uspicion even in the
habitually credulous minds of the heralds, or those officers may have
deemed the profession of the son, who was conducting the negotiation, a
bar to completing the transaction. At any rate, Shakespeare and his
father allowed three years to elapse before (as far as extant documents
show) they made a further endeavour to secure the coveted distinction.
In 1599 their efforts were crowned with success. Changes in the interval
among the officials at the College may have facilitated the proceedings.
In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl Marshal and chief of the
Heralds' College (the office had been in commission in 1596); while the
great scholar and antiquary, William Camden, had joined the College, also
in 1597, as Clarenceux King-of-Arms. The poet was favourably known to
both Camden and the Earl of Essex, the close friend of the Earl of
Southampton. His father's application now took a new form. No grant of
arms was asked for. It was asserted without qualification that the coat,
as set out in the draft-grants of 1596, had been _assigned_ to John
Shakespeare while he was bailiff, and the heralds were merely invited to
give him a 'recognition' or 'exemplification' of it. {191} At the same
time he asked permission for himself to impale, and his eldest son and
other children to quarter, on 'his ancient coat-of-arms' that of the
Ardens of Wilmcote, his wife's family. The College officers were
characteristically complacent. A draft was prepared under the hands of
Dethick, the Garter King, and of Camden, the Clarenceux King, granting
the required 'exemplification' and authorising the required impalement
and quartering. On one point only did Dethick and Camden betray
conscientious scruples. Shakespeare and his father obviously desired the
heralds to recognise the title of Mary Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to
bear the arms of the great Warwickshire family of Arden, then seated at
Park Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, was undetermined; the
Warwickshire Ardens were gentry of influence in the county, and were
certain to protest against any hasty assumption of identity between their
line and that of the humble farmer of Wilmcote. After tricking the
Warwickshire Arden coat in the margin of the draft-grant for the purpose
of indicating the manner of its impalement, the heralds on second
thoughts erased it. They substituted in their sketch the arms of an
Arden family living at Alvanley in th