If we are to credit M. de Gerville, who gives a similar meaning to Harivel and haridelles, this name is but a synonym of the last I first met with it in Norfolk, where Robert de Hardele witnesses one of the grants to Normansburgh Priory. Roger de Hardel is a witness of Edward II.’s confirmation charter to Tichfield Abbey, Hants; and John de Hardele to Robert de Vipont’s grant to Heppe Priory, Westmorland. (Mon. Angl.) In Suffolk, according to an Inquisition taken at Dunwich 21 Hen. III., it was found that “William Hardyll takes Wrec of the Sea in the Town of Westleton, from the aforesaid Limits unto the Port of Menesmeer.”—Davy's Suffolk Collections. Was this the same William Hardell whose widow, Katherine, received from Henry III. a grant of twenty feet of land in length and breadth in Smithfield, next to the chapel of St.Bartholomew, “to build her a Recluse or Ankerage”? - Stowe. A hermitage at Smithfield—of all places in the world! is very suggestive of the lapse of time! Robert Ardell witnesses a convention made between Ralph, Abbot of Battle, and the citizens of London, in 1243. In 1249, Richard Hardell was joint-sheriff of London and Middlesex: and from 1254 to 1257 Lord Mayor. William Hardel had preceded him in the civic chair in 1215. The latter bore Vert a fesse flory counterflory Or. - Robson. Galfrid de Ardel held by Castle-guard of the Honour of Richmond in Hertfordshire. - Gale's Richmondshire. William Hardell was of Kent, and Robert Hardell of Buckinghamshire, in the reign of Ed. I. - Rotuli Hundredorum. At nearly the same date we find in Essex a Sir John Hardel, the husband of Lady Alice Beaumont, who had two daughters and coheirs: Helen, married to Sir William de Hareburgh: and Alice, the wife of William Fitz Warin, then Valectus, or gentleman of the Bedchamber, to Edward I. To the latter he gave in free marriage the manor of Whatley, that had been granted to him by John de Burgh.—Morant's Essex. Laurence de Hardell, who inherited from John de Kokeham (who lived in 1274), and his son Nicolas, are also mentioned. The Hardells of Essex bore a chevron between three molets of six points Gules—Ibid.

Robert Hardell occurs in the Norman Exchequer Rolls between 1198 and 1203.