The Trial of John Somerville and Edward Arden

Abstract

The first detailed narrative of how the Dudleys set out to destroy Edward Arden by exploiting the mental problems of his son-in-law John Somerville, who lived just outside Stratford, but who had quarrelled with his wife, Margaret Arden Somerville, and her father, over financial differences. Using intermediaries the Dudleys provoked Somerville into riding towards London, armed with a pistol to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and arranged for his arrest and interrogation. They then concocted evidence implicating Edward Arden, both to confirm their dominance over Warwickshire and to establish that Somerville was key to a vast international Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth, a story that contained sufficient truth to enable a more radical Protestant agenda to be followed at Court and in the Privy Council, against Archbishop Whitgift’s and Sir Christopher Hatton’s conservative policies. The treason trial consistently broke with established procedures in rushing Arden, Somerville, and their families to condemnation, but the regime expended great efforts in broadcasting their ‘treason’ against the conflicting evidence known in Stratford and Warwickshire, especially that Arden had been in London when he was allegedly conspiring with Somerville just outside Stratford. The treasonous fiction also aimed to implicate Hatton in the treason, but though this failed, shockingly for contemporary society, several women from both families were condemned, and several more imprisoned in the Tower for some years, another example of the exercise of raw power by the Elizabethan regime in controlling collective memory that were very unlikely to have escaped William Shakespeare’s notice.