the elder brother of our Robert's grandfather, was Squire for the body to that king2; the duty of which

long resided; and as they express it, "had continued by some descents in good reputation and credit." Heralds, when once they were satisfied that there was a sufficient ground for granting the arms which were claimed, were not very rigid in examining into the title-deeds of men's estates.

2 Dugdale's Antiq. of Warwickshire, p. 653, edit. 1656. For this assertion he only quotes Holgrave, qu. 19, by which is meant the nineteenth quire of the book so denominated in the Prerogative Office; but in that quire there is no will of any person of the name of Arden. I suppose, therefore, that in the will of some other person contained in the quire cited, Sir John Arden is mentioned (probably as one of the feoffees in some feofment), and is described as Squire for the body to King Henry the Seventh; but the laxity of this reference prevents me from furnishing my readers with the words alluded to by Dugdale. A passage, however, in Sir John Arden's will, which is in the Prerogative Office (Parch. qu. 8), proves that he was frequently honoured by the visits of the King, whom he probably attended in Bosworth field. By his will, which was made on the 4th of June, 1526 (not 1525, as Dugdale has it), he gives to his son Thomas, as "heire lomys and to remayne in the maner of the Loge from heire to heire, a standing cup with a cover well gilt, and the best salt with a cover." He likewise bequeaths to him "a paire of swannys, breedyng in the mote; a great pott with a great paire of gobbards; a great broch; a paire of andyrons for the hall; a flding table with the kerven cupbord; the bedde in the king's chamber with all that belongeth of the best, with a hanging of the same, rede and grene." To his son John, a gowne furred with foye, a blak gowne furred with booge, a blak velvet doublet; " his "best hose, the secunde salt with a cover, the secunde wayne, two oxen, an oxe-harrowe, with the hole tynys, two candlesticks, a better and a worse." To his wife Elizabeth, "all the goods that she brought, both here and at the Holt." Of his brother Robert, who is one of the witnesses to his will, he thus speaks: "Item, I will that my brothers, Thomas, Martin, and

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office, requiring a personal attendance on his sovereign both by day and night, accompanied with a constant familiar intercourse, he necessarily had frequent op

Robert, have their fees during their lives." This will was proved, June 27, 1526; and it appears from the Office found after the death of the testator, that he died on the day on which his will was made. Esc. 18 Hen. VIII. p. 1, n. 9. Dugdale was unacquainted with the exact time of his death.

3 See a manuscript in the Herald's Office, M. 7, entitled "The Services of Divers Officers of the Courte," one part of which was written in the time of King Henry VII. another in the 13th year of Henry VIII.

"As for the Squyers for the body, they ought to aray the kyng and unaray, and no man else to sett hand on the kyng, and the yeman or grome of the robes to take to the Squyer for the body all the kyngs stuffe, as well his shone as his other gere. And the Squyer for the body to draw theym on. And the Squyer for the body aught to take the charge of the cupborde for all nyght; and if please the kyng to have a palett about his traverse for all night, there must be two Squyers for the body, or ells one knyght for the body; or els to lye in their owne chambers. And the usher must kepe the chamber dore untill the kyng be in bedd: and to be thereat on the morowe at the kyngs uprysyng: and the usher must see that the watche be sett, and to know of the kyng where they shall watche." P. 33, verso.

"Item, a Squyer for the body or gentleman huisher owght to sett the kyngs sworde at his bedd hed.

"Item, a Squyer for the body owght to charge a secret grome or page to have the kepyng of the said bedd, with a light until the tyme the kyng be disposed to go unto hit." Ibid. p. 20, verso.

"At dinner (says a late writer on the nature and duty of this office), there was another office to be performed by the esquire; for the ordinances of King Henry VII. tell us, that one of the esquires of the body is to be ready and obedient at dinner and supper, to serve the king of his pottage at such time as he shall be commanded by the sewer and gentleman usher.

"Though we have now left the king in his privy chamber, and in the hands of the servants of that department, yet we must not

portunities of ingratiating himself with his master, and a ready access to the royal favour. He died

entirely dismiss the esquire; for Sir H. Spelman says, that when the king went out, the office of the esquire was to follow him and carry the cloak.

"Thus much for the office of the esquire of the body by day; but the principal, most essential, and most honourable part of his duty was at night; for when the king retired to bed, the esquire had the concentrated power of the gentleman ushers, the vice chamberlain, and lord chamberlain, in himself; having the absolute command of the house both above and below stairs. At this period [the reign of King Henry VIII.], and till the close of the last century, the royal apartments, from the bedchamber to the guard-chamber inclusively, were occupied in the night by one or more of the servants belonging to each chamber respectively. The principal officer, then the gentleman, now the lord of the bedchamber, slept in a pallet bed in the same room with the king; and in the ante-room between the privy chamber and the bedchamber (in the reign of King Charles II. at least) slept the groom of the bedchamber. In the privy chamber next adjoining, slept two of the six gentlemen of the privy chamber in waiting; and in the presence chamber, the esquire of the body on a pallet bed, upon the haut pas, under the cloth of estate; while one of the pages of the presence chamber slept in the same room, without the verge of the canopy, not far from the door. All these temporary beds were put up at night, and displaced in the morning, by the officers of a particular branch of the wardrobe, called the wardrobe of beds.

"After supper, previous to the king's retiring to his bedchamber, the proper officers were to see all things furnished for the night, some for the king's bedchamber, and others for the king's cup-board, which was sometimes in the privy chamber, and sometimes in the presence chamber, at the royal pleasure, and furnished with refections for the king's refreshment, if called for. After this, the officers of the day retired, and committed all to the charge of the esquire of the body. This domestick ceremony was called the Order of All Night; the nature of which I shall now give at large from an account preserved in the Lord

June 4, 1526, in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth. Of his five brothers, we are only concerned with Robert, who was living in 1526, being a witness to John's will. I find by an inquisition taken after the death of Sir John Arden, that his eldest son, Thomas, was then forty years old, and upwards; and consequently he must have been born in or before the year 1484. His father indeed was married eleven years before, but probably when he was not above eighteen, his wife's father having, for the sake of his fortune, inveigled him into a marriage in his minority, a practice at that time extremely common. If we suppose Sir John Arden's brother, Robert (who must have been near three years younger than he, two other children having intervened between them), to have married in 1484, he might have been, and probably was, the father of that Robert Arden, of whom neither Dugdale, nor any of our other antiquaries, seem to have had any knowledge; who was groom or page of the bedchamber to King Henry the Seventh;

Chamberlain's Office. The writer, who was himself an esquire of the body to two successive kings, goes circumstantially through the whole of the esquire's business of the night; from whence it will appear, that even so lately as the middle of the last century, the office was of so confidential a nature, that no despatch, letter, or message, could be communicated to the king in the night, but what was brought to the esquire on duty, and by him carried in propriâ personâ to the king."

For a more particular account of this ancient office, which finally expired in the time of King William (1694), and the ceremony called the Order of All Night, see Curialiæ, or an Historical Account of some Branches of the Royal Household, by Samuel Pegge, Esq. Part I. 4to. 1782.

4 Esc. 18 Hen. VIII. p. 1, n. 97.

and appears to have been a favourite of his sovereign, having been highly distinguished and rewarded by him. In the seventeenth year of his reign (Feb. 22, 1502), perhaps by the interest of Sir John his uncle, who, it may be supposed, placed him about the King', he was constituted keeper of the royal park called Aldercar°; and in the following September, bailiff of the lordship of Codnore, and keeper of the park there. About five years afterwards, in September, 1507, two years before the King's death, at which time, having probably attained his twenty-second year, he is no longer styled unus garcionum camera, he obtained a lease from the crown of the manor of Yoxsall, in the county of Stafford, for twenty-one years; which,

s That Robert, the nephew of Sir John Arden, was placed in this situation originally by the favour of his uncle, is extremely probable, from the nature of the duty of a groom or page of the King's chamber, who attended on certain occasions on the squire for the body, as that officer did on the King. See a manuscript in the Herald's Office, already quoted, M. 7, p. 19:

"The Rome and service belonging to a Page of the kyngs Chamber to doo,

"Item, the said Pageis at nyght, at season convenyent, must make the payletts for knyghts and squyers for the body, in suche a chamber as they shalbe appoynted unto.

"Item, the said pageis shall doo make redy the said knyghts and Squyers for the body, and bere theyr gere to the kyngs great chamber at the instaunce of the said knyghts and squyers to their servaunts: And the said pageis to receive of the said knyghts and squyers servaunts such nyght gere as they shall delyver theym for their said maistres. Thus don, the said pageis to make sure the fyers and lights in every chamber, and so to make their paylet at the chamber dore where the said knyghts and Squyer do lye."

6 See Appendix.

7 See Appendix.