Shakespeare's familyStopes, C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael)
History
Shakespeare's family
Stopes, C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael)
Arden family; Shakespeare family; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Family
Drummond[77] exemplifies many arms of Arden, and traces them back to
their derivation. He notices that the "elder branch of the Ardens took
the arms of the old Earls of Warwick; the younger branches took the arms
of the Beauchamps, with a difference. In this they followed the custom
of the Earls of Warwick." The Ardens of Park Hall therefore bore ermine,
a fesse chequy, or, and az., arms derived from the old Earls of Warwick;
and this was the pattern scratched out in John Shakespeare's quartering.
But the reason lay in no breach of connection, but in the fact that Mary
Arden was an heiress, not in the eldest line, but through a _second
son_. A possible pattern for a younger son was three cross crosslets
fitchee and a chief or. As such they were borne by the Ardens of
Alvanley, with a crescent for difference. They were borne without the
crescent by Simon Arden of Longcroft,[78] the second son of the next
generation, and full cousin of Mary Arden's father. It is true that
among the tombs at Yoxall the fesse chequy appeared, but there is
evident confusion in their use. Martin Arden of Euston was probably in
the wrong to assume when he did the arms of his elder brother; William
Arden of Hawnes, if the sixth son, county Bedford, bore the same arms as
those proposed for Mary Arden, and it is implied that Thomas, her
father, had borne them. In the Heralds' College is the draft:
"Shakespere impaled with the Aunceyent armes of the said Arden of
Willingcote" (volume marked R. 21 outside and G. XIII. inside).
If the three cross crosslets fitchee were the correct arms for Thomas
Arden as the second son of an Arden, who might bear ermine, a fesse
chequy or, and az., the crescent would have been the correct difference,
but it had long been borne by the Ardens of Alvanley, in Cheshire, who
branched off from the Warwickshire family early in the thirteenth
century. The heralds therefore differenced the crosslets with a martlet,
usually, but by no means universally, the mark of cadency for a fourth
son at that time.[79] Thus, Glover[80] enumerates among the arms of
Warwickshire and Bedfordshire: "Arden or Arderne gu., three cross
crosslets fitchee or; on a chief of the second a martlet of the first.
Crest, a plume of feathers charged with a martlet or." If heraldry has
anything, therefore, to say to this dispute, it is to support the claim
of Thomas Arden to being a cadet of the Park Hall family, and thereby to
include Mary Arden and her son in the descent from Ailwin, Guy of
Warwick, and the Saxon King Athelstan. Camden and the other heralds were
only seeking correctness in their draft of the restitution of the
Ardens' arms. The hesitation as to exactitude among the varieties of
Arden arms was the cause of the notes. See "The Booke of Differ.," 61;
see "Knights of E.I.," folios 2, 28, etc., on the draft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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