Conclusion

Abstract

We conclude that the Dudley ascendancy was a political project that needs to be understood through the methodologies of material, political, and cultural history. This adds to the recent more nuanced understanding of religious allegiance in early modern England, and historians’ emerging challenge to an assumed consensus among the élite. We suggest new approaches to the Dudleys, the cultural legacy of Edward Arden, and new ways for historians of politics and theatre to examine the political activities of particular peerage families. We suggest how further investigation of Drayton Bassett could offer new understanding of how people in early modern Warwickshire negotiated their social and political interactions. The chapter re-examines the Shakespeares’ applications for coats of arms in 1596 and 1599–1600, by which date the family name had gained a new lustre, through published praise in 1598 of William’s skill in imitating a wide range of revered classical authors, and through the commercial, social capital that now accrued to a name which publishers from 1598 used for greater profits, using Shakespeare’s name not only on his own work, but on those of other authors. In a different social context, the recovered status of the Arden name at Court explains why the Shakespeares now wished to impale their arms with the Ardens, so recently attainted in blood. Robert Arden had survived years of Burghley’s abuse of the legal process to conceal major flaws in Edward Arden’s condemnation, so that after Burghley’s death, in May 1599 Elizabeth partially restored the Arden name.