Unknown.

Ralph Dayrel, Oxfordshire, Henry III-Edward I: Testa de Nevill, sive Liber Feodorum, temp. Henry III-Edward I.

Henry Dayrel, Buckinghamshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Ralph Dayrel, Buckinghamshire, ibid.

Isabella Darel, Yorkshire, ibid.

Gilbert Darell, Lincolnshire, ibid.

1663. Henry Darell and Mary Legg; Marriage Alleg. (Canterbury).

DAREL: Gilbert Darel of Peeblesshire rendered homage, 1296 (Bain, II, p. 207). Bardsley has the name under Darrell but gives no explanation. Harrison says French Darel (also later Dareau), probably Frankish cognate of Old English personal name Deor(a) Darel in English HR.

From the castle of Airel in the arrondissement of St. Lo (now known as Mesnilvité), built on low ground by the river bank, where the bridge of St. Louis crosses the Vire. This family came over at the Conquest, and is first heard of in Yorkshire, where Marmaduc de Arel witnesses a charter of William, son of Alan de Percy (Mon. ii. 395); and Thomas de Arel occurs in 1158 (Rot Pip.). This Thomas, according to the Liber Niger, held of Henry de Percy; and in the same record we find Ralph de Airel entered as a tenant of the Honour of Wallingford. Either he, or another Ralph, held of Saier de Wahull at Horton in Northants, and half a knight’s fee in Oxfordshire, where Henry Dayrel likewise held a fee.—Testa de Nevill. Sessay, their Yorkshire seat, is said to have been acquired through the heiress of Richard de Percy of Kildale, by William Dayrel, in the time of King John. It was certainly in their possession as early as 1223-1238, when Sir Marmaduke Dayrel witnesses one of the charters of Idonea de Busli, the widow of Robert de Vipont, as her Seneschal. He it was who bestowed the church of Sessay on York Minster. Another Sir Marmaduke, living in 1364, married Alice, daughter of Ralph, and sister of Geoffrey Pigot, and had been succeeded five years afterwards by his son Sir William, the father of Marmaduke, William, and John. Each of these two younger brothers founded a memorable family, to be presently mentioned; William at Littlecote, and John at Cale Hill.

Marmaduke carried on the line at Sessay; and the Sir Edward Darell whom we find in 1433 among the Commissioners appointed by Henry VI. to report upon the Yorkshire gentry, The list given is very short. “The reader may remember how the main design of this enquiry was (whatever was pretended) to detect such as favoured the House of York. Now the gentry of this county were generally addicted to this party, which made them so remiss in this matter, slightly slobbering it over.”— Fuller. was probably his son. The line ended in 1505. “The Darelles of Ceyssa by Newborow in Yorkshire,” writes Leland, “were the eldest Howse, or one of the eldest of that Name, that were yn England. The Heires Males of this House fayllid in King Henry the VII. tyme, and then one Guie Dawnay of Yorkshire maried the Heyre General, a Woman of a Manly Corage, and John her son is now the Heyre.” This courageous heiress, whose history I have failed to discover, was Joan, sister of Sir Thomas Darell, the last Lord of Sessay, and wife of Sir Guy Dawnay of Cowick.

Sir William Darell’s second son and namesake, who married the heiress of Littlecote, Elizabeth Calston, was Under-Treasurer of England in 1399, and settled at his new home in Wiltshire during the following reign. “Litlecote, the Darell’s chiefe house, a mile from Ramesbyri,” remains much as Leland describes it, “a right fayre and large park hangyinge upon the clyffe of an high hille welle wodyd, over Kenet.” The next heir, Sir George, was (unlike his Northern cousins) a Yorkist, and Keeper of the Great Wardrobe to Ed. IV. By his wife Margaret, the daughter of Lord Stourton, he had, among other children, Elizabeth, married to John Seymour, who was the grandmother of the “Fair Flower of England,” Queen Jane. He and his successors constantly appear on the roll of Sheriffs; the last being Edmund Darell, in 1519. Within half a century of that time, the family had disappeared, and the tragic story of its fall—here given—is still freshly remembered in the neighbourhood. “People even now speak of the Darrells as the old family, and seldom say the same of those who succeeded them, though these have held possession for three hundred years. At Froxfield, at Chilton, at Ramsbury, and about the estate, keepers and peasants can tell a vivid tradition of the great crime which they say broke the old family and laid vengeance on the new.”—F K. J. Shenton.

One autumn night, an old midwife who lived by herself either at Ramsbury or Chilton (both villages are named by tradition), was roused from her bed by loud raps at her door. She at once got up, lighted a taper, and opened the door, before which stood a man in riding gear, who had alighted, and was holding his horse. The woman always maintained that she could not see his face, for the night was rainy and gusty, the light feeble, and blown about by the wind; and as she spread out her hand to protect her taper, a deep shadow was thrown upon him. He told her he was sent to bid her come to a lady who needed her services, and asked what was her fee? When she mentioned it, “You shall have it,” he replied, “twenty times told, if you will ride with me hoodwinked, and swear to keep the matter secret, for the lady desires to remain unknown. Behold here an earnest of the bargain,” putting some money into her hand. The midwife, tempted by this offer, took the required oath, and agreed to go. She was carefully blindfolded, placed on a pillion behind the messenger, and carried off to her destination. She was very curious to know whither she was going; and, as far as she could, took careful note of her journey. At first they went along the high road; but when, as she judged, they had gone a couple of miles, they turned off, and crossed grass fields and ploughed land, the man several times getting off to unfasten gates. Then they passed under the heavy drip of trees, then again were on a beaten track; and twice, during their hour and a half’s ride, the horse plunged into the water, and she knew they were fording the river Kennet. At last his hoofs clattered on the stones of a courtyard, and they had arrived. She was lifted out of her saddle, and led through what appeared to be a large house, along passages, and up a staircase, of which she did not fail to count the steps, to the room where she was expected. Here the muffler was removed from her face, and she found herself in a spacious bed-chamber, with a bright fire of logs blazing on the hearth. She “considered it must be some great person’s house, as the room was twelve feet high:” but she had been strictly forbidden to ask any questions, or speak a word. In a large bed hung with blue curtains lay the lady—a very young woman in piteous anguish and distress; and the only other person in the room was a gentleman, pacing to and fro, who bade her, somewhat sternly, “do her office.” She attended the lady with all diligence, but still, moved by curiosity, took an opportunity of cutting out a piece of the blue bed-curtain, and slipping it into her pocket In due time a fine boy was born; and she was laying the child in its mother’s arms, when suddenly the gentleman strode up to the bedside, snatched it from her, and threw it into the fire. The poor little baby was strong and healthy, and in its struggles rolled off the burning logs to the hearth-stone; but the murderer crushed it with the heel of his heavy boot, and thrust it back into the flames. The shrieks of the agonized mother rang through the room; and the nurse had to support her, as best she might, through the first violent paroxysms of grief and terror. When the poor lady became more composed, and could be left with safety, it was signified to the midwife that she might go: a glass of some cordial was administered to her, and she went blindfolded, as she had come. As she was led downstairs, a horrible smell—the unmistakable smell of burnt flesh—seemed to pervade the whole house; and her guide muttered some words of explanation. The gardeners, he said, were firing the weeds, and burning the moles among them, as was their wont at this season of the year. He told her she was to be taken back by a longer road, but without gates; and it proved a smoother and easier one. She was set down within fifty yards of her own door: and as her feet touched the ground, she raised her hand to take off her muffler; but the man held back her arm, and saying, “Not yet —and silence, remember! silence!” put a heavy purse into her hand. The next moment she heard the clatter of his horse’s hoofs, as he struck it with his spurs, and rode away. The purse was full of gold.

For some time the woman kept her word and held her tongue; but before very long she began to ponder and doubt. Her conscience pricked her: she could not shake off the horror of the scene she had witnessed, and she was worried by the jealous suspicions of her neighbours, who perceived that she had suddenly grown rich. Finally she made up her mind to unburthen herself of her secret; and, going before a justice of the peace, told him all she knew. She “considered with herself the time she was riding, and how many miles she might have rode at that rate in the time.” She produced the sample of bed- curtain she had brought away with her, and declared she “should know the chamber if she saw it.” Accordingly, she was taken about to all the neigh­bouring houses, and successfully identified the bedroom at Littlecote; even the number of steps she had counted in the staircase was found correct. Darrel was charged with the murder; brought to trial before Judge Popham; and acquitted. The verdict was in such flagrant contradiction to the evidence, that it was always believed to have been bought, and at no less a price than the reversion of Littlecote Hall; “to be short,” concludes Aubrey, “this Judge had this noble House, Parke, and Mannor, and (I thinke) more, for a bribe to save the Knight’s life.” One single point on which the woman’s evidence broke down is said to have enabled him to pronounce an acquittal. It was proved that, to avoid discovery, she had been conducted to Littlecote by a most circuitous route; but she swore that she had only forded the river twice; whereas, her house being on the opposite bank, she must have crossed it either once or three times. Darrel, though he escaped the scaffold, broke his neck out hunting a few months afterwards, at a place still shown as “Wild Darrel’s Leap”; and it was then found that Littlecote Hall, and his whole property, had been devised to Judge Popham.

No one has ever known who was the mother of the murdered child. Aubrey calls her Lady Darrel’s “waiting woman”: others the knight’s own sister; others, again, his niece, a beautiful girl reported to have been sent to a convent at Avignon to learn French. Yet, more than once after she was supposed to have left Littlecote, an old fruit-woman was positive that she had seen her looking out of a small window next her bedroom.

Some have affirmed that the whole story was trumped up by a discharged servant of the Darrels, who had “left in malice, with horrid declarations of vengeance,” a short time before. But Aubrey, in whose Life of Sir John Popham it was first given to the world, lived only thirty years after Sir John had been raised to the Bench; was himself a Wiltshire man, resident in the county: and, though occasionally careless and credulous, has never been accounted untruthful. When Bacon, as Attorney-General, informed in the Star Chamber against Sir John Holies and other for “traducing the public justice,” he quoted the following instance of a similar slander: “Popham, a great judge in his time, was complained of by petition to Queen Elizabeth; it was committed to four Privy Counsellors; but the same was found to be slanderous, and the parties punished in Court.” Did this petition refer to the case of the Littlecote murder? Certain it is that Sir John left Littlecote and ₤10,000 a year—in those days regarded as an immense fortune—to his son Sir Francis, who “lived like a hog”: but much of it was dissipated by the next heir, “a great waster.” Littlecote is still held by his posterity. “General Popham, a descendant of Judge Popham, who acquitted the murderer Darrell contrary to all evidence,” writes Lord Malmesbury (who visited Littlecote in 1841), “does not like any allusion to this story. He has done all in his power to obliterate the traces of the transaction. The boards in the room where the child was burnt have been taken up, and oil-cloth nailed down over the floor. A large cabinet has been placed to conceal the fire-place, and all the curtains, out of which it was said a piece was cut, are destroyed.” Both oil-cloth and cabinet had, however, been removed by his successor, when I was myself there a few years afterwards. Sir William Darrel’s third son, John, founded a Kentish family which was “of eminent reputation among the gentry of the county,” and lasted over four hundred and fifty years. He bought Cale Hill in 1410, and married two Kentish heiresses: first, a daughter of Valentine Barrett of Perry Court; and secondly, a niece of Archbishop Chicheley, with whom he obtained Scotney. Of his son by the first wife came the Darells of Cale Hill; of his son by the second, the Darells of Scotney, extinct in the main line in 1720, when, by virtue of an old family settlement, the estate reverted to Cale Hill. One of the younger brothers was the ancestor of a house still in existence, to which belonged Sir Marmaduke Darrel of Fulmer Court, Bucks; “servant of Q. Elizabeth in her wars by sea and land, and Cofferer to King James, and King Charles I.,” as he is styled in his epitaph. Fulmer Church, rebuilt at his sole cost in 1610, retains his effigy in gilt armour. “He died in 1631; and his grandchildren, having squandered away their patrimony, were obliged to sell the manor to their servants. Fulmer Place has been long ago pulled down.”—Lysons. Seventh in descent from him was Sir Lionel, created a baronet in 1795, whose representatives are now seated at Fretherne Court, Gloucestershire. Of this family probably was Sir Thomas Darell, “chosen for the comeliness of his person to command the masque before the King and Queen at Whitehall in 1623, and a second time in the City, when he was knighted.”—Ibid.

The last Darell of Cale Hill died in 1846. The old name had been so very long associated with the place, and the owners had been so invariably resident, that it is still a common saying in Kent “as old as Cale Hill.” They were no less constant to the old faith than to the old home, and remained professed Roman Catholics to the very end. Many of their monuments and memorials are to be found in the neighbouring church of Little Chart. Sir James Darell was Governor of Guisnes, and Constable of Haimes, near Calais. Another, Philip Darell, rebuilt Cale Hill on a different site during the last century.

There yet remain to be noticed the Dayrells of Lillingstone-Dayrell, whose severance from the parent stock must have taken place at least seven hundred years ago. They can boast of a local antiquity seldom rivalled in England; for the land they then held is theirs now. “They settled at Lillingston-Dayrell before the year 1200, and the manor has ever since continued in the family by lineal succession in the male line. Richard Dayrell, who died in 1801, and lies buried in Lillingston Church, was the thirty-first male heir of the family.”— Lysons’ Bucks. Their earliest ancestor on record was a Richard who lived under Cceur de Lion; and they have contentedly remained Buckinghamshire squires from that time to this; the long procession of years, that have transformed all else, passing them by unchanged. Alas! Lillingston-Dayrell was sold to Mr. Robarts at the close of 1886.

"William de Orrell, a gentleman of the north parts of Normandie, soe called of a castle and family of that countrie, (and soe by contraction the vowels E and O are changed to A, by which Darell is pronounced for De Orel!,) the which came in with the Conqueror, being for his good services done in the North. . . . endowed with the possessions of a Saxon called Etheldred of Broadsworth, an ancient seat twelve miles west of Yorke." Such is the statement attached to an old pedigree quoted in Burke's Commoners. The family were undoubtedly ancient at Sesay in Yorkshire, but there appears to be no documentary evidence for the above assertion; neither does any place in the north of Normandy bear the name of Orrell. The Norman origin of the family, is, however, probable.

(Northen French) A corruption of De Orrell, so called from a castle and family of Normandy.

Darell: from Arel, on the River Vire; obtained lands in Yorkshire.