Emilio on 6 Feb 2004  •  Link

"Wife of the 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury; she lived in Clapton, Middlesex." (L&M footnote) Sam's mother used to work as her washer-woman, we discover on 5 Feb. '60/'61.

San Diego Sarah on 6 Feb 2024  •  Link

Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565 – 1635) was an English military officer and peer who served during the Eighty Years' War and the Thirty Years' War. A brother of Francis Vere, he was sent to the Electoral Palatinate by King James in 1620.
Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury was a first cousin of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604).

Following the campaign season of 1607 Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury returned to England for a double celebration: his brother, aged 47, married a woman 30 years younger than himself;
and in November 1607 Sir Horace, at 42, wed Lady Mary Tracy Hoby (1581-1671), aged 26. They had met in 1606 when Horace was visiting home. Mary was the widow of William Hoby and had 2 small children. It was thus a convenient match for Mary, but Horace seems genuinely to have been in love.

Lady Mary Tracy Hoby (1581–1671) was a daughter of Sir John Tracy (died 1591) of Toddington, Gloucs., and his wife Anne, daughter of Thomas Throckmorton (died 1568). Her brother Sir Thomas Tracy was a member of the household of Anne of Denmark, as an usher of her privy chamber.

Mary Tracy Hoby, Lady Vere followed Sir Horace to the Netherlands in July 1608, and in later life both clearly had great affection for each other. ...

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 when she was for a time the Governor of Princess Elizabeth and Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

It was probably the case that Horace married her because her views agreed with his own, rather than that she picked up Presbyterianism in the Netherlands.

In 1608, in his absence, she made a donation to Sir Thomas Bodley's Calvinist intellectual project at Oxford University.
Lady Mary's strong views; Sir Horace's 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 patronage of godly ministers exiled from England all make it clear Sir Horace was a Puritan and probably a Presbyterian.

That Vere could live happily in England under King Charles, despite his firm views in favour of military intervention on the continent, and his 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.
In addition, Horace Vere quite simply got on well with people.

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.

San Diego Sarah on 6 Feb 2024  •  Link

PART 2

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 protege's 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 proteges.

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.

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.

In 1632 or later Sir Horace Vere went into virtual retirement. His only military duties were connected with the ordnance office and he enjoyed the company of his family.

By this time his 3 elder daughters were all married:
In 1626 Elizabeth had married John Holles, who later succeeded as 2d earl of Clare;
in 1627 Mary had married Sir Roger Townshend; on his death in 1638 she married Mildmay Fane, 2nd 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.

San Diego Sarah on 6 Feb 2024  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

Family matters 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, when on a trip home. Sir Horace, in his 70th year, had a stroke and died within 2 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, Lady Vere, "my most loving wife", evidently trusting her to make appropriate dispositions for their children (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/168, fol. 7v).

In 1637 Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax married Anne Vere;
and later, the Veres' youngest daughter, Dorothy, married John Wolstenholme of Stanmore, Middlesex.

Mary Tracy Hoby, Lady Vere continued to live at Clapton until the death of the widow of Lord Vere's eldest brother, John, when she succeeded to Kirby Hall, Essex, where she died on Christmas Eve, 1670, aged 90.

Excerpts from https://www.houseofvere.com/Horac…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kir…

What stories Lady Vere could tell; she knew everybody! I almost envy Margaret Pepys working for her -- but I doubt they talked.