f the Lands of Sir Giles
Arden came to Lewis Greville through his wife, yet there is one Arden at
this time in Warwickshire that is a man of three hundred marks land by
the yeare." Addit. MS., 5937, f. 88, British Museum.
[415] See "Liber Pacis," Eg. MS., 2345.
[416] Dugdale's "Warwickshire," 884, 927.
[417] See _Athenaeum_, Feb., 1896, p. 190, and my little volume on
"Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries" (Stratford-on-Avon Press),
p. 48.
[418] State Papers, Dom. Series, Elizabeth, clxiii., 21 _et seq._
[419] Accounts of Treasurer of the Chamber, 1583-84.
[420] Burke makes an extraordinary error in stating that Shakespeare's
mother was a daughter of Sir Edward Arden, of Park Hall ("Hist. Landed
Gentry," edition 1882, vol. i., p. 34). Now, Edward was never knighted,
and must have been born about the same year as Mary, daughter of Robert
Arden, who married John Shakespeare.
[421] The Accounts of the Wardens of the Tower mention Francis Arden's
board, up to June 24, 1585, and he sued shortly after for Pedmore, on
the death of Sir George Digby, to whom it had been granted (State
Papers, Dom. Series, Elizabeth, ccii., 40).
[422] State Papers, Dom. Series, Elizabeth, clxxi. 35; also Patents,
Elizabeth, 28, c. 10.
[423] Dugdale's "Warwickshire," 927. I find also several pensions
allowed by the Crown to a Robert Arden, early in James I. These may
refer to Robert of Park Hall (Book of Patents, xi. 212).
[424] Inventory of his property is at Lichfield, where also is that of
his wife, Lady Dorothy Arden, 1635-36, and will of his son, Robert
Arden.
[425] Ashmolean MSS., 36, f. 125: "Robert Arden, Colonel and Sheriff of
Warwickshire." An elegy upon his death in Oxford of small-pox, August
22, 1643: "Seeing these tapers and this solemn night," etc. Signed,
"Peter Halstead."
[426] She was a Lady of the Privy Chamber to the Queen-mother, and
survived her husband. See the burial of her daughter, Mrs. Henrietta
Maria Stanhope, October 23, 1674.
CHAPTER II
THE ARDENS OF LONGCROFT
This main line of Ardens having thus become extinct, we have to go back
some generations to find the younger branch that carried on the name.
Simon, the second son of the Thomas Arden who died in 1563, brother of
the William Arden who died 1546, and uncle of Edward Arden, who was
executed 1583, seems to have been an important man in his own day. He
was much trusted by his father and nephew, and was elected Sheriff
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