e distant county of Cheshire. With
that stock there was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was
lineally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat were unlikely to
learn of its suggested impalement with the Shakespeare shield, and the
heralds were less liable to the risk of litigation. But the Shakespeares
wisely relieved the College of all anxiety by omitting to assume the
Arden coat. The Shakespeare arms alone are displayed with full heraldic
elaboration on the monument above the poet's grave in Stratford Church;
they alone appear on the seal and on the tombstone of his elder daughter,
Mrs. Susanna Hall, impaled with the arms of her husband; {192a} and they
alone were quartered by Thomas Nash, the first husband of the poet's
granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. {192b}

Some objection was taken a few years later to the grant even of the
Shakespeare shield, but it was based on vexatious grounds that could not
be upheld. Early in the seventeenth century Ralph Brooke, who was York
herald from 1593 till his death in 1625, and was long engaged in a bitter
quarrel with his fellow officers at the College, complained that the arms
'exemplified' to Shakespeare usurped the coat of Lord Mauley, on whose
shield 'a bend sable' also figured. Dethick and Camden, who were
responsible for any breach of heraldic etiquette in the matter, answered
that the Shakespeare shield bore no more resemblance to the Mauley coat
than it did to that of the Harley and the Ferrers families, which also
bore 'a bend sable,' but that in point of fact it differed conspicuously
from all three by the presence of a spear on the 'bend.' Dethick and
Camden added, with customary want of precision, that the person to whom
the grant was made had 'borne magistracy and was justice of peace at
Stratford-on-Avon; he maried the daughter and heire of Arderne, and was
able to maintain that Estate.' {193}

Purchase of New Place.

Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly in his own person a more
effective step in the way of rehabilitating himself and his family in the
eyes of his fellow townsmen. On May 4 he purchased the largest house in
the town, known as New Place. It had been built by Sir Hugh Clopton more
than a century before, and seems to have fallen into a ruinous condition.
But Shakespeare paid for it, with two barns and two gardens, the then
substantial sum of 60 pounds. Owing to the sudden death of the vendor,
William Underhill, on Ju