On New Year's Day 1562 Earl John gave Queen Elizabeth £10 ‘in a red silk purse, in dimy soveraigns’; similarly, Margery gave £5 ‘in a red purse, in dimy soveraignes’. Conversely, Elizabeth gave Oxford ‘oone guilt cup with a cover’, and Margery a smaller version of the same.

On 1 July the Earl put his signature to a marriage contract, called an indenture of covenants, between his twelve-year-old son, on the one part, and Elizabeth or Mary Hastings, younger sisters of Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, on the other part. The indenture provided that on his eighteenth birthday (which would fall on 12 April 1568) Edward should choose for wife whichever of the two Hastings sisters he might prefer at the time. Witnesses to the indenture were John Wentworth, Thomas Golding, John Gibon, Henry Golding, John Booth, Jasper Jones, and John Lovell, of whom ‘Iohn Wentworth’, ‘Thomas Goldyng’, and ‘Henry Goldyng’ attached signatures. Though ethically reprehensible by modern standards, the practice of arranging a marriage, and even of offering a young son the choice between two prospective brides, was conventional among the higher nobility of sixteenth-century England. Not that such negotiations inevitably achieved their intended goal: often as not, youth had its way.

About the same time, an entail was executed on behalf of the earldom:

Since most honours and properties passed to the male heir in any case, the point of this legal exercise may have been to assure that the office of Great Chamberlain was included in the inheritance. Under Elizabeth the office would transfer without question, but rights to the office would become a matter of dispute in subsequent years.