sse 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.

It has been considered strange that, after the application and even
after the grant (preserved in MS. "Coll. of Arms," R. 21), no use
thereof can be proved, though the heralds added to the former grant:
"and we have lykewise uppon an other escucheon impaled the same with the
auncient arms of the said Arden of Wellyngcote, signifying thereby that
it maye and shalbe lawfull, for the said John Shakespeare, gent., to
beare and use the same shields of arms, single or impaled, as aforesaid,
during his natural lyfe, and that it shalbe lawful for his children,
issue, and posterity, to beare, use, quarter, and shewe the same with
their dew