I thought I would take a moment to alert readers to this highly intriguing proposition being developed by noted Oxfordian researcher Nina Green that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, just might have been the author of a 1593 tract titled A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crown of Ingland. This book is traditionally attributed to Robert Parsons but Nina Green has raised many legitimate questions about that attribution and has begun to build a very compelling case that the author of A Conference was writing in England, not abroad on the continent. I won’t attempt to summarize the case for Oxford’s authorship here. Please see the summary below written by Nina Green and check out her Oxxford-Shakespeare website for more detailed information about this very interesting topic. Here’s a link to this section on Nina’s website followed by a summary that’s well worth reading. Best wishes, Matthew
From Nina Green’s Discussion of A Conference About the Next Succession:
http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Leicester/Conference_About_Succession.pdf
When taken as a whole, the attributes of the author of A Conference — his complex sentence structure, clear expository style, and word coinages; his extensive legal knowledge; his encyclopaedic knowledge of history; his travels in Italy and Flanders; his intimate familiarity with the genealogy and history of members of the nobility; his adoption of the perspective of the nobility in A Conference, including his outrage at the ‘massacring’ of the nobility (among them an Earl of Oxford) by English kings, and, in contrast, his frequent references to the ‘vulgar people’ and the ‘vulgar sort of men’; his fluency in classical and foreign languages; his quotation of Ovid (nitimur in vetitum semper); his fascination with and knowledge of all things political, including taxes and impositions; his reference to the Magna Carta barons (among whom was Oxford’s ancestor, the 3rd Earl of Oxford); his knowledge of details of the accession of Queen Mary, which was supported by Oxford’s father, the 16th Earl; his allusion to the Sicilian Vespers, which Oxford also alluded to in a 1572 letter to his father-in-law, Lord Burghley; his comment on Lord Burghley’s preference for Arbella Stuart as successor to the Queen; his mention of the restoration in blood of the Earl of Arundel, son of Oxford’s first cousin, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk — suggest that the author was Edward de Vere (1550-1604), 17th Earl of Oxford. Although evidence is found throughout A Conference, three particular points in Chapter VIII indicate Oxford’s authorship: the author’s fluency in languages other than English, his personal attitude to Don Antonio, and his use of the rare word ‘interessed’. Oxford was fluent in several languages, including Latin and Italian; he was appointed by the Queen to accompany Don Antonio when he left England (see Nelson, Alan, Monstrous Adversary, (Liverpool University Press, 2003), p. 274); and he used the rare word ‘interessed’. According to the OED, ‘interessed’ was first used in 1587 in Holinshed’s Chronicles; its second use was in A Conference. Oxford then used this rare word in a letter to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Cecil, on 22 November 1601, making his usage of it only the third recorded usage: . . . . whereby shall ensue no prejudice unto any of the pretenders which suggest to be interessed in any of the said lands in regard that, if the Queen have no title, there passeth nothing to me. . . . and thus desiring you to bear with the weakness of my lame hand I take my leave from Hackney, this 22th of November, 1601.
