while King Edward’s men bore the sun of York. The day was misty, and Warwick’s men, mistaking one for the other, charged their allies instead of their enemies. The former raised a cry of “Treason, treason! We are all betrayed!”broke their ranks, and took to flight; and the confusion thus caused lost the day. This Albrey, for his greatnesse of Stature, and sterne Looke, was named Albry the Grymme.” - Leland. He founded three religious houses, Hatfield-Broad-Oak Priory in Essex, a nunnery at Icklington, and another at Heningham, “Lucia his Wife being the first prioress there,” and died in 1194.

From this first Earl, who bore the title forty years, descended nineteen others, all more or less bound up with the history of their time, and eulogistically described by Macaulay “as the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen.” The exaggeration of this statement is patent to any student of genealogy, and has been fully exposed by Sir Bernard Burke. “In personal achievement and historical importance the De Veres can bear no comparison with the Talbots, the Howards, the Nevills, the Percies, and the Scropes; and in splendour of alliances, many a less distinguished family far surpassed them. There was scarcely one of our grand old houses of the times of the Henrys and the Edwards that had not more of royal blood.” The house of Talbot can also show an uninterrupted succession of twenty Earls. Though this assertion must be discarded as extravagant and overstrained, enough of sober truth remains to account for the glamour that surrounds the memory of “Oxford’s famed De Vere.” The third Earl, whose predecessor had been one of King John’s evil counsellors, chose a nobler part, and was one of the illustrious conservators of Magna Charta, excommunicated by Innocent III.: the fifth Earl was knighted in the field by the hand of Simon de Montfort; and the seventh Earl - a soldier from his seventeenth birthday - led forty spears under the Black Prince at Poitiers, where “Oxford charged the van.” The ninth Earl was Richard II.’s arrogant favourite, on whom every distinction that it was in his power to confer was lavished by the infatuated King, and who was hated and envied in proportion to the honours he received. Among various other grants, he obtained in 1386 “the Land and Dominion of Ireland” to hold by homage and allegiance “as the King himself ought to have the same,” with the Marquessate of Dublin; a title till then unknown in England, and bitterly offensive to the other peers, who thus beheld him raised above their heads. Not content with this, the King, a few months afterwards, created him Duke of Ireland - the first Dukedom ever granted to a subject not of Royal blood; and in order that he might “by force obtain the dominion”over the barbarous kingdom assigned to him, further gave him a sum of 30,000 marks, that had been the ransom of Charles de Blois. “Whereunto,” says Dugdale, “the Lords and Commons readily assented, being rather content to want the money then, than be troubled any longer with his Company.” But they were disappointed in their hope that he would go to Ireland; for he went no farther than Wales, in the King’s company; and thence presently returned to carry out a scheme they had concerted together for getting rid of the Duke of Gloucester and his principal enemies. But the Lords had been beforehand with him, for they had gathered in great force at Highgate, demanding, sword in hand, the dismissal of “those Traytors the King had then about him,” and first and foremost, of the Duke of Ireland. The weak King wavered and temporized, and the favourite, finding himself unsupported, had to fly the country in the disguise of a serving man, with a bow and quiver of arrows on his back. Before long, he reappeared in England with a following of four or five thousand men, and made his way into Oxfordshire, but was encountered and surrounded at Radcote Bridge by the forces of the Earl of Derby and Duke of Gloucester. The bridge over the Isis had been broken, and finding no other retreat open, “he threw away his Sword, Gantlets, and Armour, and leaping into the River, escaped them,” and again fled beyond sea. He was outlawed: and his titles and estates (except the entailed lands) being forfeited, he died in great penury and distress in 1392 at Louvain, of a hurt he had received in boar-hunting. The King ordered his body to be brought home, and had his coffin opened, that he might see the face of his friend once more. He then followed it in great state to its resting-place in the chapel of Our Lady at Colne Priory, where thirteen representatives of the De Veres are buried. Though twice married, the Duke left no children. His first wife, Philippa, daughter and co-heiress of Ingelram de Coucy, Earl of Bedford, and granddaughter of Edward III. through her mother, Isabel Plantagenet, was one of the greatest ladies in the realm; yet, in the height of his insolent prosperity, “pufft up with Wealth and Honour,” he wantonly repudiated her to marry a low­born foreigner, the joiner’s daughter Lancerona, who had come over in the train of Anne of Bohemia. Lancerona faithfully followed his fallen fortunes, and lies by his side at Earl’s Colne, where her effigy may still be seen, wearing the piked-horn head-dress, first introduced into England by her mistress, that Horace Walpole declares is “exactly like the description of Mount Parnassus.”

The twelfth Earl, a devoted Lancastrian, was beheaded on Tower Hill with his eldest son Aubrey at the accession of Edward IV. His second son, John, restored as thirteenth Earl, was, “through many vicissitudes of fortune, the chief of the party of the Red Rose, and led the van on the decisive day of Bosworth.” - Macaulay. This is Shakespeare’s Oxford, who when urged by Warwick to “Leave Henry and call Edward King,” replies - “Call him my king, by whose injurious doom My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere, Was done to death? and more so, my father, Even in the downfall of his mellow years, When Nature brought him to the door of death? No, Warwick, no: while life upholds this arm, This arm upholds the house of Lancaster.” - Henry VI., Part III., Act 3, Sc. 3.

Henry VII. visited him at Hedingham, and was entertained with the most profuse splendour. As he was taking his departure, the King noticed the long line of attendants ranged on either side to form his guard of honour, and called out to the Earl, “My lord, I have heard much of your hospitality, but I see it is greater than the speech. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen which I see on both sides of me, are surely your menial servants?” The Earl smiled, and said, “It may please your Grace, they are not for mine ease; they are most of them my retainers, that are come to do me service at such a time as this; and chiefly to see your Grace.” The King started a little, and rejoined, “By my faith, my lord, I thank you for my good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight; my attorney must speak with you.” The attorney spoke, and to some purpose; for the graceless guest positively caused his hospitable entertainer to be mulcted of ₤10,000, for having, in his desire to do honour to his Sovereign, ventured to exceed the number of retainers prescribed to him.

The seventeenth Earl was an unthrift, who dissipated the great inheritance that had descended to him. He pulled down the buildings erected by his predecessors, wasted the parks, and sold most of the lands, Dugdale says he was “an intire friend” to the Duke of Norfolk, and vainly interceded for his pardon with the Lord Treasurer Burghley (his wife’s father), “but prevailing not, grew so highly incensed against Burghley, knowing it was in his power to save him, that, in great indignation, he said, he would do all he could to ruin his Daughter; and accordingly not only forsook her Bed, but sold and consumed that great Inheritance, descended to him from his Ancestors; leaving very little for Henry his Son and Successor.” But it should be observed that Henry was his son by his second wife, and he could only have intended to injure the three daughters borne to him by Anne Cecil. including Kensington (the Chenisiton of Domesday) that had been one of the Conqueror’s grants. He was a wit, a poet, and a courtier, very favourably regarded by Queen Elizabeth, conspicuous in her tournaments, and one of the commanders of her fleet at the time of the Armada. She gave him the motto since borne by the De Veres, Vero nil verius, in honour of his loyalty. “He was,” says Stowe, “the first who brought perfumed gloves and such like fineries out of Italy into this kingdom.” His son Henry recouped his fortunes by marrying Lord Exeter’s second daughter, Lady Diana Cecil, one of the greatest beauties and heiresses of her day, and repurchased some of the estates, but she brought him no children, and when, in 1625, he was killed at the siege of Breda, the direct line of descent terminated. His widow sold Hedingham, that had remained in the family for 550 years, and of which the grand Norman keep - all that is now left of the castle - still lords it proudly over North Essex. The titles and the office of Great Chamberlain were hotly contested in the House of Lords by two claimants, Robert de Vere, in right of his descent from the second son of the fifteenth Earl, and Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, in right of his mother, Mary de Vere, sister and heiress of the seventeenth Earl. Chief Justice Crewe summed up for the heir male in a speech often quoted as a rare specimen of old English eloquence. “I have laboured,” he said, “to make a covenant with myself that affection may not press upon judgment; for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness but his affection stands to the continuance of so noble a name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine thread to uphold it. And yet Time hath his revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere? - for where is Bohun? where is Mowbray? where is Mortimer? nay, what is more, and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality. And yet let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God.” The Earldom only, however, was adjudged to De Vere; the three baronies in fee, Bulbec, Sandford, and Badlesmere, were declared in abeyance; and the staff of Lord Great Chamberlain of England was committed to Lord Willoughby, This decision, strangely at variance with our present notions - for he was not the heir general of the De Veres - has nevertheless always held good. Lord Lindsey duly officiated at the coronation of Charles II., and the representatives of his descendant, the last Duke of Ancaster, the Marquesses Cholmondeley and Lords Willoughby de Eresby, now alternately hold the office. who was created Earl of Lindsey in the following year.

Robert de Vere, who thus succeeded as nineteenth Earl, was comparatively a poor man; and his son Aubrey, the last of this time-honoured line, “the noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say, the noblest subject in Europe,” with whom ended the lofty name of De Vere, died in a miserable cottage in 1702. He had been Lord Lieutenant of Essex and Colonel of the Blues, but was deprived both of his regiment and his office by James II. When, in 1687, the King determined to pack a parliament, and retain in office only those who would support him, De Vere declared that he would stand by the King to the last drop of his blood, “but,” added he, “this is a matter of conscience, and I cannot comply.” He left three daughters, of whom the eldest only was married, Lady Diana, the wife of Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans, the son of Charles II. by Nell Gwynn.

Two other baronies had belonged to the De Veres, but each of brief con­tinuance. The first was granted to Hugh, a soldier of merit in the wars of Edward L, who married the heiress of Montchensy, but died s. p. in 1313. The second was the reward of another gallant soldier, Sir Horatio Vere, a grandson of the fifteenth Earl, who was created Lord Vere of Tilbury in 1625, but also left no heir. He and his brother Sir Francis are buried side by side in West­minster Abbey, and “were amongst the boldest and best generals that upheld the renown of the English name under Elizabeth in the wars of the Netherlands.” Fuller graphically describes them both: "Sir Francis was of a fiery Spirit and rigid nature, undaunted in all dangers, not over-valuing the price of men’s lives, to purchase victory therewith. He served on the Scene of all Christendom where war was acted. One master-piece of his valour was at the battle of Newport, where his Ragged Regiment (so were the English then call’d for their ragged Clothes) helped to make all whole, or else all had been lost. Another was, when for three years he defended Ostend against a strong and numerous Army, surrendering it at last a bare Skeleton to the King of Spain, who paid more years Purchase for it than probably the world will endure.

“Sir Horace had more meekness, and as much valour as his Brother; so pious, that he first made his peace with God before he went out to war with man. One of an excellent Temper, it being true of him that is said of the Caspian Sea, ‘that it doth never ebb nor flow’; observing a constant tenor, neither elated nor depressed with Success. Had one seen him returning from a Victory, he would, by his silence, have suspected that he had lost the day; and had he beheld him in a Retreat, he would have collected him a Conqueror, by the cheerfulness of his Spirit. He was the first Baron of King Charles’s creation.” He died in 1635. His widow, “the truly honourable and religious Lady Vere,” still survived in 1657, “kept alive thus long,” writes Dillingham, “by special providence, that the present age might more than read and remember what was true godliness in 88”(the year of the Armada).

Originally Weir or Were-a fish dam. The family are descended from Rotaldus Were of Blackwood in Lanarkshire, 1404.

A Norman baronial name. Henry de Ver, Normandy 1180-95 (Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae). The name is derived from Ver, near Bayeux and Caen. Ver was part of the ducal demesne 1026, when it was included in the dowry of the duchess Judith. It was afterwards granted to this family, of whom Alberic de Ver occurs 1058 (Gall. Christ. xi. 108). He had issue: 1. Alberic de Ver, Chamberlain, a baron 1086, ancestor of the Earls of Oxford (See Dugdale); 2. Humphry Fitz-Alberic, a baron in Norfolk and Suffolk 1086, ancestor probably of the Barons Hunting- field; 3. Erneis de Ver, of Holdernesse and Lincoln, ancestor of the families of De Ver, Gousell, and Thorold. See Mandeville.

(English) The same as Ware, q. v.

From Ver; a location name in Normandy. in the Domesday Book, de Ver; a personal name.

A Norman name: Ver; a local name

Vere: from Verin, in Calvados, or another Ver in Manche.

Vere: from Ver, between Bayeux and Caen. Alberic de Vere was one of the great landowners of Domesday, who had his castle at Hedingham in Essex. His successor and namesake was Viscount under Henry I. in no less than eleven different counties.