Edward Arden

Edward Arden (c. 1542–1583) was an English nobleman and head of the Arden family, who became a Catholic martyr.

Arden lived in Park Hall, Castle Bromwich, an estate near modern-day Birmingham. He was a recusant Catholic and kept a priest, Hugh Hall, at his house disguised as a gardener. Arden's son-in-law, John Somerville, hatched a plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, but was arrested long before he could attempt it. A purge of Arden's household ensued, and Arden, who may not have known of Somerville's plan, was executed and decapitated.[1]

Arden's father, William Arden, was a second cousin of Mary Arden, mother of William Shakespeare.[2]

Life

He was the head of a Warwick family; his father William died in 1545, and Edward succeeded his grandfather Thomas Arden in 1563. He kept to the old faith and maintained in his home, Park Hall at Castle Bromwich, a priest named Hall, in the disguise of a gardener. This priest influenced John Somerville, Edward Arden's son-in-law, who had had indirect contact with Mary Queen of Scots (she had visited Coventry in 1569).[3]

Somerville talked of shooting the Queen of England, and set out for London. He was arrested, put to the rack, and confessed, implicating his father-in-law in his treason and naming the priest as the instigator. All three were tried and sentenced to death. Somerville strangled himself in his cell. Arden was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield on 20 December 1583,[4] but the priest was spared. Arden's and Somerville's heads were set on London Bridge beside the skull of the Earl of Desmond.[3]

William Camden in his Annals reflected contemporary opinion by saying that Arden's execution was attributable to the malice Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, bore towards him. Somerville was thought insane by Lord Burghley.[5]

Marriage and issue

Arden married Mary Throckmorton (died 1603), the daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton and his first wife, Muriel Berkeley, daughter of Thomas (1472–1533), 5th Baron Berkeley, by Eleanor Constable (c. 1485 – 1527), daughter of Sir Marmaduke Constable, by whom he had a son and two daughters:[4]

Footnotes
  1. Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World. New York: Norton, 2004, pp. 157–8.
  2. Holden, Anthony. "William Shakespeare's Mother Mary Arden". Archived from the original on 30 September 2011.
  3. "Arden, Edward" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  4. Wizeman I 2004.
  5. Wizeman, William. "Arden, Edward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/633. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. Wizeman II 2004.
gollark: Yes, and electron has native API access, allowing better spying.
gollark: Let's be honest, it probably does.
gollark: _uses discord browser eternally due to lower RAM use, less spying and ease-of-use_
gollark: My newsreader project uses F# (a .NET language) compiled for .NET Core on the serverside and F# compiled to JS on the client.
gollark: You can even run .NET in the browser these days.

References
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Arden, Edward". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Arden, Edward". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.