Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet

Sir Aubrey (Hunt) de Vere, 2nd Baronet (28 August 1788 - 5 July 1846) was an Anglo-Irish poet and landowner.

De Vere was the son of Sir Vere Hunt, 1st Baronet and Hon. Eleanor Pery, daughter of William Pery, 1st Baron Glentworth.^[1][2] He was educated at Harrow School, where he was a childhood friend of Lord Byron, and Trinity College, Dublin. He married Mary Spring Rice, the daughter of Stephen Edward Rice and Catherine Spring, and sister of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, in 1807.^[3] He succeeded to his father's title in 1818.

The Hunt/de Vere family estate for 300 years (1657–1957), including the period of the de Vere Baronetcy of Curragh, is the present day Curraghchase Forest Park, in County Limerick. De Vere spent most of his life on the estate and was closely involved in its management. He suffered much trouble from his ownership of the island of Lundy, which his father, who was not much of a businessman, had unwisely purchased in 1802, and which became a heavy drain on the family's finances. Sir Vere was never able to find a purchaser for Lundy, and it took his son until 1834 to dispose of it.

He changed his surname from Hunt to de Vere in 1832, in reference to his Earl of Oxford ancestors, dating back to Aubrey de Vere I, a tenant-in-chief in England of William the Conqueror in 1086.^[4] He served as High Sheriff of County Limerick in 1811.

Sir Aubrey was a poet. Wordsworth called his sonnets the most perfect of the age. These and his drama, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama, were published by his son the poet Mr. Aubrey Thomas de Vere in 1875 and 1884.

Works

De Vere produced numerous works over his lifetime. The most notable are: Ode to the Duchess of Angouleme (1815), Julian the Apostate: A Dramatic Poem (1822), The Duke of Mercia: An Historical Drama [with] The Lamentation of Ireland, and Other Poems (1823), A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets and his most famous work, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama.^[5]

In A Book of Irish Verse, W. B. Yeats described de Vere's poetry as having "less architecture than the poetry of Ferguson and Allingham, and more meditation. Indeed, his few but ever memorable successes are enchanted islands in gray seas of stately impersonal reverie and description, which drift by and leave no definite recollection. One needs, perhaps, to perfectly enjoy him, a Dominican habit, a cloister, and a breviary."^[6]

References

1. ThePeerage.com (entry #84913) http://www.thepeerage.com/p8492.htm#i84913 (Accessed 10 February 2015)
2. John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (Volume 1, H. Colburn, 1833), 351.
3. ThePeerage.com (entry #84913) http://www.thepeerage.com/p8492.htm#i84913 (Accessed 10 February 2015)
4. John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (Volume 1, H. Colburn, 1833), 351.
5. ‘The Poems of the De Veres’, Dublin University Magazine, XXI, 122 (Feb. 1843), pp.190-204.
6. ‘Modern Irish Poetry’ [prev. in A Book of Irish Verse, 1895, & rep. in] Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, 1904, Vol. III, p.pp.vii-xiii; p.11.

External links

• Works by or about Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet at Internet Archive
• Works by Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)