Occasional Notes: On the past and present defamation of Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford,

from The Dictionary of English History | (1928 (1st ed.
1884)) Sir Sidney Low, M.A., & F. S. Pulling, M.A., :

"Vere, Edward De, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), one of the haughtiest and overbearing of the nobles of Elizabeth's reign, was one of the commissioners at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586. He subsequently did good service for England in fitting out, at his own expense, ships for the defence of the country against the Armada (1588)." (p. 1068)

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from Wikipedia's article on Anne Cecil, daughter of William Cecil (later, Baron Burghley, K.G.) principal adviser and Secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, and holder of, among other offices, Master of the Wards of Court :

... "In 1569, Anne was engaged to marry Sir Philip Sidney. When these marriage negotiations failed, she married instead Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford on 19 December 1571 at London's Westminster Abbey, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. The wedding was celebrated with great pomp. According to some accounts, Anne genuinely loved Oxford, who as her father's ward had partly grown up in the Cecil household. However, his reasons for marrying Anne were largely mercenary, as he had hoped her father would pay his many outstanding debts." (5) ...

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(5) Grant, Teresa. "Vere, Anne de (1566-1588)", (in) Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance, (Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin, eds.) ABC-CLIO, 2007.

“Oxford was arrogant, petulant and spoiled, irresponsible with money, sexually dissolute, widely disliked and given to outbursts of deeply unsettling violence. At the age of seventeen he murdered a household servant in a fury (but escaped punishment after a pliant jury was persuaded to rule that the servant had run onto his sword). Nothing in his behaviour, at any point in his life indicated the least gift for compassion, empathy or generosity of spirit – nor indeed the commitment to hard work that would have allowed him to write more than three dozen plays anonymously, in addition to the work under his own name, while remaining actively engaged at court.”
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— Bill Bryson: Chapter 9 "Claimants" from Shakespeare : the world as stage New York : Atlas Books, 2016.

For continued discussion on this thread's topics, please refer to the Edward de Vere and the Shakespeare Authorship Mystery group