1564. When attesting documents he occasionally
made his mark, but there is evidence in the Stratford archives that he
could write with facility; and he was credited with financial aptitude.
The municipal accounts, which were checked by tallies and counters, were
audited by him after he ceased to be chamberlain, and he more than once
advanced small sums of money to the corporation.

The poet's mother.

With characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of assured fortune--Mary,
youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote in the
parish of Aston Cantlowe, near Stratford. The Arden family in its chief
branch, which was settled at Parkhall, Warwickshire, ranked with the most
influential of the county. Robert Arden, a progenitor of that branch,
was sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1438 (16 Hen. VI), and
this sheriff's direct descendant, Edward Arden, who was himself high
sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was executed in 1583 for alleged
complicity in a Roman Catholic plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth.
{6} John Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of the family,
and there is no trustworthy evidence to determine the exact degree of
kinship between the two branches. Her grandfather, Thomas Arden,
purchased in 1501 an estate at Snitterfield, which passed, with other
property, to her father Robert; John Shakespeare's father, Richard, was
one of this Robert Arden's Snitterfield tenants. By his first wife,
whose name is not known, Robert Arden had seven daughters, of whom all
but two married; John Shakespeare's wife seems to have been the youngest.
Robert Arden's second wife, Agnes or Anne, widow of John Hill (_d._
1545), a substantial farmer of Bearley, survived him; but by her he had
no issue. When he died at the end of 1556, he owned a farmhouse at
Wilmcote and many acres, besides some hundred acres at Snitterfield, with
two farmhouses which he let out to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of
his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that he had lived in
comfort; his house was adorned by as many as eleven 'painted cloths,'
which then did duty for tapestries among the middle class. The exordium
of his will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and proved on
December 16 following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. For
his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he showed especial affection
by nominating them his executors. Mary received not onl