His nature was not factious; and his interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the Court; for his estate was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned to the Royal Closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was demanded from him. 'Sir,' answered the Earl of Oxford, 'I will stand by Your Majesty against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is a matter of conscience and I cannot comply.' He was instantly deprived of his Lieutenancy and of his regiment." A parenthesis forces itself forward here. The line of the true De Veres, of the house that earned the motto, _Vero nil Verius_, from the Virgin Queen in recognition of its steadfast loyalty, of the family concerning whom it was said, "Let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God," came to an absolute end in 1703. Yet the last century saw an Aubrey de Vere of distinguished family and of no mean distinction as a poet. It will probably occur to others, as it has occurred to me, to wonder whether the nineteenth-century poet De Vere was a descendant or a kinsman of the Elizabethan peer and poet. A rapid reference would seem to show that he may have been--the cautious phrase is used by one who does not aspire to be a genealogist. The first of the Irish De Veres was, it is true, the son of the first Sir Vere Hunt, baronet, and assumed the name of De Vere by Royal License in 1832. But the Irish De Veres have the same motto--_Vero nil Verius_--as the Essex De Veres of old; their crest is the boar of the Essex De Veres; the mullet of the Essex De Veres appears in their arms. Heaven forbid that I should venture into the thickets of genealogy, that I should attempt to conceal an absolute ignorance of heraldry. But surely, after all this, it may be assumed to be probably more than a happy coincidence that Aubrey Thomas De Vere, bearing the Christian name of him who came with the Conqueror and the surname of the Elizabethan poet, was a poet of exceptional sincerity and sweetness, albeit little known to "the general reader." No doubt the whole truth is known to genealogists and to students of heraldry; but a stranger to their mysteries is too well aware of the disputatious quality of their temper, and of the existence of doubts concerning the title to arms of this or that family, to assume that because crest and motto and arms are described and illustrated in Burke or in Debrett there is therefore any historical connection between the arms and those who bear them.