"Be therefore so much, my good Lord, as to take my cause into your own hands, and for God's sake to end it. I protest mine adversary hath caused me to spend more then such an annuity is worth to purchase. Age wold have ease, which is expedicion in causes of suit and molestacion, and expedicion in justice is the most Honour that may be; which is no small part of your Honor's comendacion. Almighty God long preserve you in all felicity, that this Realm of England may more and more long take profit of your most wise and grave counsels."
Perhaps on his coming to Longcroft he found the old Arden arms there. Before the grant to his grand-uncle Robert there had been Ardens in Yoxall.[434] Certain it is that after that date they appear in Longcroft Hall and in the parish church. The headship of the family fell to his heirs in 1643. Simon's son[435] Ambrose[436] married Mary Wedgewood 1588, and died 1624. His son Humphrey[437] married Jane Rowbotham at Marchington, December 1, 1630. Of his family, Henry married Catherine Harper, but died without children, November 26, 1676; John, of Wisbeach, married Anne, and died without heirs, April 2, 1709, aged 84;[438] Humphrey, of Longcroft, who married the daughter of —— Lassel, and died January 31, 1705, aged 74. His daughters Elizabeth and Katharine died unmarried. His son Henry married Anne Alcock, and died 1728, aged 63. Humphrey's son and heir, John, was born 1693, and died 1734, aged 40. He married, first, Anna Catherine Newton, and second, Anne, daughter of the Rev. John Spateman, Rector of Yoxall, 1730. He was High Sheriff of the County in 3 George II. His son, Henry Arden, of Longcroft, married Alethea, daughter of Robert Cotton, Esq., of Worcester, and died June 22, 1782. The full pedigree is given, and the monuments at Yoxall are described in Shaw's "Staffordshire," and in French's "Shakespeareana Genealogica." Descendants still survive in this country and the Colonies.
FOOTNOTES:
[427] Fuller's "Worthies."
[428] Administration of goods of Christian Arden, wife of Simon, 1563 (Lichfield Wills).
[429] Nich., "Col. Top. et Gen.," vol. viii., p. 298.
[430] Lansdowne MS., xxx. 27, 30.
[431] Subsidy Rolls, Yoxall, 1590; Shaw's "Staffordshire," i., pp. 100-102 and 499; and Talbot Papers, Heralds' College, Dugdale p. 932.
[432] See also manuscript notes on the copy of Shaw's "Staffordshire," by Samuel Pipe Wolferstan, Esq., of Statfold, preserved in the British Museum, p. 102.
[433] Note that this is the same man appointed trustee by Mary Shakespeare's grandfather.