་་ such honours were of grave importance; and there is a solemnity in the tone of these very documents which, however it may provoke a smile from what we call philosophy, was connected with high and generous principles: "Know ye that in all nations and kingdoms the record and remembrance of the valiant facts and virtuous dispositions of worthy men have been made known and divulged by certain shields of arms and tokens of chivalry." 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. John Shakspere was of the third generation succeeding the adherent of Henry VII. The family had continued in those parts, "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. They were probably cultivators of the soil, unambitious small proprietors. 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. ... A painter of manners, who comes near to the times 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 preeminence and more estimation than labourers and the common sort of artificers, and these commonly live wealthily, keep good houses, and travel to get riches. They are also for the most part farmers to gentlemen, or at the leastwise artificers; and with grazing, frequenting of markets, and keeping of servants (not idle servants as the gentlemen do, but such as get both their own and part of their masters' living), do come to great wealth, insomuch that many of them are able and do buy the lands of unthrifty gentlemen, and often, setting their sons to the schools, to the universities, and to the inns of the court, or otherwise leaving them sufficient lands whereupon they may live without labour, do make them by those means to become gentlemen: these were they that in times past made all France afraid." Plain-speaking Harrison, who wrote this description in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, tells us how the yeoman and the descendants of the yeoman could be changed into gentlemen ; Whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, whoso abideth in the university giving his mind to his book, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences, or beside his service in the room of a captain in the wars, or good counsel given at home, whereby his commonwealth is benefited, can live without manual labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for money have a coat and arms bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same do of custom pretend antiquity and service, and many gay things), and thereunto being made so good cheap, be called master, which is the title that men give to esquires and gentlemen, and reputed for a gentleman ever after." And so John Shakspere, whilst he was bailiff of Stratford in 1568 or 1569, desired to have "a coat and arms;" and for instruction to the heralds as to the "gay things" they were to say in their charter, of "honour and service," he told them, and he no doubt told them truly, that he was great-grandson to one who had been advanced and rewarded by Henry VII. And so for ever after he was no more goodman Shakspere, or John Shakspere, yeoman, but Master Shakspere; and this short change in his condition was produced by virtue of a grant of arms by Robert Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms; which shield or coat of arms was confirmed by William Dethick, Garter, principal King of Arms, in 1596, as follows: Gould, on a bend sable and a speare of the first, the point steeled, proper; and his crest, or cognizance, a faulcon, his wings displayed, argent, standing on a wrethe of his coullors supporting a speare gould steele as aforesaid, sett uppon a helmet with mantells and tassells." | Arms of John Shakspere } But there were other arms one day to be impaled with the speare of the first, the poynt steeled, proper." In 1599 John Shakspere again goes to the College of Arms, and, producing his own "ancient coat of arms," says that he has "married the daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden, of Wellingcote:" and then the heralds take the speare of the first," and say-"We have likewise upon on other escutcheon impaled the same with the ancient arms of the said Arden of Wellingcote." 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. His uncle, Sir John Arden, probably showed him the road to these benefits. The squire for the body was a high officer of the ancient court; and the groom of the chamber was an inferior officer, but one who had service and responsibilty. The correspondent offices of modern times, however encumbered with the wearisomeness of etiquette, are relieved from the old duties, which are now intrusted to hired servants. The squire for the body had to array the king and unarray; no man else was to set hand on the king. The groom of the robes was to present the squire for the body "all the king's stuff, as well his shoon as his other gear;" but the squire for the body was to draw them on. If the sun of majesty was to enlighten the outer world, the squire humbly followed with the cloak; when royalty needed refection, the squire duly presented the potage. But at night it was his duty, and much watchfulness did it require, to preside over all those jealous safeguards that once fenced round a sleeping king from a traitorous subject. In a pallet bed, in the same room with the king, rested the gentleman or lord of the bedchamber; in the ante-room slept the groom of the bedchamber; in the privy chamber adjoining were two gentlemen in waiting; and, lastly, in the presence-chamber reposed the squire for the body under the cloth of estate. Locks and bolts upon every door defended each of these approaches, and the sturdy yeomen mounted guard without, so that the pages, who made their pallets at the last chamber threshold, might sleep in peace.* It is not improbable that the ancestor of John Shakspere might have guarded the door without, whilst Sir John Arden slept upon the haut pas within. They had each their relative importance in their own day; but they could little foresee that in the next century their blood would mingle, and that one would descend from them who would make the world agree not utterly to forget their own names, however indifferent that future world might be to the comparative importance of the court servitude of the Arden or the Shakspere. Robert Arden, the groom of the bedchamber to Henry VII., probably left the court upon the death of his master. He married, and he had a son, also Robert, who married Agnes Webbe. Their youngest daughter was Mary, the mother of William Shakspere.† Mary Arden! The name breathes of poetry. It seems the personification of some Dryad of "Many a huge-grown wood, and many a shady grove," called by that generic name of Arden,—a forest with many towns, *This information is given in a long extract from a manuscript in the Herald's Office, quoted in Malone's 'Life of Shakspeare.' 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 in the grants of arms 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 Shakspere, 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 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? "Whose footsteps yet are found, In her rough woodlands more than any other ground, Her one hand touching Trent, the other Severn's side." * That name of Mary Arden sounds as blandly as the verse of this fine old panegyrist of his native country," when he describes the songs of birds in those solitudes amongst which the house of Arden had for ages been seated : "The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves, : 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. She had three sisters, and they all, with their mother Agnes, survived their father, who 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 |