Source
Thomas Arden, or Arderne, was a successful businessman in the early Tudor period. Born in 1508, probably in Norwich, Arden took advantage of the tumult of the Reformation to make his fortune, trading in the former monastic properties dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. In fact, the house in which he was murdered (which is still standing in Faversham) was a former guest house of Faversham Abbey, the Benedictine abbey near the town. His wife Alice had taken a lover, a man of low status named Mosby; together, they plotted to murder her husband. After several bungled attempts on his life, two ex-soldiers from the former English dominion of Calais known as Black Will and Loosebag (called Shakebag, or Shakebags, in the play) were hired and continued to make botched attempts. Arden was finally killed in his own home on 14 February 1551, and his body was left out in a field during a snowstorm, hoping that the blame would fall on someone who had come to Faversham for the St Valentine's Day fair. The snowfall stopped, however, before the killers' tracks were covered, and the tracks were followed back to the house. Bloodstained swabs and rushes were found, and the killers quickly confessed. Alice and Mosby were put on trial and convicted of the crime; he was hanged and she burnt at the stake in 1551. Black Will may also have been burnt at the stake after he had fled to Flanders: the English records state he was executed in Flanders, while the Flemish records state he was extradited to England. Loosebag escaped and was never heard of again. Other conspirators were hanged in chains. One - George Bradshaw, who was convicted by an obscure passage in a sealed letter he had delivered - was wrongly convicted and posthumously acquitted.
The story would most likely have been known to Elizabethan readers through the account in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, although the murder was so recent, and so memorable, that it is also likely that it was in the living memory of some of the anonymous playwright's acquaintances.
Read more about this topic: Arden Of Faversham
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