Vere, Horace [Horatio], Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565–1635), army officer

Vere, Horace [Horatio], Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565–1635), army officer, was the youngest of four sons of Geoffrey Vere (c.1525–1572?) of Crepping Hall, Wakes Colne, Essex, and his wife, Elizabeth (d. 1615), daughter of Richard Harkyns (or Hardekyn) of Colchester. Geoffrey was the fourth son of John de Vere, fifteenth earl of Oxford [see under Vere, John de, sixteenth earl of Oxford], so Horace was close kin of the premier earl of England, a title to which for a time he would even be heir presumptive. Most contemporary English sources (and all modern historians) give his name as Horace, but some English and all Dutch memoirs and manuscripts of the period give Horatio. His elder brother Sir Francis Vere was also a celebrated military commander.

Early career

Little is known of Horace Vere's early life. He and his elder brothers Robert and Francis were trained as boys in the military arts by William Browne (later knighted) and by the early 1580s Francis was fighting for the protestant cause in the Netherlands. He continued in service there after England joined the Dutch in war against Spain in 1585, and in February 1589 he was joined by Robert. In the following year Robert visited their widowed mother and returned with the youngest brother, now aged twenty-five (leaving Elizabeth Vere in the care of the eldest brother, John). What Horace had done up to this point is unknown.

In 1591, despite his inexperience, Vere was appointed lieutenant of his brother Francis's own company of foot. By June 1594, after the English troops had suffered heavy casualties, including at least three captains, while besieging Groningen, Sir Francis wrote to Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's chief minister, that ‘My youngest brother for his experiences and trial made of his sufficiency shows himself very capable of the charge’ (Markham, 194). Horace was duly promoted captain. Evidently he distinguished himself in this capacity, for in 1596 he was made lieutenant-colonel of Sir John Wingfield's regiment of foot in the army sent to attack Cadiz under the command of the earl of Essex. When Wingfield was slain in battle Horace took command of the 750-strong regiment and was knighted by Essex for his good service.

On his return Vere passed from Elizabeth's employ into the Dutch army. To supplement the forces in the queen's pay the states general of the United Provinces had commissioned Sir Francis in 1594 to raise an extra regiment of English troops as mercenaries. Late in 1596 Sir ‘Oratius’ became the senior captain of the regiment (TNA: PRO, SP 84/54, fol. 107r). He spent the rest of his career in the service of the Dutch republic. This did not exclude also serving his sovereign but his primary paymaster henceforth would always be the United Provinces.

In 1599 all the English troops in the Netherlands, save for the garrisons of the ‘cautionary towns’ of Flushing and Brill, were transferred into Dutch pay. Sir Horace Vere distinguished himself in the bitter fighting around Bommel, in which a Spanish offensive was blunted and then driven back. In the celebrated battle of Nieuwpoort (2 July 1600), in which the English troops played a major part, Horace distinguished himself. He gathered six companies of English troops, with which he saved the Dutch artillery (which played an important part in the victory) before launching a charge that helped break up the Spanish momentum, allowing Sir Francis Vere and Prince Maurice, captain-general of the United Provinces, to launch a general counter-attack and sweep the Spanish to defeat. Sir Francis's narrative of the battle in his military memoirs does not do justice to his brother's role (‘The Commentaries’, 158–65). Sir John Ogle, a loyal lieutenant to both, implies that Sir Francis gave an imperfect account of Nieuwpoort because he could not be aware of all that had gone on, being caught up in the action. Surely, however, by the time Sir Francis wrote his memoir, he must have had an idea of what his own brother, at least, had done. He preferred to emphasize his own part in this famous battle at the expense not only of Sir Edward Cecil (another English officer with whom he had quarrelled bitterly by the time of writing), but even of his brother. A better idea of Horace's role can be gained from the Dutch chronicler Orlers (Orlers, 1610, edn, 157).

The famous victory at Nieuwpoort was followed by the equally famous siege of Ostend. Vere alarmed Elizabeth in September 1600 when he wrote to her, warning of the city's vulnerability, and she ensured that its garrison was reinforced, mostly by English soldiers, before the siege commenced in July 1601. Eventually it lasted more than three years and the city became known as ‘the New Troy’ in consequence. The defence was originally commanded by Sir Francis Vere, ably seconded by his brother. In the massive Spanish assault of 7 January 1602 Sir Horace had charge of ‘12 weak companies’ holding the vitally important post known as Sand Hill; it was here that the brunt of the Spanish assault would fall and Sir Horace was ‘hurt in the leg, with a splinter’, a potentially serious wound which he and his leg survived intact (‘The Commentaries’, 176, 183). In March 1602 both Veres were rotated out of Ostend with many of their troops and given a chance to rest. Sir Horace was given his elder brother's dispatches to carry to the new king, James VI and I, in April 1603.

In his prime

James promptly made peace with Spain. He maintained English control over the cautionary towns and still permitted the Dutch republic to recruit English, Welsh, and Scottish troops, but England was no longer an ally of the United Provinces. This undermined Sir Francis Vere's position and he was obliged to resign his post as generaal der infanterie in 1604. At first no one replaced him. Sir Edward Cecil, grandson of Lord Burghley and nephew of the secretary of state, Sir Robert Cecil (later earl of Salisbury), was impatient with Sir Francis's supremacy and had already intrigued against his general. Consequently, initially the four English colonels, Henry Sutton, Cecil, Ogle, and Sir Horace, each answered only to the captain-general (Maurice) and the council of state. It was only after more than a year, during which Ogle could observe that ‘Sir Horace Vere presses hard’, that, on 3 May 1605, Horace was appointed Generael over alle d'Engelsche compaignien (Salisbury MSS, 17.156). His authority, even then, was more limited than his brother's: he would only ‘superintend’ the other colonels in the field, rather than having any administrative jurisdiction; this limitation on his authority was largely due to Cecil's refusal to be commanded by Vere (De L'Isle and Dudley MSS, 3.153–4; Salisbury MSS, 17.156–7).

However, Sir Horace Vere showed himself to be at least his brother's equal. In autumn 1604 he was commended by the states general for his distinguished conduct in the successful siege of Sluys. A year later he saved Maurice and the Dutch army at the battle of Mulheim (9 October 1605). The Dutch cavalry were commanded by Maurice's younger brother and heir, Prince Frederick Henry of Nassau, who had served with Vere at Sluys. Unfortunately his force was routed, throwing the entire states' army into danger. A retreat was necessary but there was ‘every prospect of the movement being converted into a complete rout’ (Markham, 376), unless time could be gained for Maurice to rally his troops. Vere now conceived and executed a bold plan, crossing the Ruhr with picked English companies and holding the passage of the river until Maurice had rallied the army, which then withdrew in good order. The Spanish general, the celebrated Spínola, ‘declared that Sir Horace Vere had saved the army of the States’ (ibid., 377).

As he defied the Spanish at the river crossing Vere must have truly seemed a latterday Horatius to the hard-pressed Nassau brothers. In the following year his primacy in the field went beyond mere ‘superintendence’. Each English colonel kept control of ‘the disposing of the business of his owne regiment’ (that is, of internal administration), but henceforth were obliged to ‘receive their directions’ (that is, in military operations) from Sir Horace (De L'Isle and Dudley MSS, 3.283–4).

Vere exercised his new powers in the field only during 1607, for 1608 was taken up largely by the negotiations which resulted in 1609 in the beginning of the Twelve Years' Truce between Spain and the Dutch republic. Following the campaign season of 1607 he returned to England in October for a double celebration: his brother, aged forty-seven, married a woman thirty years younger than himself; in November 1607 Sir Horace, at forty-two, wed Lady Mary Hoby (1581–1671) [see Vere, Mary], aged twenty-six. The two had met the previous year when Horace was visiting home. The daughter of Sir John Tracy of Tuddington, Mary was the widow of William Hoby and had two small children. It was thus a convenient match for Mary, but Horace seems genuinely to have been in love. She followed him to the Netherlands (though not until July 1608) and in later life both clearly had great affection for each other. John Chamberlain's description of Sir Horace and his lady taking him sightseeing in the Netherlands in October 1608 is but one example of their ease in each other's company.

The Twelve Years' Truce and relations with the Dutch

In 1609 Sir Francis Vere died. He had still been governor of Brill, a very desirable post which was promptly sought by Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, and by Sir Edward Cecil, whose father, the earl of Exeter, wrote to his brother and Edward's uncle, the earl of Salisbury. However, though this was not a Dutch office, Prince Maurice recommended Sir Horace Vere and did so strongly enough to ensure that he was duly appointed successor to his brother. Vere held the office until 1616, when the English government finally returned the cautionary towns of Brill and Flushing to Dutch control. He was granted an annual pension of £800 in lieu of the office's pay and perquisites, but in any case it did not affect his standing in the republic, which by this time was secure.

Vere was on close terms with both Maurice and Frederick Henry of Nassau. His cordial relations with the former are particularly notable as personal differences between the prince and Sir Francis had been a major factor in the latter's enforced resignation. However, the younger Vere blamed Sir Edward Cecil for his brother's fate, rather than Maurice. Both Cecil and Sir Horace were colonels at the time; both rose to become generals in the Dutch service and were ennobled at home. However, they were at odds for many years, each seeking appointments at the other's expense and each endeavouring to prefer their own clients to commands over the other's. Despite Cecil's exalted connections in England Vere had the better of the rivalry, at least in the United Provinces. From 1610 he established himself in the affinity of Henry, prince of Wales, but his success was primarily due to his connection to the Nassaus. From at least 1606 Vere received preferential rates of pay and his clients generally had the best of the competition with Cecil's: one of them, Sir Edward Harwood, was even made a gentleman of Maurice's privy chamber. Moreover not only was Vere appointed governor of Brill in 1610, but he was preferred to the governorship of Utrecht in July 1618. This appointment came at the expense of Sir John Ogle who, during the Arminian troubles, sided with the opponents of Maurice. His replacement by Vere was thus doubly a gesture of trust.

No doubt it owed much to Vere's actions at Mulheim, but it must also have been due to a personal relationship between the two men. When, in 1610, Maurice decided at the last minute to accompany the army which besieged Jülich, Vere reported how ‘his Excellencie hath desyred me to wayte uppon him which I wold not refewse’ (Trim, 349). Clearly they got on well.

Nevertheless Sir Horace carried less authority than had Sir Francis. The withdrawal of England from war against Spain in 1604 followed five years later by an armistice between Spain and the United Provinces naturally made the English troops in Dutch service less significant and this made it easier for their employers to reduce them to the same obedience to the republic as all its other soldiers. Vere himself reflected on the ‘lymitations [with which] I … exersyse that command I have under the States’, observing that the best way for an English or Welsh soldier to advance his career was to be ‘knowen to the princypall persons that govern here’ (Trim, 351). Indeed, his own successful career demonstrated this point.

The fullness of fame

In 1620 the Palatinate, whose elector Frederick V's wife was Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James VI and I, faced invasion by Spanish troops, after Frederick's intervention in Bohemia. In May 1620 James finally responded to the appeals of his own subjects to intervene on his protestant son-in-law's behalf by permitting Count Dohna, the palatine envoy, to raise troops in England (but at his own expense). Consequently Dohna also chose the expedition's general. Sir Edward Cecil wanted the post and obtained the backing of the king's favourite, the duke of Buckingham. However, though Vere had not sought the command, Dohna chose him, much to Cecil's anger. Buckingham withdrew his support for the expedition, but such was the feeling for the protestant cause among the English gentry and nobility, and such was Vere's reputation, that there was no shortage of volunteers, including many from distinguished families: two of his captains were Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex, and Horace's own kinsman Henry de Vere, eighteenth earl of Oxford (whose impoverished inheritance had been relieved only by a generous legacy from Sir Francis Vere). However, owing to Dohna's financial difficulties, it was not until 22 July that Vere and a force of 2200 volunteers sailed for the Netherlands. The following month Spínola's, Spanish army invaded the Palatinate.

Vere's force was reinforced in the Netherlands by men from the English regiments in Dutch pay and was accompanied into the Palatinate by a Dutch cavalry force under Frederick Henry. Vere outmanoeuvred Spínola and was able to effect a union with the army of the German protestant Evangelical Union, Frederick V's allies. That winter, however, the elector was utterly defeated at the battle of the White Mountain and, together with his ‘winter queen’, fled to his Nassau cousins in The Hague. In April 1621 the princes of the Evangelical Union broke up their army, agreeing to leave the Palatinate and the English army defending it to their fates. Vere carefully disposed the forces under his command to hold Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Frankenthal, key fortresses in the Lower Palatinate. Frankenthal was besieged in 1621, but was gallantly defended until Vere relieved the siege.

However, that year the imperialist general Tilly completed the conquest of the Upper Palatinate, while Vere's troops were ill-paid and suffering from disease. Early in 1622 James sent £30,000 to help his son-in-law, but much of it was diverted to Ernst, Count Mansfeld. The latter had been Frederick's general in Bohemia and the elector joined his army for an offensive that began in April 1622. Frederick actually reached Mannheim, where Vere was in command, but Tilly twice defeated Mansfeld's army and by June Frederick had retreated to the Netherlands once more. By late summer an overwhelming imperialist and Spanish army had assembled and the writing was on the wall. Heidelberg was stormed on 16 September 1622. Two weeks later Vere was obliged to surrender Mannheim, but he was granted the honours of war and took his surviving troops back to the Netherlands. He then returned to England.

Vere received an enthusiastic welcome. He was celebrated in verse by the dramatist and translator of Homer, George Chapman (‘Pro Vero autumni lachrymae’, 1622); Ben Jonson declared his deeds ‘fit to be Sung by a Horace’, hymning his ‘fame … wonne/In th'eye of Europe, where thy deedes were done’ (Epigrammes, 91); later, Thomas May dedicated book seven of his translation of Lucan, which deals with the battle of Pharsalia, to Vere, whose military prowess made him seem comparable to Caesar. Meanwhile on 16 February 1623 he was appointed muster-master-general of the ordnance for life.

All this was appropriate recognition. Given Vere's lack of support it was remarkable that he had held back the Catholic tide so long. To hold virtually all the Lower Palatinate against Spanish attacks in 1621 was an impressive feat and had Vere been given greater resources things might have turned out differently.

Back in the Netherlands Maurice was in constantly poor health and the republic was militarily on the back foot. Vere quickly returned to the Netherlands and to active service. Breda, seat of the Nassau family, was closely besieged and in 1624–5 Vere was involved in the operations to relieve the siege. Hampered by Maurice's death on 23 April 1625, these failed; the city capitulated to Spínola.

It was a dark moment for the Dutch republic and made the worse for Vere since his young cousin, the earl of Oxford, died of wounds sustained at Breda. However, Sir Horace had distinguished himself in the fighting, carrying out another fighting withdrawal: the most difficult operation in warfare. He received further honours at home. In 1624 he was made a member of the council of war; Cecil and Ogle were also appointed, but neither were any longer in Dutch service—it was a signal honour for one who was a general in foreign pay. On 24 July 1625 Sir Horace was created Baron Vere of Tilbury (the title came from his estate in north-east Essex rather than from the Thames-side fort): appropriately the supporters granted to his arms carried shields, one with the arms of the Netherlands, the other with the arms of Zeeland. He and his wife bought an estate at Clapton, near Hackney, where, aged sixty, he may have hoped to retire with his five daughters.

Last years

Frederick Henry, who on Maurice's death had succeeded him as stadholder and captain-general, wanted his old comrade in arms in service again and Vere would not refuse the call. Vere was on the republic's council of war which, in 1628, decided to begin a counter-offensive by campaigning against the great fortress city of 's-Hertogenbosch. In 1629 Vere commanded a large English contingent in the prince of Orange's army. It included, among a host of noble officers and gentlemen volunteers, Robert de Vere, nineteenth earl of Oxford; Vere's son-in-law, John Holles, Lord Haughton; Thomas Fairfax (whose grandfather, Thomas, first Lord Fairfax, had fought with Vere in the 1590s, whose great-uncle Sir Charles had been killed at Ostend, and two of whose uncles had been killed in the Palatinate); and lords Doncaster, Fielding, and Craven. It was a long siege—Vere was rumoured to have been killed in June; a kinsman, Sir Edward Vere, was killed in August. Yet in September the city fell: the greatest Spanish defeat since the Armada.

Vere was able to spend more of his time in England during the following two years, though he was in the Netherlands in the summers (the campaign season). In 1632 another major offensive was launched, this time against Maastricht. Vere was commander of the English brigade, and on this occasion Frederick Henry went so far as to give him the power to confer knighthood. In this siege Vere's nephew Sir Simon Harcourt was badly wounded, while two English colonels were mortally wounded, both close to Vere: Sir Edward Harwood and the earl of Oxford. However, even though an imperialist army was sent to bolster Spanish attempts to relieve the siege, the sacrifices of Vere's kin and loyal followers were not in vain. Maastricht surrendered in August, leaving Spanish power in disarray.

Vere now entered virtual retirement. His only military duties were connected with the business of the ordnance office and he enjoyed the company of his family. By this time his three elder daughters had all been married. In 1626 Elizabeth had married John Holles, who later succeeded as second earl of Clare; and in 1627 Mary had married Sir Roger Townshend; on his death in 1638 she married Mildmay Fane, second earl of Westmorland. (Both daughters had been born in the Netherlands and had been the beneficiaries of a parliamentary act of naturalization in 1624.) In 1634 Catherine married Oliver St John, the eldest son of Sir John St John, first baronet, of Lydiard Tregoze, Wiltshire; after his death she married John Poulett, son and heir of John, Lord Poulett of Hinton St George. In 1635 Vere's fourth daughter, Anne [see Fairfax, Anne], was betrothed to Thomas Fairfax.

Family matters, therefore, were well in hand when on 2 May 1635 Vere went to dine at Whitehall with his friend Sir Henry Vane, ambassador to The Hague, then on a trip home. Sir Horace, in his seventieth year, had a stroke and died within two hours. He was buried with great pomp on 8 May 1635 in Westminster Abbey, by the side of his brother Sir Francis, where both still lie.

Sir Horace Vere's will, dated 10 November 1634, was proved on 6 May 1635. It makes no mention of his daughters, but he had made a number of conveyances of his property the previous year and he left his remaining lands to Mary, ‘my most loving wife’, evidently trusting her to make appropriate dispositions for their children (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/168, fol. 7v). In 1637 Thomas Fairfax married Anne Vere; later, the Veres' youngest daughter, Dorothy, married John Wolstenholme of Stanmore, Middlesex. Mary Vere, Lady Vere of Tilbury, lived to be ninety, serving for a time as parliamentarian governor of Charles I's children Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester.

Character and religious views

The Veres have been classified among ‘the well-known Puritan families’ of pre-civil war England (Heal and Holmes, 366). Sir Horace himself was a patron and protector of puritan ministers: from 1611 to 1619 the puritan minister William Ames was in Vere's personal service, and in 1620 he was chaplain of Sir Horace's regiment in Dutch pay. (Later, Sir Edward Harwood, Vere's client, helped get Ames a university appointment.) Vere appointed as chaplain of his regiment for palatine service the puritan minister Dr John Burgess.

Mary, Lady Vere's religious views were regarded by some contemporaries as ‘of a Dutch complexion’ (DNB) and it was to this she owed parliament's favour after the civil wars. It was probably the case that Horace married her because her views agreed with his own, rather than that she picked presbyterianism up in the Netherlands. In 1608, in his absence, she made a donation to Sir Thomas Bodley's Calvinist intellectual project at Oxford University. His wife's strong views; his own family background; his friendship with the princes of Orange (known as defenders of the Reformed church in the Netherlands); his appointment as governor of Utrecht in place of Sir John Ogle, tainted with Arminian sympathies; and his own patronage of ‘godly’ ministers exiled from England—all make it clear that Sir Horace was certainly a puritan and probably a presbyterian.

That Vere could live happily in England under Charles I, despite his firm views in favour of military intervention on the continent, and his almost certain puritan sympathies, was probably partly due to an instinctive allegiance to his king, which a close personal tie to the princely house of Orange must have reinforced. However, in addition Horace Vere quite simply got on with people. For example, even after Sir Francis fell out with Sir Robert Sidney, Horace and Sidney remained friends. Contemporaries also remarked on the steady nature of Sir Horace's temperament, though this was heightened by the contrast with his more choleric brother. A near-contemporary writer recorded that ‘it was true of him what is said of the Caspian Sea, that it doth never ebb nor flow, observing a constant tenor neither elated or depressed with success’ (Fuller, Worthies, 1.514). Ben Jonson praised Vere for his

Humanitie, and pietie, which are
 

As noble in great chiefes, as they are rare.
 

And best become the valiant man to weare,
 

Who more should seeke mens reverence, then feare.
 

(Epigrammes, 91)

Horace Vere's friendship with the notoriously prickly Maurice of Nassau, and his ability to stay on good terms with almost all the English officers in the Netherlands (notable as a group for their hot-headed quarrelsomeness), along with the praise he garnered from his opponents all point to his essential likeableness.

Historical significance

Most early modern English military commanders before the duke of Marlborough (other than Oliver Cromwell) have been largely ignored, but this is truer of Horace Vere than most. He is rarely the subject of even short essays in specialist periodicals; he has less than a third of C. R. Markham's putative double biography of the Vere brothers; and in general works of military history or biography it is Francis who attracts attention, with Horace often not even mentioned. This reflects that Francis, the elder, came first, that he commanded in a period of greater success for his employers, and that he was a gifted self-publicist. However, the younger brother was certainly as able a soldier and arguably more influential in the long term.

English troops commanded by Sir Francis Vere played a crucial part in the operations of the 1590s by which the future of the Dutch republic was secured, but the success of the great Dutch counter-offensive of that decade was really due to Maurice of Nassau and a group of highly proficient and professional officers of whom Sir Francis Vere, while a leading light, was only one. From about 1610 the senior officers serving the Nassaus, while still efficient, were mostly of a lesser calibre. Sir Francis Vere's record is thus partly made to look good by those around him, while the opposite is true of Sir Horace. In addition, he, unlike his brother, commanded an army in his own right. Francis commended himself to posterity by his apparently frank memoirs, which in fact serve to enhance the author's reputation at every point. Horace was a quieter, more modest man: Thomas Fuller observed that while he had ‘as much valour’ he had ‘more meekness’ than his elder brother (Fuller, Worthies, 1.514). Francis helped win the day at Nieuwpoort and ensured that everybody knew it; Horace saved the day at Mulheim, but did not boast of the fact.

Moreover, Sir Horace Vere recognized that in the long term the English troops in Dutch employ could not be maintained as a separate force and, by keeping on good terms with first Maurice and then Frederick Henry, he ensured that a steady flow of Englishmen crossed the narrow seas and fought with the Dutch. England's insular inhabitants thus had an opportunity for valuable military experience, despite the long peace between 1604 and 1639; but they also had an escape valve for the stress resulting from their sovereign's refusal to intervene in the Thirty Years' War. Revisionist historians have not recognized that any unity in the English body politic in the 1620s and 1630s existed partly because many of those who were discontent with the Stuarts' religious and foreign policies had an opportunity to vent their frustrations.

Indeed, as contemporaries recognized, Sir Horace Vere's army was a ‘Nurcery of Souldierie’ (Hexham, ‘epistle dedicatory’). Sir Horace was the teacher and patron of a whole generation of soldiers. In the 1640s they comprised a high proportion of both the cavalier and roundhead officer corps. Generals who had served under Sir Horace included the earl of Essex, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Philip Skippon, Sir William Waller, Philip, Lord Wharton, Sir Jacob Astley, Sir Nicholas Byron, Sir Thomas Glemham, and Sir Ralph Hopton; but Vere's veterans could be found at all levels of the royalist and parliamentarian armies. Many former protégés of the even-tempered Sir Horace were moderate in their conduct of what Waller, writing to Hopton, famously termed a ‘war without an enemy’. George Monck, who brought about the restoration of Charles II, was one of Vere's particular protégés. Monck's decision to renew legitimate monarchy, rather than become a military dictator, was doubtless the result of his own character; but this had been moulded by Vere's influence at an early stage.

By his tactical astuteness, leadership, courtesy, courage, and magnanimity, and his influence on his contemporaries, Vere was a figure of genuine significance in seventeenth-century English and European history. He deserves to be more than just a footnote in history—and to be remembered in his own right, not just as an addendum to his brother.

D. J. B. TRIM