On Southampton's 16th birthday, 6 October 1589, Lord Burghley noted Southampton's age in his diary, and by 1590 Burghley was negotiating with Southampton's grandfather, Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague, and Southampton's mother, Mary, for a marriage between Southampton and Lord Burghley's eldest granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere, daughter of Burghley's daughter, Anne Cecil, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. However the match was not to Southampton's liking, and in a letter written in November 1594, about six weeks after Southampton had turned 21, the Jesuit Henry Garnet reported the rumour that "The young Erle of Southampton refusing the Lady Veere payeth £5000 of present payment". In 1591 Lord Burghley's Clerk in Chancery, John Clapham, dedicated to Southampton a poem in Latin, "Narcissus", recounting the Greek legend of a beautiful young man who perishes through self-love. According to Akrigg, Southampton was now spending much of his time at court. He was in attendance when Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford in late September 1592, and was praised in the Latin poem written by John Sandford to commemorate the Queen's visit. In October 1592 Southampton's grandfather, Viscount Montague, died. Montague had been a Knight of the Garter, and on 3 May 1593 Philip Gawdy of Clifford's Inn (a law school and Inn of Chancery) wrote to his brother, Bassingbourne Gawdy, that Southampton had been nominated to the Order, together with the Lord Keeper, Lord Burgh, and Lord Willoughby de Eresby. Shortly thereafter, in his "Honour of the Garter" dated 26 June 1593, George Peele referred to him as "Gentle Wriothesley, Southampton's star", claiming erroneously that an Earl of Southampton had been among the founding Knights. However it was not until 1603 that Southampton was invested in the Order under King James. In 1593 Shakespeare dedicated his narrative poem "Venus and Adonis" to Southampton, followed in 1594 by "The Rape of Lucrece". Although the dedication to "Venus and Adonis" is more restrained, the dedication to "The Rape of Lucrece" is couched in extravagant terms:  The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end ... What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.