Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Arden family is an English landed gentry family whose male line traces back to a pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon landholder who kept his status after the 1066 Norman invasion. It is best known for this rare unbroken descent and for its connection to William Shakespeare, whose mother, Mary Arden, belonged to the family.
Turchil, also recorded as Thorkell or Thorkill, was the son of Alwin, who was Sheriff of Warwickshire at the time of the Norman Conquest, and he became the real ancestor of the Ardens at the time of William the Conqueror. Scholars Parry and Enis describe him as the only Saxon magnate to increase his territories after the Norman conquest and the largest landholder in Warwickshire at the time of the Domesday survey.
The Arden family held lands in Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcester, Cheshire and Shropshire, an area that shares its name with the Forest of Arden. The forest, south of Watling Street, is associated with the setting of Shakespeare's play As You Like It.
Mary Arden, the mother of William Shakespeare, belonged to the Arden family. Edward Arden of Park Hall, who was Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was her second cousin.
In 1583, Edward Arden came under suspicion as head of a family that had remained loyal to the Catholic Church and was sentenced for allegedly plotting against Elizabeth I. His son Robert married Elizabeth Corbett, and Edward's great-grandson Robert died unmarried in 1643, ending the Park Hall male line.
The Swinton, Wentworth, and Grindlay families have also claimed an unbroken male line back to a pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon ancestor, but historians dispute these claims. Along with the Berkeley family, the Ardens are among the few whose claim of this kind is not disputed.