esearch into the 17th Earl of Oxford's life has unfortunately resulted in the development and promulgation of the Prince Tudor theory, the two branches of which claim, solely on the basis of a subjective interpretation of language in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, that Oxford was the son of Queen Elizabeth I and Lord Thomas Seymour, that Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton was the son of Oxford and the Queen—and that as the sons of Queen Elizabeth, both Oxford and Southampton were potential heirs to the throne.

The Prince Tudor theory originated with Alfred Dodd, who claimed in Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story, published in 1910, that both Sir Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, were the sons of Queen Elizabeth.  In “Occultist Influence on the Authorship Controversy” in the Spring 1998 issue of The Elizabethan Review, Roger Nyle Parisious explains how the Baconian scenario was taken over by two British Oxfordians, Captain B. M. Ward and Percy Allen, at some time between 1930 and 1933.

Since then, the Prince Tudor theory has been the subject of four books and is at present the subject of a feature film currently in production, directed by Roland Emmerich (Anonymous).

A wide range of historical documents decisively refutes the  Prince Tudor theory.  A number of these documents were discussed by Diana Price in “Rough Winds Do Shake: A Fresh Look at the Tudor Rose Theory,” in the Autumn 1996 issue of The Elizabethan Review.

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