Oxford’s Childhood

What We Know and What We Don’t

By Stephanie Hopkins Hughes

Among the areas of human knowledge that Shakespeare drew on repeatedly as sources for metaphor, nine stand out: the law, horticulture, medicine, distilling, astrology, hawking, music/instrumental musicianship, ships/the sea, and Italy. The first six of these were subjects that also fascinated Sir Thomas Smith, Edward de Vere's tutor. Much of Smith's four-hundred-volume library consists of books on these six topics (Strype 274-81). Books have been written by professionals in everyone of these fields to prove that Shakespeare's knowledge of their field was profound, even that of a professional. In a controversy less fraught with tension, this should be enough to make the connection from de Vere to "Shakespeare" for how else could "Shake- speare" acquire so much knowledge about the very things that fascinated Smith? And, since Shakespeare's use of his knowledge of these things rarely pertains directly to their functions-far more often he uses them as metaphors for subjects that have nothing to do with their ordinary functions-that they were absorbed into his consciousness in childhood makes good psychological sense.

Since arguments that attempt to connect the historical record with literary topics are subject to infinite quibbles and because the controversy over Shakespeare's identity is so ferocious, we need to know as much as we can about Oxford's time with Smith-when it began, how long it lasted, where it took place, and who, through Smith, might have had an influence on Oxford as a child. Some of this we know - much we still have to guess. We know for certain when he left Smith's care (September 1562), but exactly when he came to live with him has proven more difficult to determine.

The recorded facts

As J.K. MacFarlane, Cambridge scholar specializing in the history of the aristocracy, makes clear, references to noble children in the letters and other documents of the period he terms late medieval are few and far between (242-3), something that was equally true of Oxford's time. With a child who becomes a political pawn we may have more information, but-apart from wills and baptismal or family birth documents that do no more than reveal the fact that they exist-most persons born at this time remain invisible until they marry or come of age. The extremely high rates of infant mortality may have had something to do with this. In any case, we're lucky that we know as much as we do about Oxford's early years.

What solid records there are give us the date of his birth (April 22, 1550 NS) and that he was "brought up" in the household of his tutor, Sir Thomas Smith, and that when he was nine he spent five months (1558-9) at Smith's alma mater, Queens' College, Cambridge. We know that with the death of his father, the sixteenth earl, in September 1562, he was transferred to the household of his henceforth unofficial guardian, Sir William Cecil. Of these facts we have records; the rest of what we know is necessarily based on secondary evidence, but some of this is almost as strong.

For instance, we can be certain that de Vere was with Smith long enough that Smith could refer to him as "brought up in my house," as he phrased it in a letter to Cecil (who of all people would certainly have known if he was lying or exaggerating).i(1) Keeping in mind that families on this social level tended to move back and forth from one manor to another, we can be relatively certain that de Vere was under his care - or, we would imagine, that of his wife when Smith was away on business - from some time after Smith moved into his home in southeast Buckinghamshire in 1553 until he was called in September of 1562 to act as Elizabeth's ambassador to France.

It is next to impossible at this point to determine exactly when Smith moved his household, which by then would have included the young de Vere, from Ankerwick, just to the southwest of London, to Hill Hall in Essex, slightly northeast of London. Contradictory statements by both Smith's biographers, Dewar and Strype, suggest that they did not know either. Since John Strype was working with information from Smith's direct descendant, this suggests that by his time (1698) the Smith family had lost the details, although there is a local tradition that the young Earl of Oxford did live for a time at Hill Hall (or possibly the small manor nearby, Mount Hall) (Padfield).

Strype states that, by the 1560s, Smith was maintaining at least four fully furnished houses, including Ankerwick near Windsor, Hill Hall in Essex, one at Cannon Row at Westminster (170), and another one (or two) in London (170), which he would visit when work required it. A notebook of Smith's at Queens' College library contains a list of the rooms at Ankerwick and their contents dated 1569, well after the time when he began dating letters from Hill Hall. One of the rooms from this list is termed "my chambre," unlikely had he given up residence there. A letter exists from 1565 in which Smith, writing from France, comments on a recent visit to Ankerwick by the Queen and Leicester and his "sorrow" that his wife could not be present to welcome them (Dewar 85). These testify that Smith continued to maintain rooms for himself, and his wife, at Ankerwick long after he created living quarters at Hill Hall.

As for the date when de Vere came to live with Smith, Mary Dewar, Smith's biographer, reports that de Vere was placed in his household in late 1554. Her citation (the letter cited in endnote 1) does not support the exact month and year of the transfer, but what we hope to show here is that this period is in fact the most likely moment for his move from Essex to Buckinghamshire.

Rebellions and revolution

Apart from the paucity of records of noble childhoods, it also happens that Oxford's early years coincide with one of the most turbulent periods in English history, so that records, both publicand private, are even more sparse than they might have been at another time. Unlike the so-called Wars of the Roses that take up so much space in histories of the period and that were mainly power struggles between regional factions that didn't greatly affect the lives of most Englishmen - the rebellions of the Edwardine and Marian eras were grassroots uprisings that erupted at the same time in several sections of the country, affecting everyone in those areas from magnates to yeomen. One doesn't often hear the reforms of the Edwardine regime or the heretic-hunting of the Marian regime referred to grandly as revolutions, but this is due to their relatively small size and duration, not their intent or their effect. As Lawrence Stone puts it:

What is and what is not, a revolution? According to one view,

it is change effected by the use of violence in government,

and/or regime, and/or society .... [which, whether by a narrow

or wide definition] allows the historian to distinguish between,

on the one hand, the seizure of power that leads to a major

restructuring of government or society, the establishment of a

new set of values for distributive justice, and the replacement

of the former elite by a new one, on the other hand, the coup

d'etat involving no more than a change of ruling personnel

by violence or threat of violence.

During the period of Oxford's conception, birth and early childhood, England experienced all of the above forms of violence, some more than once. As historians Fletcher and MacCulloch note, "In 1558, Elizabeth I inherited a country which had seen four successful rebellions in seven decades, and which had been seething with disturbances for the entire previous decade" (125), disturbances that were particularly fierce in Oxford's home territory of Essex and Suffolk counties.

In July of 1549, at around the time of his conception, a grass roots uprising known as Kett's Rebellion was firing much of his home territory. It centered in the town of Lavenham in southern Suffolk, for centuries the political control center of the Oxford earldom. For a time the rebels made their command center at Surrey Place on Mousehold Heath in Norfolk, formerly the home of the recently-executed (1547) Earl of Surrey and his wife Frances Vere, Oxford's aunt. i(2) Kett's Rebellion was eventually brought under control, but not before the poet Lord Sheffield, the earl's brother-in-law, was murdered by a vengeful butcher (69).i(3) Close on the heels of this grassroots rebellion, two palace coups, one right after the other, threw the central government into a frenzy, while by his ninth birthday two revolutions (or two phases of the great revolution we call the Reformation) swept the nation - if not as devastating overall as the French or Russian revolutions, yet just as frightening and dangerous to those who lived through them." i(4)

Thus, it should be no wonder that letters from this period are sparse and that most of those that survive are lacking in specifics. In times of revolution people avoid putting their private thoughts on paper. For the same reason, official records often fail to survive because officials fearing incrimination destroyed them. Even William Cecil, whose life is so thoroughly documented by his paper trail, disappears from history between the autumn of 1548 and the spring of 1549 (Read 52), an unusually long hiatus for someone in high office. (Cecil was Somerset's Master of Requests until the Duke's downfall in October, 1549.) His biographer, Conyers Read, conjectures that later, during the Marian regime (1553-58), Cecil was even wary of spending his holidays with his protestant friends and relatives (116).

Northumberland's failed coup

Of all the upheavals that touched the Oxford earldom, the closest was the attempt by John Dudley, self-styled Duke of Northumberland (and father of Queen Elizabeth's favorite, the Earl of Leicester), to put his own daughter-in-law on the throne in 1553 following the death of the young Edward VI. By the time of Mary Tudor's showdown with Northumberland in July, the sixteenth earl had already signed the letters patent of June 16, nominating Lady Jane Grey to succeed Mary's brother (ODNB). Here is the story of the day in mid-July, 1553 when the Oxford household forced the earl to change his allegiance, as it was penned not long after by his neighbor and distant relative, Robert Wingfield, an ardent Catholic:

“… while [Northumberland] was setting out for Bury

[St. Edmund's, where his forces were gathering], he was brought

news by Henry Gate and ... Thomas Golding, brother to

the Countess of Oxford, that the earl himself had deserted

Northumberland's party, mainly through the efforts of his

menial household servants.i(5) Some attribute Oxford's ad-

herence to Mary to the agency of Sir John Wentworth, the

earl's cousin and a man of noble stock and reliable character;

others, whose account I prefer, find the explanation of the

earl's defection elsewhere ....

Clement Tusser, a lawyer and a truly courageous character,

was being kept prisoner at Hedingham castle, the earl's most

delightful home set on the hill above the town which derives

its name from the castle, for no other reason than that he had

publicly proclaimed Mary as the only undoubted heir to the

throne. ... Since he was, as the comic poet puts it, a man

well-disposed at all times, he was treated with great kind-

ness especially by the menial servants; he fully convinced

them that it was their duty to urge the earl to espouse and

embrace Mary's cause with all his might. This daring man

spoke thus and in similar vein, adding the proverbial spur to

the horse and fuel to the fire, for these menial servants were

loyal enough to Mary as their queen to make the voice of the

common people heard.

At that time Henry Gate and Robert Stafford came from

Northumberland to the earl, Stafford being designated captain

of the earl of Oxford's contingent because of his courage and

military skill. According to their instructions, these men were

trying every means and thinking of every argument to bring

Oxford into their ranks. However, when Tusser saw this he

once more fiercely urged the servants to encourage and force

their master to obey Queen Mary. Manfully and zealously

doing their duty on Tusser's initiative, they crowded into the

ample space of the castle hall and sent up deafening shouts that

they recognized no other queen but Mary, the eldest daughter

of Henry VIII; if their lord was willing to join her party, they

were ready to give their lives in this most just cause, but on

the other hand, if their lord did not wish to give his backing

to this cause ... they threatened immediately to throw off

their liveries and set out for Princess Mary.

The earl professed himself much moved by their words

and gave his agreement to his menial servants, asking for

their help against the gentlemen who were doing everything

they could to oppose this move. The earl had at that time

a hundred common servants remarkable for their stature

and strength and they were quick to aid their master. They

fell on the gentlemen and on the earl's orders, they threw

the most important into gaol. Those imprisoned included

Sir Robert Stafford, Sir Henry Gate, Sir Thomas Golding,

... Henry Golding, Thomas's brother, and [three others].i(6)

After this, the earl, accompanied by Tusser, whom he had

just restored to liberty, and the rest of his household, made

for Framlingham [where Mary's forces were gathering], and

his defection from Northumberland was a severe blow to the

morale of that party.” (263-64) i(7)

It is of course not known exactly where the three-year-old heir was during this fracas-presumably with his nurse, either with her family somewhere on the Hedingham estate or a few miles to the north with his mother's family at Bloomsters in Halstead, Suffolk (Anderson 150). Whichever it was, there would have been long-echoing reverberations of the events of that day, since both his father's and his mother's families were involved, and on opposing sides.

For the Goldings, it must have reinforced their no doubt already poor opinion of Earl John. It can't be said that it was the earl's "defection" that tipped the scales against Northumberland and along with him, all who had risen to power under her brother, including the Golding family, but it certainly must have been a factor.

1554: Dark days for the Protestants

Although the nation at large may have welcomed good King Harry's "legitimate" daughter and the restitution of the familiar Mass, once the new queen made it clear that she intended to marry the King of Spain, the national mood began to shift. A return to Catholicism was one thing-but to willingly bow to a foreign king, particularly this king, was another. Soon a new rebellion was brewing, this time in Kent and the west country.

Had the conspirators waited a year or so (or even just until the weather warmed up) before making their move they might have found more support, but when the revolt erupted in February the nation was not yet ready and, as the ringleaders dropped out one by one, they left Sir Thomas Wyatt (son of the Henrician sonneteer),i(8) along with his crew of Kentish men to take the brunt of its failure. Wyatt was executed in April, while most of the other conspirators were let off later with fines by a still conciliatory Mary (Fletcher 81-93).

When the Spanish envoys who were sent to arrange the wedding arrived in late December 1553, they were pelted with snowballs by schoolboys (Prescott 288) and with scurrilous rhymes by the Citizenry:

Flour of England, fruit of Spain,

Met together in a shower of rain.

Put in a bag tied round with a string,

If you tell me this riddle I'll give you a ring.

This relatively mild jape compares the marriage to a Christmas pudding with Mary as the flour and Philip as the fruit. It was in fact raining when the two finally met. [Baring-Gould 272-3)

Although an agreement had been in place since the previous December, the young king did not arrive in England until mid-July. Following their marriage later that month, the royal couple and their advisors seemed more engrossed in hunting, feasting and dancing than in stamping out heresy, but as the nights grew longer and the days colder, the arrival in November of the Pope's legate, Cardinal Pole, followed by Parliament's acceptance of Mary's proclamation that England was again a Catholic nation, announced the true beginning of the regime, the one that would leave the Queen dubbed "Bloody Mary" ever after by an unforgiving History. The Sunday following Advent saw High Mass celebrated once again in full panoply at Paul's Cathedral where hundreds gathered to hear Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner beg God for forgiveness for England's great sin of heresy (Prescott 348-65). Thus seemed undone two decades of government and church reform.

It takes no great effort to imagine just how festive the reformers were feeling that winter holiday season of 1554-55. The promised uprisings against Mary had come to nothing. Backed by his father Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, Philip was - if not yet officially, no doubt soon to be - King of England, which was now once more, by official fiat, a Catholic nation. The international repercussions were almost as disturbing. Scotland was still tightly controlled by the catholics under Mary of Guise (mother of Mary Queen of Scots), while the advent of Philip was certain to turn the French, always a menace, into an active encroacher (Prescott 337). So fearful of a future under Spanish rule were the Mayor and aldermen of Plymouth, that they begged the French ambassador for French protection (286-7). Most worrisome of all to Cecil and his friends may have been the danger from within their own ranks from the hotheads, the English Robespierres, whose rash actions could easily have provoked an all out civil war (376-80). We can only imagine with what dread the protestant leadership faced the New Year.

It was at this time, December of 1554, that the former Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. John Taylor, died at Ankerwick , the home of his former student and old friend, Sir Thomas Smith, and also that, according to Smith's biographer, the four-year-old de Vere came to live with Smith (Dewar 77).

Sir Thomas Smith

That few today recognize the name Sir Thomas Smith,i(9) is one of those strange cruelties of Fate, since Smith was justly as famous in his own time, and for decades after, as any of the friends and colleagues whose names continue to ring loud in histories of the period. Among such as John Cheke, Roger Ascham, Sir William Cecil, Matthew Parker, Richard Eden, Gabriel Harvey, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Francis Walsingham, Smith's name ranked at or close to the top. That Smith was Queen Elizabeth's active and diligent Principal Secretary for four years from 1572 to 1576 is often overlooked by historians, whose interest focuses on Walsingham, who joined Smith as a second secretary in 1573, but whose secretaryship lasted so much longer (until 1590).

From humble beginnings as the second son of a poor Essex farmer, Smith's Cambridge career rocketed him to collegial stardom: King's scholar at thirteen, Fellow of Queens' College at nineteen, Greek orator at twenty, first Regius Chair in Civil Law at twenty-seven, Vice Chancellor of the University at thirty (Strype 9-10). And there was yet more to come: by thirty-four he was at Court, acting as personal Master of Requests to the Protector, the Duke of Somerset, and, shortly after, as Principal Secretary to the young king himself. But however fast he rose, Smith was to fall just as fast. With the overthrow of Somerset in 1549, Master Secretary Smith fell too. He would rise again later, but never so far (Dewar, Strype).

More unfair still has been his fate with regard to credit due him for his contributions to the intellectual achievements and statesmanship of his time. Until very recently, the majority of his works have been attributed to others, while those accomplishments he shared are still, in most works of history and biography, assigned to one of his colleagues. In book after book, Smith's name has been left out where it should have been included, even put foremost. i(10) It has been only gradually with the passage of centuries that his authorship of one after another of the seminal works of the period has been recognized, though still not by enough, and there are at least three other extremely important works that may someday be acknowledged either as all his or strongly influenced by him. i(11) When that happens, the name Sir Thomas Smith will finally rise to its proper place in the history of the English Reformation. Despite the humiliation Smith must have felt when in 1550 his former Cambridge student, William Cecil, succeeded him as the king's secretary, by 1555 he must have realized how losing his office had saved him from the trials that so many of his friends and former associates were about to suffer. For, surprisingly, despite his obvious commitment to the protestant regime, Smith was treated well by Mary. Although she was forced to remove him from his post at Eton, she compensated with a lavish (for the time) £100 annuity (Dewar 75-6).i(12) He would not be called again to important public service for nine long years. An ambitious, energetic and nervous man, Smith tried to put a good face on his rustication, writing later to Cecil that he had passed the time "with hunting and hawking and now and then looking on a book" (78).

Shortly before his fall from grace in 1549, Smith had acquired the former priory of Ankerwick, located on a bend in the Thames southeast of London, a stone's throw from Windsor Forest, Runnymede (where the Magna Carta was signed), and close enough to London that the steeple of St. Paul's was visible. While Smith was secretary to the King, Ankelwick was handy both to Windsor and to Westminster, and also afterwards while he was still active as Provost at Eton.

The priory was old and in disrepair, so now, with time on his hands, Smith set about having it dismantled and the stone used to create an up-to-date twenty-room manor house. His diary reports that work on Ankerwick began in 1550 and was finished in 1553 (Nichols 108,117 -18). Although the following year he would acquire a grander property in Essex known variously as Mount Hall or Hill Hall, which at some point became his primary residence, Ankerwick would remain in the Smith family for generations. Following his removal to Hill Hall in Essex, Smith passed Ankerwick on to his son George, but in all likelihood he continued to maintain rooms there for occasions in the 1570s when, as Elizabeth's Principal Secretary, he was needed at Court when it was at Windsor.

De Vere comes to Ankerwick

According to Dewar:

When John Taylor, Bishop of Lincoln, specially aroused

Mary's wrath and was evicted from his bishopric in March

of 1554, Smith offered him a home at Ankerwick where he

died in December. At the same time Edward de Vere, only

son of the Earl of Oxford, Mary's Great Chamberlain, was

placed in Smith's household. (77)

There is a pleasing symmetry to the image of Smith opening his door at the same time to both his old tutor, who had launched him on his own illustrious career at Cambridge,i(13) and the boy he would be tutoring himself for the next eight years - the one at the end of his life, the other just beginning. Nevertheless, we do not know exactly what Dewar means by "at the same time." The same week? The same month? Within the same twelve-month period? As for December 1554, although the letter she cites fails to support it, she is specific enough that we may consider it partial, if not definitive, evidence for the year at least, perhaps based on information in a letter or other document that she couldn't find when it came time to cite. (To her, Oxford's advent was an event of minor importance.)

From what we know, Taylor may have come to Smith at any point after March, but it is unlikely that de Vere would have arrived before July, when Smith married for the second time (his first wife having died the day Queen Mary rode into London). It seems unlikely that so young a boy would have been placed in a bachelor's household; though no longer in need of a nurse, a four-year-old would still require the attentions of a woman and her female entourage.

That de Vere did indeed live with Smith at Ankerwick and for a substantial period can be shown by the fact that, in his 1569 list of the rooms at Ankerwick, one on an upper floor is labeled "My Lorde's chambre" (Strype 170). Strype "supposes" that by "my Lord" Smith means the Duke of Somerset, but that's impossible since the building was not finished until 1553, by which time Somerset was dead. It could not be Cecil, since from 1555 Cecil kept his household not far from Ankerwick at his own manor house at Wimbledon, nor did Cecil become a "lord" until 1571. Other than these, we can't think of any lord other than de Vere who could possibly have required a room to himself in Smith's home. De Vere was a "lord" from birth, since he was born a Viscount (Badlesmere).

The fear factor

We need to keep in mind that little Edward de Vere, as the sole heir to one of the most ancient and prestigious names in English history and to an earldom that, though declining, was still of immense power and prestige, was a person of extreme importance to a community that extended far beyond his immediate family. Until the death of his father, his parents could conceivably have produced another son or two, but they did not, so until he was well into his twenties, his life was regarded by his overseers as too precious to risk in any situation that was potentially harmful to his health or well-being, a concern that would have been most intense during his vulnerable childhood years.

Considering the background conditions as described above, we feel that Mary Dewar's date for de Vere's placement with Smith, December 1554 or thereabouts, while not certain is still the most likely time for his removal from Essex, the primary reason being fear, fear of the regime and even more perhaps, fear of the kind of religious inquisition that did in fact begin to grip Essex early the following year. These fears that would have been at their peak during the holiday season following the portents of November. By the following September however, such fears would have eased. The Queen's obvious failure to get pregnant and her husband's return to Spain must have made it apparent that, no matter how many evangelical protestants she and her bishops dragged to the stake, the Catholic grasp on the nation was unlikely to outlast her reign.

Dewar suggests that it was the boy's uncle, the translator Arthur Golding, who arranged for him to be placed with Smith, as the two were friends and fellow Cambridge scholars. Certainly young Golding may have been involved, but for a number of reasons it's more likely that the change was engineered by William Cecil. First, he was a far more intimate and long time friend of Smith's than was Golding. Second, Cecil was uniquely positioned to know what the Catholic regime was intending. Though not an official delegate, he was among the group that had traveled to Brussels in November to bring the Papal legate, Cardinal William de la Pole, back to England. The highest ranking official in the English Church and a member of one of England's most ancient and prestigious families, De la Pole was the most influential of Mary's English advisors. The fact that Cecil then continued to act as a sort of unofficial secretary to the Cardinal during his first weeks in England and that he managed to maintain a personal friendship with him until the Cardinal's death in 1558 (Read 103-4) tells us a great deal about the future Lord Treasurer's political genius. This proximity to the English official most closely involved in the regime's plans for eradicating heresy made him the point man on just what sort of troubles were in store for the protestant community. Third, throughout his long career Cecil was always intensely concerned that the coming generation of peers be raised as protestants. We can be certain that he was not about to leave the education of this particular young lord up to fate or the whims of his unstable father. Finally, Cecil would have been in the best position to bring the Goldings, who had every reason to mistrust the earl, into agreement with Earl John. That Cecil himself tended not to trust the earl is suggested by a letter to him from Smith praising the earl in a somewhat defensive tone (Nelson 28).

Furthermore, despite Earl John's quick reversal of allegiance and the fact that Mary returned to him the office of Lord Great Chamberlain (Debrett 249) and put him on her Privy Council, the Marian regime would have been well aware of the earl's connection to the protestant reform movement through his Golding and Darcy in-laws as well as his earlier support of the militant reformer John Bale, whose scurrilous pamphlet against the Catholic bishops was being widely distributed that winter (Prescott 378), to their great consternation.

Of greatest concern, however, would have been the fact that the coast of East Anglia is provided with a number of small ports where narrow winding rivers, draped in shrubbery, connect with the sea, making it easy for small vessels to hide, then slip across the Channel to protestant safety, or conversely, for the notorious Dutch pirates-later termed the Sea Beggars-to lurk, then pounce upon English ships. Normally the earl could be relied on to defend the coast for his monarch, but would he do so for Mary and Philip of Spain? Despite his weaknesses, Earl John had a large following in Essex and Suffolk. Which way would he jump? And what measures would Mary's councilors take to insure that he jumped the way they wanted?

With the government gearing up for extreme measures against protestant leaders, and with the radical reformers, many of them located in Essex, thirsting for a showdown, those who were most concerned with the safety of the only son and heir to the great Oxford earldom would be eager to see him placed as far as could be from political hot spots and as soon as possible.

Was four too young?

At four-and-a-half, de Vere was young, but not too young. The two major considerations as to when to place a child outside the home were: was his need for a nurse at an end and was his prospective tutor set up to take care of so young a child? (Emotional needs of mother and child would not become a serious consideration until the nineteenth century.) Aristocrats had long been accustomed to splitting up their families, living and traveling separately so that, should something happen to one member, others would remain alive to continue the line. In addition, it was, as it had been for centuries, the tradition to send well-born children out to board, study, and learn the niceties of noble life with relatives, friends or tutors. Most children weren't sent out until seven or eight, but where such evidence exists, it shows that they were sometimes boarded out as young as three or even two (MacFarlane 243).

Nor was four considered by the Reformation pedagogues of Smith's generation to be too young for a "toward" child to begin his studies of Latin and even Greek. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Book of the Governour (1531) stated the current thinking:

Some old authors hold opinion that, before the age of seven years, a child should not be instructed in letters, but those writers were either Greeks or Latins, among whom all doc- trine and sciences were in their maternal tongues, by reason whereof they saved all that long time which at this day is spent in understanding perfectly the Greek or Latin. Wherefore it requireth now a longer time to the understanding of both. Therefore that infelicity of our time and country conpelleth us to encroach somewhat upon the years of children, and especially of noblemen, that they may sooner attain to wisdom and gravity than private persons. … (Wikipedia)

This then should be our view of Oxford's childhood (always keeping in mind that we need more facts). Having been placed with a wet nurse immediately after birth, one who resided on or near the estate, as trouble began to escalate throughout 1554, those concerned for his safety would have begun to consider where best to place him. With the announcement of Mary's decision to marry the King of Spain, followed by Philip's arrival in July with a contingent of arrogant Spaniards, and finally, most ominously, the reinstatement by Parliament of all the old laws against heresy including the penalty of death by burning, they may have felt that it would be dangerous to wait any longer to place the boy somewhere safe, sufficiently far from Essex and its hotbeds of Protestantism, and as soon as possible. And indeed it was not long before Essex became one of the major locations for the burnings, while, the following year Earl John came under suspicion by the regime of involvement in another conspiracy to unseat Mary (Debrett 249 fn a). That someone of Smith's stature was available just at this time must have seemed most fortunate to those concerned with de Vere's welfare. Smith's impeccable teaching credentials, his mastery of the Law, of Latin and Greek, of protestant theology, and in fact, of most of the subjects that were deemed appropriate for a noble child to study, would have been on a par with his reputation for loyalty and uprightness of dealing. Most important at the moment perhaps was the fact that he was located far from any of the current hot spots and close to Windsor Castle, the most heavily fortified of all the royal palaces and therefore the most safe. Equally important was that, unlike so many of the protestant leaders, Smith was on the good side of the Marian regime.

What Smith felt about it we will never know. To him it may have seemed an "offer he couldn't refuse," at least at first. But if de Vere was the young Shakespeare, and had the kind of eager and absorbent mind that Shakespeare must have had as a boy to have learned as much as he did, he couldn't have found a better, and undoubtedly, more willing tutor. As Strype remarked, "For Sir Thomas was glad to be thus employed, to contribute to the generous education of all noble youth for the good of the commonwealth .... " (20).