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Edward Arden and the Dudley earls of Warwick and Leicester, c. 1572–1583

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Cathryn Enis
Cathryn Enis*
Affiliation:
Hamm, NRW, Germany. Email: cathrynenis@outlook.com
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Abstract

Between c. 1572 and his execution in 1583, Edward Arden, a Catholic gentleman from Warwickshire, was involved in a lineage dispute with Ambrose and Robert Dudley, earls of Warwick and Leicester and two of the most powerful men in early modern England, over their shared ancestral claim to a Saxon known as Turchil. This article explores the significance of this dispute from a number of perspectives, including the ancestry of Edward Arden, the history of the Warwick and Leicester earldoms and Philip Sidney’s Defense of Leicester, in order to explore lineage as central to the prevailing ideology of power. It uses the clash between Arden and the Dudleys to present an environment in which Catholics were still part of the political mainstream and in which different political discourses led to conflict as well as consensus during the 1570s and early 1580s. Moreover, the article suggests that the activities of the heralds and the pedigrees they produced had a political function during this period which merits changing our approach to an underused manuscript source.

Keywords

ArdenDudleySidneyGloverWarwickshireLineage
Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 170 - 210
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2016. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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References

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58 Dugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire (London: 1656), 681 Google Scholar.

59 BCA, MS917/496 (Norton 184). George Digby was one of the Dudleys’ officers; Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 340–1. Holte was executor of Digby’s will; TNA, PROB11/70, fols. 245v-246v, Will of George Digby.

60 Raphael Massey was one of Ambrose Dudley’s yeomen and participated in his funeral. CA MS, Dethick’s Book of Funerals, II, fol. 212. Massey and Rugeley were also cousins; TNA, PROB11/39/232; will of John Rugeley.

61 SCLA, DR18/3/19/2; TNA, STAC5/A17/34, STAC5/A34/7, STAC5/A55/39.

62 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 329.

63 Peck, Dwight, ‘The Earl of Leicester and the riot at Drayton Bassett, 1578’, Notes and Queries, n.s. 27 (April 1980): 131–135 Google Scholar; Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 339–41, ‘Baronial contexts?’, 388–9.

64 TNA, STAC5/A24/25, STAC5/A4/26.

65 University of Nottingham Manuscript Collection, Middleton MSS, MiDa 80/7.

66 ‘Simon Harcourt’, in House of Commons, ed. Hasler, II, 249–50; ‘William Stanford’, in House of Commons, 1509–1588, ed. Stephen Bindoff, 3 vols (London: HMSO for the History of Parliament Trust, 1982) III, 366–8.

67 VCH Warks., 4: 235–6.

68 TNA, C54/1286; many thanks to Professor Glyn Parry for passing on this reference.

69 BCA, MS3375/434072, February 1574/5.

70 List of Sheriffs for England and Wales … to A.D. 1831, PRO Lists and Indexes IX (London, 1898; reprinted New York, 1963).

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75 TNA, STAC5/A24/25. Depositions were still being taken in early 1580. Some of the ring-leaders were fined but the sources do not provide a final conclusion to the case.

76 Henry E. Huntington Library (hereafter HEHL), Hastings MS10328.

77 Peck, Leicester’s Commonwealth, 29–30, 66, 73, 86, 88–90. Huntingdon remains something of an unknown quantity and Peck has noted that ‘we are left unable fully to explain the vehemence of the Commonwealth’s professed fears about him’.

78 Crouch, David, The Birth of the Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (London: Routledge, 2005), 157 Google Scholar. The earldom of Warenne was held by the Howards in the sixteenth century as the courtesy title of earl of Surrey.

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80 Ibid.

81 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 339–40. The complexity of the Warwick estate is discussed in Carpenter, Locality and polity, 439–447. Carpenter makes two particularly important points – firstly, that the division of the Warwick estate in the 1440s resulted in ‘a rough and ready division that paid relatively little regard to absolute legal rights’ and secondly, that ‘the really serious conflicts over the inheritance were between Richard Neville and his wife’s three half-sisters and their husbands.’

82 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 321.

83 Peck, Leicester’s Commonwealth, 115.

84 Driver, ‘Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick’, 150–51; Griffith, ‘The Visual History of Guy of Warwick’, 127.

85 BL, MS Harley 807, fols. 54v-58r. Adams has identified Shrewsbury and Leicester as friends but formal professions of friendship amongst the nobility does not exclude the possibility of political rivalry; Adams, ‘Heralds and the Elizabethan court’, in Heralds and heraldry, 12, 15–6. Dudley’s request to Shrewsbury for documents connected with the Berkeley inheritance does not necessarily indicate friendly co-operation between the two men. Given that the case was being pursed in the name of the queen, it is not clear how Shrewsbury could have refused.

86 The Visitation of the County of Warwick in the Year 1619, ed. John Fetherston, Harleian Society, 12 (London, 1877), 176.

87 Appendix IV: MS sources connected to the descent of the earls of Warwick, the Dudley family and the Arden family made or used by the heralds, 1572–1582.

88 Berry, Elizabeth, Henry Ferrers, an Early Warwickshire Local Antiquary, 1550–1633, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 16 (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1965): 27 Google Scholar, 33–4. Ferrers’ list can be viewed at https://archive.org/details/collectaneatopog08londuoft.

89 Griffith, ‘Owners and Copyists’, 209.

90 Fox, John, ‘The Bromes of Holton Hall, A Forgotten Recusant Family’, Oxoniensia, 68 (Oxford: 2003): 69–88 Google Scholar. Fox provides an excellent overview of the Brome, Ferrers and Windsor families. He also notes that the Windsors deserve more attention as a recusant family and that Henry Ferrers was probably a more committed recusant than his current reputation suggests.

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93 Camden later praised Ferrers as a friend and his surviving manuscripts were used by both Camden and Dugdale. Berry, Henry Ferrers, 33–7.

94 For example, BL, MS King’s 396 and Pierpont Morgan, MS M.956 have been attributed to Robert Cooke on the basis of strong similarities between the scripts. However, a comparison of the portraits reveals substantial differences. MS King’s 396 has been dated to 1567 on the basis of the list of Elizabeth’s New Year’s gifts and further used to attribute Penn. State MS Codex 1070 to Cooke, even though there are several differences in script and style, for example, the formation of the letter ‘r’ in ‘Erle’. The pedigree that we know was by Cooke, Longleat MS 249, has similarities to MS Codex 1070 but clear differences to both MS King’s 396 and MS M. 956. A more detailed and coherent study of these and related documents is needed before definite attributions can be made.

95 Adams, ‘The Heralds and the Elizabethan Court’, in Heralds and Heraldry, 10–13, 18–20.

96 Thomas Lant (1554–1601), who made the drawings of Philip Sidney’s funeral, was employed as a painter and draughtsman for several years before he secured a post as a herald.

97 Adams, ‘The Heralds and the Elizabethan Court’, in Heralds and Heraldry, 16; CA, MS Num. Sch. 13/1.

98 University of Pennsylvania State (hereafter Univ. Penn. State), MS Codex 1070, Descent of the earls of Leicester and Chester. Appendix V: Univ. Penn. State, MS Codex 1070, fol. 1v, opening inscription. Document online at http://openn.library.upenn.edu/Data/PennManuscripts/html/mscodex1070.html. The commentary on this website, also repeated elsewhere, concerning Robert Dudley’s absence among his siblings at the end of the pedigree is incorrect. He is represented by the coat of arms.

99 CA, MS Num. Sch. L15 fols. 91–105.

100 CA, MS Num. Sch. 3/44; Appendix VI: Final inscription on pedigree of Edward Arden attributed to Robert Cooke and Robert Glover, c. 1581–3, written by Robert Glover.

101 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 317.

102 BL, MS Harley, 6182; CA, MS Vincent 76.

103 Selwyn, Pamela, ‘Such special bookes of Mr Somersettes as were sould to Mr Secretary’: the fate of Robert Glover’s collections’, in James P. Carley and Colin G. C. Tite, eds., Books and Collectors 1200–1700: Essays Presented to Andrew Watson (London: British Library, 1997), 389 Google Scholar.

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105 BL, Cotton MS Titus B, vii. fol. 14, 24 Jan 1584.

106 Griffith, ‘Owners and Copyists’, 219; Glover’s copy is now Bodleian Library (hereafter Bod. Lib.), MS Ashmole 967.

107 Griffith, ‘Owners and Copyists’, 219.

108 Ibid., 212–4.

109 Visitation, 1619, 176; Griffith, ‘Owners and Copyists’, 214–5.

110 Univ. Penn. State, MS Codex 1070, fol. 2v; CA, MS Num. Sch. 13/1.

111 CA, MS Num. Sch. M 1bis, fol. 18. Notes in the same notebook but in a different hand also refer to ‘Turquinus erle of Warwyke’, CA MS Num. Sch. M 1bis, fol. 98v.

112 BL, MS Harley 807.

113 Ibid., fols. 17–20.

114 BL, MS Harley 807, fols. 22–24. Andrew Lyall, ‘Waterhouse, Sir Edward, (1535–1591)’, ODNB.

115 BL, MS Harley 807, fols. 54v-58r.

116 Griffith, ‘The Visual History of Guy of Warwick’, 120–1.

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119 TNA, E101/632/6; many thanks to Professor Glyn Parry for passing on this reference.

120 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 316–7.

121 Ibid., 316.

122 Univ. Penn. State, MS Codex 1070, fol. 8r; Levi Fox, ‘The Honor and Earldom of Leicester, Origin and Descent 1066–1399’, English Historical Review, 54, 216 (July 1939): 397.

123 Univ. Penn. State, MS Codex 1070, fol. 2v.

124 CA, MS Num. Sch. 13/1; Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 322.

125 Fox, ‘Honor and Earldom of Leicester’, 391.

126 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 313–315.

127 Goldring, Elizabeth, ‘Langham’s Letter’, in Goldring, Eales, Clarke & Archer, eds., Progresses and Public Progressions of Queen Elizabeth I, 253 Google Scholar. Either Langham’s Saxon history was better than his spelling or he had a good editor, as the name and dates given for Kenulph are essentially correct; see Williams, Ann, Smyth, Alfred P. and Kirby, David P., eds., A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain, England, Scotland and Wales c. 500-c. 1050 (London: Seaby, 1991), xxvi Google Scholar.

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129 Goldring, Elizabeth, ‘“A mercer ye wot as we be”, the Authorship of the Kenilworth Letter Reconsidered’, English Literary Renaissance (2008): 245–269 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

130 Baxter, Stephen, The Earls of Mercia, Lordship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 295 Google Scholar; Williams, ‘A Vice-Comital Family’, 287.

131 English, Barbara, The Lords of Holderness, 1086–1260: a Study in Feudal Society (Oxford: Oxford University of Press for the University of Hull, 1979), 7 Google Scholar.

132 Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 297.

133 Bod. Lib., MS Ashmole 967, fol. 36v.

134 Victoria County History of Warwickshire (hereafter VCH Warks), ed. L. Salzman, 8 vols, (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 7:58–72. BL, MS Egerton 3789, fol. 10v for Fitzansculf in the Sutton descent.

135 TNA, E178/2338; BCA, MS917/383 (Norton 155).

136 Arden, Douglas, ‘A gift from Robert Glover, BL MS Egerton 3789, fols. 25r-32r’, The Coat of Arms, Series 3, I, pt. 2 (2005): 107 Google Scholar.

137 Ibid.

138 BL, MS Egerton 3789, fol. 31r.

139 BL, MS Egerton 3789, fols. 40r-42r, fols. 60r-63v.

140 BL, MS Egerton 3789, fol. 116v.

141 BL, MS Harley 6182.

142 BL MS Harley 6182, fol. 12v.

143 BL, MS Harley 6182, fols. 34r-35r. See A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain, 170, for further information.

144 Fox, ‘The Honor and Earldom of Leicester’, 390–3, for Petronella and the English Grandemesnil inheritance. Blanchmains and Petronella’s son, Robert de Breteuil (d. 1204), was the first use the cinquefoil that became the symbol of the earldom of Leicester. Crouch, Birth of the Nobility, 159.

145 BL, MS Harley 6182, fol. 28r.

146 Fox, ‘The Honor and Earldom of Leicester’, 393–6.

147 BL, MS Harley 6182, fols. 32r, 35r. Katherine Keats-Rohan has shown that Lucy was not Edwin’s sister, although she was probably his cousin. The confusion appears to have been widespread and was not necessarily a fiction created by Glover; http://users.ox.ac.uk/~prosop/prosopon/issue2-2.pdf.

148 BL, MS Harley 6182, fol. 26v.

149 Longleat MS 249. See Ramsay, ed., Heralds and Heraldry, plate 1, for the opening image of Felicia and Guy.

150 It is still unclear to what extent Turchil owed allegiance to the earls of Mercia. Williams, ‘A Vice-Comital Family’, 291; Baxter, Earls of Mercia, 246–7, 287–8.

151 CA, MS Num. Sch. 3/44.

152 Appendix VI.

153 Davies, Lords and Lordship, 32.

154 The Arden family continued using ermine fess chequy or et azure. See Visitation, 1619, 72.

155 Adams, ‘Of that countrye’, 314.

156 Woudhuysen, Henry R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 210 Google Scholar.

157 Duncan-Jones, Katherine and van Dorsten, Jan, eds., Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 127–128 Google Scholar.

158 Duncan-Jones and van Dorsten, Miscellaneous Prose, 123–4.

159 Peck, ‘Defense of Leicester’, 169.

160 Ibid.

161 Peck, ‘Defense of Leicester’, 176, n. 14, 15.

162 Peck, Dwight, ‘An Alleged Early Draft of Leicester’s Commonwealth’, Notes and Queries (July 1975): 295–296 Google Scholar; ‘The Letter of Estate: an Elizabethan Libel’, Notes and Queries, 28, 1 (Feb 1981): 21–35.

163 Peck, Leicester’s Commonwealth, 7.

164 TNA, SP12/164/77.

165 BL MS Cotton Caligula CVIII fols. 204r-206v, transcript available at www.livesandletters.ac.uk/herle/letters/046.html. Many thanks to Professor Glyn Parry for passing on this reference.

166 ‘Hyde’ is possibly Thomas Hide, author of A Consolatorie Epistle, see Lucy Wooding, ‘Hide, Thomas (1524–1597)’, ODNB. However, a more intriguing possibility is that the reference is to the antiquarian and scholar, David Hyde, about whom we know very little; Southern, Alfred C., Elizabethan Recusant Prose, 1559–1582 (London: Sands & Co., 1950), 24 Google Scholar.

167 Holmes, Peter, ‘The Authorship of Leicester’s Commonwealth’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33, 3 (July 1982): 424–430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, Alan H., ‘Who Didn’t Write Leicester’s Commonwealth? (Who Did?)’, in Peter Beal, ed., Discovering, Identifying and Editing Early Modern English Manuscripts, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, 18 (London: British Library, 2013), 11–18 Google Scholar. Nelson summarises the main arguments so far.

168 TNA, SP12/164/77; Miscellanea IV, CRS (London: 1907), 114–5.

169 TNA, SP12/163/55. Tresham’s nephews, Edward and Ambrose Vaux, were also in Rome in spring 1582.

170 Stewart, ‘Philip Sidney’, Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 47; Southern, Recusant Prose, 338, 347.

171 The British Armorial Bindings Database, a joint collaboration between the Bibliographical Society of London and the University of Toronto Library, uses the earl of Leicester’s arms as an example of an early modern coat and includes a useful guide to heraldry; https://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/.

172 The portrait, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester with a Dog, c. 1564, now in the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon, shows the Somery two lions passant at dexter chief, a coat also linked to the Sutton descent. The Dudley arms generally showed the Sutton lion rampant. The portrait is reproduced in colour in Ramsay, ed., Heralds & Heraldry, plate 51.

173 Peck, ‘Defense of Leicester’, 174.

174 Peck, ‘Defense of Leicester’, 175.

175 Orwen, W.R., ‘Spenser’s Stemmata Dudleiana ’, Notes and Queries, 1 (January 1946): 9–11 Google Scholar.

176 Allen, William, A True, Sincere and Modest Defense of English Catholics that suffer for their faith both at home and abroad, against a false, seditious and slanderous libel entitled ‘The Execution of Justice’ (Rouen: 1584)Google Scholar; modern edition, Kingdon, Robert, ed., The Execution of Justice and A Defense of English Catholics (Ithaca: NY, Cornell University Press, 1965), 109 Google Scholar.

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178 Renold, P., ed., Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, 1572–1598, CRS, 58 (London: 1967), 60 Google Scholar; Hicks, Leo, ed., Letters and Memorials of Father Persons, CRS, 39, 2 vols (London: 1942), 1 Google Scholar, 193; Pollen, J. H., ed., The English Martyrs 1584–1603, CRS, 5 (London: 1908), 305 Google Scholar; Calendar of Letters and State Papers, Spain, Simancas, ed. M. Hume, 4 vols (London: HMSO, 1892–99) 3, 511–512; Calendar State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, 1583–1584, ed. Sophie C. Lomas, 23 vols (London: HMSO, 1914) 18, 651–2.

179 Dugdale, Warwickshire, 302.

180 Kemp, Henry, ed., The Black Book of Warwick (Warwick: 1898), 248–249 Google Scholar.

181 Peck, Leicester’s Commonwealth, 127.

182 Bristow, Richard, A briefe treatise of diverse plaine and sure waies to finde out the truthe in this doubtful and dangerous time of Heresie (Antwerp: 1574)Google Scholar.

183 Miscellanea IV, CRS, 27–8, 178–81. Sheldon’s apparent conformity was seen as a notable public relations victory by some of the Elizabethan regime. The authorship and motivation behind A persuasion delivered to Mr Sheldon, (att. Langdale, 1580) is unclear; Walsham, Alexandra, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), 51 Google Scholar.

184 The trial and execution of Campion has provoked widespread debate and generated a huge literature. An account of Tresham’s and Catesby’s examination is in Anthony Petti, G., ed., Recusant Documents from the Ellesmere Manuscripts, CRS, 60 (London: 1968), 6–13 Google Scholar. Kilroy, Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription, 121–145, focuses on Sir Thomas Tresham in the light of the Tresham papers and buildings. See also , Kilroy, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Ashgate: Farnham, 2015)Google Scholar. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, ‘Puritans, Papists and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England: the Edmund Campion Affair in Context’, The Journal of Modern History, 72, 3 (Sept. 2000): 587–627 CrossRefGoogle Scholar considers the connection between the pursuit of Campion and public discourse.

185 Lake, ‘The Politics of “Popularity”’, 73.

186 Sheils, William, ‘“Getting on” and “getting along” in Parish and Town: Catholics and Their Neighbours in England’, in Benjamin Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop and Judith Pollmann, eds., Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 68–83 Google Scholar; Lewycky, Nadine and Morton, Adam, eds., Getting along? Religious Identities and Confessional Relations in Early Modern England; Essays in Honour of Professor W. J. Sheils (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012)Google Scholar.

187 Collinson, Patrick, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 381 Google Scholar.

188 Ibid.

189 Younger, Neil, ‘Drama, Politics and News in the Earl of Sussex’s Entertainment of Elizabeth I at New Hall in 1579’, The Historical Journal, 58, 2 (June 2015): 343–366 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

190 Enis, ‘Justices of Elizabethan Warwickshire’, 3; the enduring connections between the Newport, Hatton and Ferrers families can be seen in Richard Newport’s appointment of his brother-in-law, Edward Ferrers of Cock Bevington, as one of his executors in 1565; will of Richard Newport, TNA, PROB11/48, fols. 249r-250v.

191 Adams, ‘The Dudley Clientele’, 200.

192 Axton, Marie, ‘The Influence of Edmund Plowden’s Succession Treatise’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 37, 3 (May 1974): 209–226 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

193 Reprinted in Adams, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Eyes at Court’, 146.

194 Adams, ‘Heralds and the Elizabethan Court’, in Heralds and Heraldry, 2.