contradiction, in Westminster Hall, to the
assertion that all the people of England
were indicters of Charles the First—"No!
not the hundredth part of them." In short,
the word Vere was almost synonymous in
English history with whatever was noble and
dignified, when in its twentieth Earl of
Oxford it came to a sorry end in the person of a
profligate time-server, who accommodated
himself to every event in succession—Tory,
Commonwealth, and Whig—and crowned
his anti-heroical achievements by cheating
an actress with a false marriage. The
Kensington property, however, was saved the
disgrace of belonging to this scoundrel; for
he died long after it had been carried, by
a co-heiress, into the families of Argyle and
others, who sold it to Sir Walter Cope, the
builder of Holland House.

But before we part with the Veres we have
a quarrel to pick with the whole of them, or
rather with their name, and with the Vere,
whoever he was, who first gave them their
motto, Vero nihil verius—Nothing truer than
true; that is to say, pun-ically speaking,
Nothing more veritable than Vere. For the
fact is, saving their lordships' valours (and
we think we see their dust redden as we say
it—but it is the inventor's fault, not ours)
the motto is false. Vere does not mean
"true." The family came from Holland; the
word in Dutch is written Weer—it is the
name of the place in the isle of Walcheren,
which the owners quitted for drier quarters;
and the word means neither more nor less
than the same word in English—weir or
wear, that is to say, a dam, fish-trap, or flood-
gate. "Aubrey de Vere" is as fine an
aristocratical sound as can well be imagined, and it
is a pity to spoil it; but truth must be told.
Aubrey de Vere means Aubrey of the dam,
fish-trap, or flood-gate.

In short, the Veres originated with the
coasters or others, whoever they were—
a hardy, painstaking race. It may be added,
to complete the notice of the Veres, that
the present representative of the race is
the Beauclerk family, the daughter of the
last lord having married the first Duke of
St. Albans, the son of Charles the Second
by Nell Gwynn. The two fathers, it is to
be feared, helped to spoil, for a time, the
blood of the actress; for Sidney Beauclerk,
their grandson (father of Johnson's Topham
Beauclerk), is said to have been as great a
"raf" as either of them, without inheriting
any of the royal wit. This could not be said
of Topham, however he might have resembled
the king in more respects than one; for
though Johnson, in one of the most
extraordinary compliments on record, told him
"his body was all vice," he added that "his
mind was all virtue;" a combination of
totals which, to the doctor's surprise,
Beauclerk did not seem happy to admit.

But we are losing sight of Holland House.
Sir Walter Cope, the purchaser of the Vere
property in Kensington, seems to have been
one of the money-getters, who profited by the
endeavours which James the First made to
supply his lavish exchequer without the help
of a Parliament. He built the house, or
rather the main body of the house (the centre
and turrets), about the year sixteen hundred
and seven, and bequeathed it to Henry Rich,
Earl of Holland, as the husband of his
daughter and heiress, Isabella. The wings
and arcades were added by the earl.

This Earl of Holland was the younger son
of Robert Rich, first Earl of Warwick, by
Penelope, daughter of Queen Elizabeth's Earl
of Essex, the Stella of Sir Philip Sidney. He
was a handsome, showy man; was a favourite
with James's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham;
and had the reputation of being more
than in the good graces of Charles the First's
queen; probably for no other reason than his
having fetched her as a bride from France,
and been coxcombical in his attentions on
the way. He and his friend, Hay, Earl of
Carlisle, were the twin stars of the great
world, next after their patron Buckingham;
and Holland House, during the prosperous
portion of Rich's career, must have entertained
in its saloons all the rank and fashion of the
time. Among others came Bassompierre, the
French Ambassador, who with the dandy
indifference of his countrymen respecting the
orthographies of other countries, or being too
fine a gentleman to hear the word properly
from the first, has recorded Kensington under
the mincing appellation of Stintinton.

"Wednesday 25.—Dined yesterday with the Earl
of Holland at Stintinton." *
   * So, on a visit to him at Hampton Court, he calls that
   village Imtincourt—
   "Went to see the Earl of Holland, who was sick at
   Imtincourt.
   "(Le Vendredy 16.—Je fus voir le Comte de Hollande,
   malade à Imtincourt. Le Mercedi 25.—Je fus diner chez
   le Comte de Hollande à Stintinton."

Unfortunately, Rich's coxcombry made him
over-sensitive to what he thought attentions
or the reverse from ruling powers, and in the
Civil Wars he went to and fro in his partisanship
with so provoking a caprice, now playing
the part of a knight-errant for king and
queen, and now sulking at Holland House,
and receiving visits from the disaffected for
some imaginary affront, that when the
Parliament at last seized him and put him
to death for making a stand against the
death of the king, his end was a grief to
nobody. Foppish to the last, he died in a
white satin waistcoat, and a cap ditto with
silver lace.

Five months after the earl's execution
Holland House was occupied by the
Parliamentary General Fairfax, husband of the
"starry Vere," who thus found herself, under
very extraordinary circumstances,
contemplating the property of her ancestors. At
this period we are to suppose Cromwell