this Shakspere there is no record: his name or his deeds would have no interest for us unless there had been born, eighty years after this battle-day, a direct descendant from him "Whose muse, a Shakspere, of whom it is also said "He seems to shake a lance As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance."† A public document, bearing the date of 1599, affirms, upon “credible report," of “John Shakspere, now of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gentleman," that his "parent, great-grandfather, and late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent prince King Henry VII. of famous memory, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements, given to him in those parts of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit." Such is the recital of a grant of arms to John Shakspere, the father of William Shakspere, which document refers to "his ancient coat of arms, heretofore assigned to him, whilst he was her Majesty's officer and bailiff of Stratford." In those parts of Warwickshire, then, lived and died, we may assume, the faithful and approved servant of the "unknown Welshman," as Richard called him, who won for himself the more equivocal name of "the most prudent prince." He was probably advanced in years when Henry ascended the throne; for in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1558, his great-grandson, John Shakspere, was a burgess of the corporation of Stratford, and was in all probability born about 1530. The family had continued in those parts, we are assured, "by some descents;" but how they were occupied in the business of life, what was their station in society, how they branched out into other lines of Shaksperes, we have no distinct record. The name may be traced by legal documents in many parishes of Warwickshire; but we learn from a deed of trust executed in 1550, by Robert Arden, the maternal grandfather of William Shakspere, that Richard Shakspere was the occupier of land in Snitterfield, the property of Robert Arden. At this parish of Snitterfield lived a Henry Shakspere, who as we learn from a declaration in the Court of Record at Stratford, was the brother of John Shakspere. It is conjectured, and very reasonably, that Richard Shakspere, of Snitterfield, was the paternal grandfather of William Shakspere. Snitterfield is only three miles distant from Stratford. They probably were cultivators of the soil, unambitious small proprietors. Harrison, a painter of manners who comes near the time of John Shakspere, has described the probable condition of his immediate ancestors : "Yeomen are those which by our law are called legales homines, free men born English. The truth is, that the word is derived from the Saxon term zeoman, or geoman, which signifieth (as I have read) a settled or staid man. This sort of people have a certain pre-eminence and more estimation than labourers and the common sort of artificers." But the grant of arms in 1599, opens another branch of inquiry into Shakspere's ancestry. It says, "for that the said John Shakespere having married the daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden of Wellingcote, [Wilmecote] and also produced this his ancient coat of arms, we [the heralds] have likewise upon one other escutcheon impaled the same with the ancient arms of the said Arden of Welling * Spenser. † Ben Jonson. See Halliwell's "Life of Shakspere," p. 8, and Collier's "Life," p. 62. cote." They add that John Shakspere, and his children, issue, and posterity, may bear and use the same shield of arms, single or impaled. The family of Arden was one of the highest antiquity in Warwickshire. Dugdale traces its pedigree uninterruptedly up to the time of Edward the Confessor. Under the head of Curdworth, a parish in the hundred of Hemlingford, he says—“In this place I have made choice to speak historically of that most ancient and worthy family, whose surname was first assumed from their residence in this part of the country, then and yet called Arden, by reason of its woodiness, the old Britons and Gauls using the word in that sense." At the time of the Norman invasion there resided at Warwick, Turchil, "a man of especial note and power" and of "great possessions." In the Domesday Book his father, Alwyne, is styled vice comes. Turchil, as well as his father, received favour at the hands of the Conqueror. He retained the possession of vast lands in the shire, and he occupied Warwick Castle as a military governor. He was thence called Turchil de Warwick by the Normans. But Dugdale goes on to say "He was one of the first here in England that, in imitation of the Normans, assumed a surname, for so it appears that he did, and wrote himself Turchillus de Eardene, in the days of King William Rufus." The history of the De Ardens, as collected with wonderful industry by Dugdale, spreads over six centuries. Such records seldom present much variety of incident, however great and wealthy be the family to which they are linked. In this instance a shrievalty or an attainder varies the register of birth and marriage, but generation after generation passes away without leaving any enduring traces of its sojourn on the earth. Fuller has not the name of a single De Arden amongst his "Worthies" -men illustrious for something more than birth or riches,—with the exception of those who swell the lists of sheriffs for the county. The pedigree which Dugdale gives of the Arden family brings us no nearer in the direct line to the mother of Shakspere than to Robert Arden, her great-grandfather: he was the third son of Walter Arden, who married Eleanor, the daughter of John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire; and he was brother to Sir John Arden, squire for the body to Henry VII. Malone, with laudable industry, has continued the pedigree in the younger branch. Robert's son, also called Robert, was groom of the chamber to Henry VII. He appears to have been a favourite; for he had a valuable lease granted him by the king of the manor of Yoxsall, in Staffordshire, and was also made keeper of the royal park of Aldercar. Robert Arden, the groom of the chamber, probably left the court upon the death of his master. He married, and he had a son, also Robert, who had a family of seven daughters. The youngest was Mary, the mother of William Shakspere. From the connection of these immediate ancestors of Shakspere's mother with the court of Henry VII., Malone has assumed that they were the antecessors of John Shakspere declared to have been advanced and rewarded by the conqueror of Bosworth Field. Because Robert Arden had a lease of the royal manor of Yoxsall, in Staffordshire, Malone also contends that the reward of lands and tenements stated in the grant of arms to have been bestowed upon the ancestor of John Shakspere really means the beneficial lease to Robert Arden. He holds that popularly the grandfather of Mary Arden would have been called the grandfather of John Shak spere, and that John Shakspere himself would have so called him. The answer is very direct. The grant of arms recites that the great-grandfather of John Shakspere had been advanced and rewarded by Henry VII., and then goes on to say that John * In a draft of the grant of arms, dated 1596, there are several variations from that of 1599. Amongst others we have,-" whose parents and late antecessors were for this valiant and faithful service" instead of "parent, great-grandfather, and late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service," &c. Shakspere had married the daughter of Robert Arden of Wellingcote: He has an ancient coat-of-arms of his own derived from his ancestor, and the arms of his wife are to be impaled with these his own arms. Can the interpretation of this document then be that Mary Arden's grandfather is the person pointed out as John Shakspere's great-grandfather; and that, having an ancient coat-of-arms himself, his ancestry is really that of his wife, whose arms are totally different? Mary Arden! some Dryad of The name breathes of poetry. It seems the personification of called by that generic name of Arden, a forest with many towns, "Whose footsteps yet are found, In her rough woodlands more than any other ground, Her one hand touching Trent, the other Severn's side."* High as was her descent, wealthy and powerful as were the numerous branches of her family, Mary Arden, we doubt not, led a life of usefulness as well as innocence, within her native forest hamlet. Her father died in December, 1556. His will is dated the 24th of November in the same year, and the testator styles himself "Robert Arden, of Wylmcote, in the paryche of Aston Cauntlow." A The face of the country must have been greatly changed in three centuries. canal, with lock rising upon lock, now crosses the hill upon which the village stands; but traffic has not robbed the place of its green pastures and its shady nooks, though nothing is left of the ancient magnificence of the great forest. There is very slight Drayton. "Polyolbion," 13th Song. appearance of antiquity about the present village, and certainly not a house in which we can conceive that Robert Arden resided. It was in the reign of Philip and Mary that Robert Arden died; and we cannot therefore be sure that the wording of his will is any absolute proof of his religious opinions :-" First, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God and to our blessed Lady Saint Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven, and my body to be buried in the churchyard of Saint John the Baptist in Aston aforesaid." Mary, his youngest daughter, occupies the most prominent position in the will:-"I give and bequeath to my youngest daughter Mary all my land in Wilmecote, called Asbies, and the crop upon the ground, sown and tilled as it is, and six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence of money to be paid over ere my goods be divided." To his daughter Alice he bequeaths the third part of all his goods, moveable and unmoveable, in field and town: to his wife Agnes (the step-mother of his children) six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence, under the condition that she should allow his daughter Alice to occupy half of a copyhold at Wilmecote, the widow having her “ "jointure in Snitterfield." The remainder of his goods is divided amongst his other children. Alice and Mary are made the "full executors" to his will. We thus see that the youngest daughter has an undivided estate and a sum of money; and the crop was also bequeathed to her. The estate consisted of fifty-six acres of arable and pasture, and a house. But she also possessed some property in Snitterfield, which had probably been secured to her upon her father's second marriage. It was in Snitterfield that Richard Shakspere occupied part of the Arden property. Some twenty years after the death of Robert Arden, Harrison described the growth of domestic luxury in England, saying, "There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain, which have noted three things to be marvellously altered in England within their sound remembrance." One of these enormities is the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas formerly each one made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat: the second thing is the great amendment of lodging-the pillows, the beds, the sheets, instead of the straw pallet, the rough mat, the good round log or the sack of chaff under the head: the third thing is the exchange of vessels, as of treen platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. He then describes the altered splendour of the substantial farmer: "A fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessels going about the house; three or four feather-beds; so many coverlids and carpets of tapestry; a silver salt, a bowl for wine, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit." Robert Arden had certainly not a mansion filled with many needless articles for use or ornament. In the inventory of his goods taken after his death we find table-boards, forms, cushions, benches, and one cupboard in his hall; there are painted cloths [pictures] in the hall and in the chamber; seven pair of sheets, five board-cloths, and three towels; there is one feather-bed and two mattresses, with sundry coverlets, and articles called canvasses, three bolsters, and one pillow. The kitchen boasts four pans, four pots, four candlesticks, a basin, a chafing-dish, two cauldrons, a frying-pan, and a gridiron. And yet this is the grandson of a groom of a king's bedchamber, an office filled by the noble and the rich, and who, in the somewhat elevated station of a gentleman of worship, would probably possess as many conveniences and comforts as a rude state of society could command. There was plenty outdoors-oxen, bullocks, kine, weaning calves, swine, bees, poultry, wheat in the barns, barley, oats, hay, peas, wood in the yard, horses, colts, carts, ploughs. Robert Arden had lived through unquiet times, when there was little accumulation, and men thought rather of safety than of indulgence: the days of security were at hand. Then came the luxuries that Harrison looked upon with much astonishment and some little heartburning. And so in the winter of 1556 was Mary Arden left without the guidance of a father. We learn from a proceeding in chancery some forty years later, that with the land of Asbies there went a messuage. Mary Arden had therefore a roof-tree of her own. Her sister Alice was to occupy another property in Wilmecote with the widow. Mary Arden lived in a peaceful hamlet; but there were some strange things around her,-incomprehensible things to a very young woman. When she went to the church of Aston Cantlow, she now heard the mass sung, and saw the beads bidden; whereas a few years before there was another form of worship within those walls. She learnt, perhaps, of mutual persecutions and intolerance, of neighbour warring against neighbour, of child opposed to father, of wife to husband. She might have beheld these evils. The rich religious houses of her county and vicinity had been suppressed, their property scattered, their chapels and fair chambers desecrated, their very walls demolished. The new power was trying to restore them, but, even if it could have brought back the old riches, the old reverence had passed away. In that solitude she probably mused upon many things with an anxious heart. The wealthier Ardens of Kingsbury and Hampton, of Rotley and Rodburne and Park Hall, were her good cousins; but bad roads and bad times perhaps kept them separate. And so she lived a somewhat lonely life, till a young yeoman of Stratford, whose family were her father's tenants, came to sit oftener and oftener upon the wooden benches in the old hall-a substantial yeoman, a burgess of the corporation in 1557 or 1558; and then in due season, perhaps in the very year when Romanism was lighting its last fires in England, and a queen was dying with "Calais" written on her heart, Mary Arden and John Shakspere were, in all likelihood, standing before the altar of the parish church of Aston Cantlow, and the house and lands of Asbies became administered by one who took possession "by the right of the said Mary," who thenceforward abided for half a century in the good town of Stratford. There is no register of the marriage discovered: but the date must have been about a year after the father's death; for "Joan Shakspere, daughter to John Shakspere," was, according to the Stratford register, baptized on the 15th September, 1558. |