Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/86

 Arden  Appius Claudius in 'Virginius,' Polixenes in the 'Winter's Tale,' Gloster in 'Jane Shore,' Bassanio in the 'Merchant of Venice,' and Claudio in 'Measure for Measure,' and other characters; and took part in the melodramas of the 'Cataract of the Ganges' and 'Kenilworth.' he was the original representative of Opimius and Gesler in Sheridan Knowles' plays of 'Oaius Gracchus' (1823) and 'Willam Tell' (1825). He visited the United States, and was engaged in the management of several theatres there. He was afterwards a member of the English company of actors performing in Paris with Miss Smithson. At a later period he led a company to Belgium and Germany, and presented certain of Shakespeare's plays at Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Frankfort, Hamburg, &c. He was again a member of the Drury Lane company, under the management of Mr. Hammond, in 1839, and in 1845 was appearing at Covent Garden Theatre, then under the management of M. Laurent, as the blind seer in the tragedy of 'Antigone.' He was the author of many successful dramas, adaptations from the French, including the 'Black Doctor,' the 'Little Devil,' produced at the minor theatres, and of one original play of historical interest, entitled 'Blood Royal, or the Crown Jewels.' Of this production he was accustomed to represent the hero, Colonel Blood.

[Genest's History of the Stage, 1832; Theatrical Times, 1847.] 

ARDEN, EDWARD (1542?–1583), high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was a probably innocent victim of the rigorous severity adopted by the ministers of Queen Elizabeth in order to defeat the numerous Roman Catholic conspiracies in favour of Mary Queen of Scots and against the protestant sovereign. He was the head of a family that had held land in Warwickshire for six centuries from the days of Edward the Confessor downwards. His father, William, having died in 1545, Edward succeeded his grandfather Thomas Arden in 1563. He kept to the old faith and maintained in his home, Park Hall, near Warwick, a priest named Hall, in the disguise of a gardener. This man, animated with the fierce zeal of his order, inflamed the minds of the Arden household against the heretical queen, and especially influenced John Somerville, Edward Arden's son-in-law. This weak-minded young man had been greatly excited by the woes of the Scottish queen, who had given to a friend of his a small present for some service rendered her when at Coventry in 1569. He talked of shooting the Queen of England, whom he vituperated as a serpent and a viper, and set out for London on this deadly errand. Betraying himself, however, by over-confident speech, he was arrested, put to the rack, and confessed, implicating his father-in-law in his treason, and naming the priest as the instigator of his crime. All three were tried and sentenced to death. Somerville strangled himself in his cell. Arden was hanged at Tyburn (October 1583), but the priest was spared. Arden's head and Somerville's were set on London Bridge beside the skull of the Earl of Desmond.

Dugdale, who quotes from Camden's 'Annals,' says that Arden was prosecuted with much rigour and violence at the instance of the Earl of Leicester, whom he had irritated, partly by disdaining to wear his livery, but chiefly for galling him by certain harsh expressions touching his private accesses to the Countess of Essex before she was his wife. The language of Camden is very outspoken. 'The woful end of this gentleman, who was drawn in by the cunning of the priest and cast by his evidence, was generally imputed to Leicester's malice. Certain it is that he had incurred Leicester's heavy displeasure; and not without cause, for he had rashly opposed him in all he could, reproaching him as an adulterer, and defaming him as a new upstart.' Much interest is attached to the question of relationship between this Edward Arden and Mary Arden of Wilmcote, the mother of Shakespeare, and second cousin of Edward Arden's father. Ingenious writers have not been wanting who trace the poet's consummate portrayal of high-born dames to his gentle blood and the influence of the Arden ladies, his mother and her six sisters who dwelt at Asbies in Wilmcote.

[Froude's England, vii. 610; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser., v. 332, 463, 492; Dugdale's Warwickshire, ii. 931; Camden's Annals, 1583; Calendar of State Papers, 1583; French's Genealogica Shakspeareana.] 

ARDEN, RICHARD PEPPER, (1745–1804), born at Bredbury, Cheshire, in 1745, was the son of John Arden of Stockport, and was educated at the Manchester grammar school. His two brothers received their earlier instruction at the same institution. The eldest, John, became a country squire, and was resident at Harden and Utkinton Halls in Cheshire, and at Pepper Hall in Yorkshire, and was a feoffee of the grammar school and of the Chetham Hospital at Manchester. The other, Crewe Arden, A.M., of Trinity College, 1776, became rector of Tarporley, and died there in 