This biography of Robert de Vere (1362–1392) shows the value of reading administrative sources against the well-known and highly partisan chronicle accounts of Richard II's reign. The records allow James Ross to argue for de Vere as having every right to both the king's favor and a leading place in the royal household, and thus not being a royal favorite in the strictest sense. At the same time, Ross argues that de Vere became distrusted enough in the febrile politics of the 1380s to tip over into being seen as one and to become a political target, leading to his exile in 1388. For Ross, de Vere was very much in line with the norms and expectations of a late medieval earl, whose military and administrative career showed real potential promise, until they did not. His political missteps and closeness to an unpopular king laid him open to criticism and political downfall.
The book has six chapters, with two thematic chapters framing the four chronological ones. Ross starts with a discussion of the conceptual slipperiness of what a medieval royal favorite was and whether the term can be said to express more than simple political opposition. His answer is yes, based on the examples of those such as Piers Gaveston who received clearly outsized rewards from the king. Ross then breaks the thirty years of de Vere's life into four chronological chapters: family background (to 1381), his court career (1381–5), the duchy of Ireland (1385–7), and finally his downfall, exile and death (1386–92). He then returns to a thematic final chapter on affinity and regional influence before the conclusion. This structure illustrates the central methodological tension of this book. It navigates between the two poles of how Anglophone historians have approached the later middle ages: the more structural approach advocated by Edward Powell as opposed to the networks of affinity and personal relationships in the localities that Bruce MacFarlane and his followers have studied. Ross begins with a structural discussion of how and why contemporaries identified and vilified those men (and a few women such as Alice Perrers) who were attacked as royal favorites. He ends with a chapter assessing de Vere's involvement with his landholding heartlands in Essex and his political connections at court. Because so little direct evidence for de Vere's personal choices survive, much of the book examines the structures within which he and his contemporaries worked, but always with an eye to personal networks, both familial and political, which Ross sees as the crucial elements in late medieval political life.
The chapters on de Vere's career in England and his exile in the Low Countries marshal details from chronicles alongside the administrative records Ross has extensively surveyed to reassess the narratives of political events at court and to reconsider the relationships between Richard II and those closest to him. Ross argues that de Vere was at court as a boy, just five years older than the young king. He suggests that he was with the king at pivotal moments due to a long-standing friendship. De Vere's uncle Aubrey and his first mother-in-law Isabella de Coucy in particular emerge as intriguing figures who may have smoothed his path into the world of the royal court. As a biography, it is an impressive achievement in reconstruction and analysis from a wide range of records.
The most thought-provoking chapter is chapter four on the dukedom of Ireland. It offers a wholesale reconsideration of Ricardian policy on the island, which has been of enormous interest to Irish historians over the last century, through the lens of English politics. Ross sees this grant as a serious attempt to reassert English claims to the entirety of the island, backed by substantial military resources from England, which might have succeeded in revitalizing the lordship, despite de Vere's personal absence. The grant of Ireland as a dukedom was clearly highly exceptional and parachuted de Vere and his subordinates such as Sir John Stanley into the very complex world of the late medieval English colony and its relationships with the Gaelic Irish polities. Unfortunately, Ross is sometimes muddled in dealing with these complexities, such as describing Art MacMurrough as “self-proclaimed king of Leinster,” when he had been crowned by Irish custom (143).
De Vere had never operated politically in the dominions of the English kings before he was given the rule of Ireland. He had served in military expeditions to France and Scotland, but not taken part in administration nor held lands there, in Wales or Ireland. He did not have the experience of transnational lordship in the pattern of the Mortimer earls of March and Ulster. De Vere had “all the ingredients necessary for the successful career of a late medieval earl,” but was very much an English rather than a transnational one (70). The power vacuum in Ireland in the 1380s due to the minority of Roger Mortimer, fourth earl of March (1374–98), might well have allowed de Vere to create his own affinity and power base from his delegated role, but that was not necessarily a given. Robin Frame in his Plantagenet Ireland (2022) argued that Richard II was a destabilizing force on Irish politics during his own 1390s expeditions. De Vere's presence on the island as a newcomer to the workings of transnational lordship might well have similarly broken open old disputes for good or for ill. Ross's own discussion, in chapter six, of de Vere's weaknesses in his heartlands of Essex and his focus on the court over local connections would suggest caution in an Irish context as well.
It is very welcome to have a corrective to the dismissive accounts of Robert de Vere as a foppish courtier in the contemporary chronicles, alongside a careful study of the administrative documents to show how he fitted into and then overstepped magnate norms in England. This book is ultimately a very generous rehabilitation of a central and misunderstood figure at Richard II's court who was hated by Walsingham and other contemporary chroniclers.
