others, is no proof that that person was insolvent, or in very mean circumstances. It was in all probability the result of some business arrangement, the particulars of which cannot now be recovered. There then occurs a long interval in which we have no facts from which any inference can be drawn; for Mr. Malone next conducts us to the year 1597, when in his Chancery Bill he describes himself as "a man of very small wealth, and who had very few friends or alliances in the county of Warwick." But are not these very usual words of form in such a document?

His retirement from the corporation in 1586, is no evidence in such a question as this. Mr. Malone says, that he had searched the records of the corporation, and had found that he had not been present at any meeting for the seven preceding years. This carries us back to 1579, at which period it seems that he may have removed from the town, and taken up his abode at Clifford, a village at no great distance; for I have found a John Shaxspere described as of Clifford at that period, among the debtors to the estate of one John Ashwell of Stratford, in a schedule accompanying his will, which is dated August 27, 1578, and proved at Worcester May 14, 1583, and who there is great reason to believe was this John Shakespeare of Stratford.

No will has yet been discovered of John Shakespeare. All we know of him after the grant of arms, is that he was buried at Stratford on September 8, 1601; nor has any will of his widow Mary Shakespeare, originally Arden, been found. She was buried on September 9, 1608, both probably more than seventy years of age. They had lived in wedlock nearly five-and-forty years, and there are eight children the offspring of the marriage, whose admissions by baptism into the Christian Church are on record in the register of the parish church of Stratford; to whom two

more are to be added, who are not in the register, if the information given to Rowe was correct, that the whole number of the children was ten. I need not say that WILLIAM was one of them.

Neither John nor Mary were persons of so much consideration that we may expect to find inquisitions on their decease. But it is a subject of fair inquiry, how it happened that among the innumerable inscribed grave-stones in the church and church-yard of Stratford, there is not, nor, as far as we know, ever was there, any memorial for either the father or the mother of the poet. Probably they found interment in the ground outside the walls, where memorials of the dead remain for the most part unnoticed even by the antiquary, and where they soon give place to the claims of following generations, and, like those they cover, are no more

seen.

We now for a time leave the Shakespeares, and go to the family which gave us the poet's mother.

THE ARDENS.

66

Whatever may be thought of the quality of the poet's ancestors on the father's side, there can be no doubt that by the mother's he sprung from families of ancient gentry, and that therefore on that side at least his birth-prejudices would be aristocratic. Robert Arden, his grandfather, was gentleman of worship," so declared by the heralds, and admitted by them as a point unquestionable to the distinction of coat armour by descent. The name is sometimes found written Ardern; but it seems, as Dugdale asserts of them, that they were indigeni of the country called Arden in Warwickshire, and had their surname from their residence there. The arms as impaled by Shakespeare, in one of the drafts before spoken of, are, in technical language, to be described thus: Gules, three cross-crosslets fitchée or, and a chief of the second. These arms the poet had a right to quarter, as declared in the grant of 1599; but of this right the parties who erected his monument at Stratford, the only place in which we see his arms displayed, did not think proper to give him the benefit.

Robert Arden lived at Wilmecote, which is a hamlet of the parish of Aston Cantlow, or Aston Cantilupe, a few miles north-west of Stratford. He died in 1556, at which time he had, at least, two marriageable daughters; so that the time of his own birth was not much later than the year 1500, and as we have no means of ascertaining his age when he married, it might be earlier. We are here without the assistance of parish registers, monuments, or inquisitions; but the Subsidy Rolls lately disinterred from the perishing beds of old Exchequer documents, present us with both a Thomas and a Robert Arden living at Wilmecote in the 15th of Henry

D

the Eighth, 1523-4, who are each assessed upon goods of the value of 107. In the 38th of that reign, 1546-7, Thomas Arden was living, if not at Wilmecote, yet in the parish of Aston Cantlow, and was assessed on lands valued at forty shillings per annum. The reader may be cautioned against smiling at the smallness of these sums.

Now with these facts before us, let there be compared the clause in the will of a John Arden, as cited by Malone,* who is described in the Arden pedigrees as "Esquire for the body to Henry the Seventh," and who is the well-known ancestor of a very eminent Warwickshire family, "Item, I will that my brothers Thomas, Martin, and Robert have their fees during their lives." Let any one observe the date of this will, which is June 4, 1526, and bear in mind that Robert Arden of Wilmecote was a "gentleman," and entitled to the same coat-armour which this testator John Arden used, and he may be disposed to come to the conclusion that the Thomas and Robert Arden of Wilmecote of 1524, are the two brothers of those names mentioned in the will, and that this Robert, or another Robert, the son of Thomas or Robert, is the Robert Arden of Wilmecote who made his will in 1556, and left a good amount of property to his youngest daughter Mary Arden, one of his coheiresses, who in the next year became the wife of John Shakespeare.

There is what would appear to be a confirmation of this opinion in a mark of cadency in the arms of Arden of Wilmecote as impaled with the coat of Shakespeare in the heralds' draft. It is the martlet, the distinctive mark of a fourth son, and it would seem according to the arrangement of the names of his three younger brothers by John Arden the testator of 1526, that Robert was the fourth son of his father. It is remarkable that the pedigrees of Arden of Warwick

Boswell's Malone, vol. ii. p. 33.

shire are so incomplete. We know with certainty from the will of John that he had the three brothers Thomas, Martin, and Robert, and yet in the best pedigree of Arden which I have been able to find, namely one which is inserted in the Harleian copy of the visitation of Warwickshire by Lennard and Vincent in 1619,* only Martin of all the brothers of John is mentioned, with his daughter and heir whom Thomas Gibbons married. He was of Dichley, in Oxfordshire.

This pedigree presents us with the names of the parents of John and Martin, and consequently, as we may believe, of Robert, the Arden of Wilmecote, or his father. They were Walter Arden and Eleanor his wife, daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden in Buckinghamshire. We thus bring the poet by descent on the mother's side from the more ancient gentry of the midland counties, both the Hampdens and the Ardens having formed extensive alliances among the old feudal families of their respective counties. In fact, having once got into such lines as those there is no limit to the extent to which genealogical research might be carried, and with wellproved results.

But though we owe nothing to the heralds for the line of Arden of Wilmecote beyond the assertion that they were gentlemen of worship, and entitled to the ancient arms of Arden, we receive at their hands very valuable information respecting the descendants of John Arden, the esquire of the body to King Henry the Seventh. They were seated at a place called Park-hall, which is in Hemlingford Hundred, in

* Harl. 1167, f. 57, 58. Compare also Harl. 6832, f. 384.

† Much has been said of late of the poet's descent from the Hampdens; but it is remarkable that in the pedigree of Arden, in Harl. 1110, f. 24, the wife of Walter is said to have been a daughter of William Brasbridge, of Kilsbury, in co. Warwick, Esquire. The same remark, however, concerning descent from ancient gentry would apply whether the marriage were with Hampden or Brasbridge. Walter's children are there said to be John, Martin, Robert, and Henry. The Arden pedigree it is manifest wants a great deal of examination.