A name adopted in the eleventh century by the son of a priest. “Fulk, Seigneur of Guernaville, and Dean of Evreux, affords a conspicuous example of a married dignitary, for he espoused the noble Lady Orielda, and had ten children, of whom the youngest, Walter, assumed the name of Tyrrel, and transmitted it to William Rufus’ favourite and boon-companion.” - Sir Francis Palgrave. This was the “Walterus Tirelde”of Domesday, Castellan of Pontoise and Lord of Poix, who was living in the Vexin in 1091, and is popu­larly credited with having caused the death of the Red King. “It will be well to repeat the story, as told by the two Chroniclers who give the fullest account, with all its omens and apparitions. The King had gone to bed on the evening of the 1 st of August, and was suddenly awoke by a fearful vision. He dreamt that he was bled, and the stream of blood, pouring up to heaven, clouded the very day. His attendants, hearing his cries to the Virgin, rushed in with lights, and stayed with him all that night. Morning dawned; and Robert FitzHamon, his special friend, came to him with another dream, dreamt also that very night by a foreign monk then staying at the court, who had seen the King enter a church, and there seize the Rood, tearing apart its legs and arms. For a time the image bore the insult, then suddenly struck the King. He fell, and flames and smoke issued from his mouth, putting out the light of the stars. The Red King’s courage had, however, by this time returned. With a laugh, he cried, 'He is a monk, and dreams for money like a monk: give him this:’ handing FitzHamon a hundred shillings. Still the two dreams had their effect, and William hesitated to test their truth. At dinner that day he drank more than usual. His spirits once more returned. He defied the dreams. In spite of their warnings, he determined to hunt. As he was preparing, his armourer approached with six brand-new arrows. Choosing out two, he cried, as he gave them to Walter Tiril, Lord of Poix and Pontoise, who had lately come from Normandy, ‘The best arrows to the best marksman.’ The small hunting party, consisting of his brother Henry, William de Breteuil, Walter Tiril, and FitzHamon, and a few more, then set out. As they are leaving the court-yard, a monk from St. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester arrives. He gives the King a letter from Serlo, the Abbot. It told how a monk of that abbey had dreamt that he had seen the Saviour and all the host of heaven standing round the great white throne. Then, too, came the Virgin robed in light, and flung herself at the feet of her Son, and prayed Him, by his precious Blood and Agony on the Cross, to take pity on the English: prayed, too, as He was judge of all men, and avenger of all wickedness, to punish the King. The Saviour answered her, ‘You must be patient and wait: due retribution will in time befall the wicked.’ The King read it and laughed. ‘Does Serlo,’ he asked, 'think that I believe the visions of every snoring monk? Does he take me for an Englishman, who puts faith in the dreams of every old woman?’ With this the party once more sets out into the Forest, the woods still green with their deep summer foliage.

“So they hunted all that noon and afternoon. The sun was now setting. Tiril and the King were alone. Vitalis says there were some others. A stag bounded by: the King shot and slightly wounded the quarry. On, though, it still bounded in the full light of the setting sun. The King stood watching it, shading his eyes with his hand. At that moment another deer broke cover. Tiril this time shot, and the shaft lodged itself in the King’s breast. “William of Malmesbury says nothing about the tree from which nearly all modern historians represent the arrow as glancing. Vitalis expressly states that it rebounded from the back of a beast of chase (fera), apparently, by the mention of bristles, a wild boar. Matthew Paris first mentions the tree, but his narrative is doubtful.” - Ibid. He fell without a word or groan, vainly trying to pull out the arrow, which broke short in his hand.

“So perished William the Red.” - Wise's New Forest.

Tiril leapt on his horse, spurred away in hot haste, and never drew bridle till he had reached the Avon, which then formed the S.W. boundary of the forest. Here he was compelled to halt, for his hardly-pressed horse had cast a shoe; and, before taking the water at the ford that has ever since borne his name, he turned into a smithy to have it re-shod. At this same place, now known as Avon-Tyrrel, there is still a smithy, on the old site by the river side, that to this day pays a yearly fine of ₤3 10s. to the Crown for furnishing this horse-shoe to aid his escape. It is about twelve miles distant from “the lonely glen of Canterton, where the King is said to have fallen. The oak from which, as the legend runs, the arrow glanced, is long since dead, but a stone marks its site, now capped over with a hideous cast-iron case.” - Ibid. Leland gives a different name to the locality. “The Place wher it is saide that Tyrelle kyllyd King William Rufus ys caullid Thorougham, and there standith yet a Chapelle.” He evidently means Fritham, called Truhamin Domesday. But it is round “Rufus’ Stone” that, as the common people firmly believe, the bloody spectre of the King wanders and moans at night. His body was found by a poor charcoal- burner called Purkis, who conveyed it in his cart to Winchester, the blood from the gaping wound “reddening the road and clotting the dust”as he went. “His descendants have ever since lived in the same cottage, and maintained their ancient rank. Until lately, the Purkis for the time being always kept as a sacred relic the wheel of the cart in which his ancestor had carried the dead King!” - Woodward's Hampshire. Some of them are still to be found “in the woods and in the village of Minestead.” - Wise’s New Forest.

Tirill was never called to account for the King’s death. He was a friend of the banished Archbishop Anselm, and it has been suggested that he purposed to avenge the wrongs of the Church while ridding the world of a tyrant; but the general opinion has always acquitted him of any murderous intent. It is even uncertain whether it was from his bow that the fateful arrow came. “It is noteworthy that Giraldus Cambrensis names another courtier as the culprit. According to his account, the arrow that the Prior of Dunstable had seen prefigured in a dream as destined to cause the King’s death was given by William himself to one of his followers, Ralph de Aquis. By an arrow from that knight’s bow William Rufus fell before the day had passed.” His headlong flight was shared by the rest of the hunting party, who all rode for their lives in different directions, and cannot therefore lead us to infer his guilt. Above all, he himself maintained his innocence with his last breath. When he was lying on his death-bed, he declared “that he was not so much as on the field when the King was slain.” - Ordericus Vitalis. “Much weight is doubtless due to this solemn denial.” - Freeman.

He appears in Domesday as the tenant of Richard FitzGilbert, Lord of Clare, of whom he held Langdon in Essex; and his descendants still continue in the county, “one of the ancientest Families,” says Morant, “that hath subsisted till our days. Thomas Tyrell was one of the Knights of the Shire in Parliaments 28, 31, 34, 38, 39, 43, 46, 47 of King Edward III.; and how often his successors were, the List of these Knights will show. And the List of Sheriffs will also show how frequently they served that office for this County: the first was John Tyrell of Herongate 2 Hen. V.” As considerable landowners, they were early of note in Essex, and boasted that for six hundred years each successive head of their house had enjoyed the honour of knighthood. One of them, Sir Hugh, gallantly defended Carisbrook Castle against the French in 1377. Another, Sir John, served Henry V. in his wars, and was Treasurer of his Household. A third descendant, whose name is carefully expunged from this honourable pedigree, by a grim fatality, justly incurred the obloquy that had undeservedly rested on his ancestor. He was the Sir James Tyrrel, “infamous in our English Histories,” that was employed by Richard III. to murder the young princes that barred his right to the throne. When Sir Richard Brackenbury, the Constable of the Tower, refused this hateful office, the King lamented to “a secret page of his”that even those he had himself brought up failed him in his need, and would do nothing for him. “f Ah!’ cried he, ‘whom shall a man trust?’‘Sir,’ quoth the page, ‘there lieth one in the palet chamber without, that I dare well say, to do your grace pleasure, the thing were right hard that he would refuse:’ meaning by this James Tyrrel.” - More. Tyrrel raised no objections, and selected “his own horse-keeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave,” and another fellow, “flesh bred in murther aforetime,” as the executioners. On the appearance of Perkin Warbeck, these two men were committed to the Tower, and examined as to the manner in which the Duke of York and his brother had been put to death. According to Lord Bacon’s narrative, they deposed: “That the King directed his Warrant to Sir James Tirrel, to receive the keyes of the Tower from the Lieutenant (for the space of one night) for the King’s speciall service. That Sir James Tirrel accordingly repaired to the Tower by night, attended by his two servants whom he had chosen for the purpose. That himself stood at the stair- foot, and sent these two Villaines to execute the murther. That they smothered them in their bed; and that done, called up their Master to see their naked dead bodies, which they had laid forth. That they were buried under the Staires, and some stones cast upon them.” The King knighted Tyrrel for his pains, and appointed him Sheriff of Cornwall. “I behold,” writes Fuller, “this Sir James as an Essex man, though now the prime Officer of this County: for King Richard accounted Cornwall the Back-door of rebellion, and therefore made this Knight the Porter thereof. Indeed it is remote from London, and the long sides of the County afford many Landing-places, objected to Britain in France, whence the Usurper feared (and at last felt) an Invasion; and therefore he appointed him Sheriff to secure the County, as obliged unto him by Gratitude for Favours received, and guilt for Faults committed. This Tirrell was afterwards executed for Treason in the Tower-yard, in the beginning of Henry VII.”

The family was conspicuously loyal during the Great Rebellion, and Sir John Tyrrel, who was then its representative, was “once decimated, twice imprisoned, thrice sequestered and forced to compound for ₤600, and many times plundered,” under the Commonwealth. “I have,” he states in an address to Charles II., “lost more than I have left (being no small matter) for my Loyalty and Love to His Majesty . . . I have lived in Purgatory near twenty years, to the Honour of my exhausted Family.” His son, who died before him, was created a baronet at the Restoration, and this title continued for exactly one hundred years, expiring with Sir Charles Tyrrel, the last heir of the elder line, in 1766.

Two other baronetcies, granted to the family, had previously become extinct. In the first years of the sixteenth century, Humphrey Tyrrel had acquired Thornton, about four miles from Buckingham, through the heiress of the Ingeltons. “He seated himself at Thornton, and was ancestor of the Tyrrels of this place, the Tyrrels of Castlethorpe, and the Tyrrels of Oakley in this county. Sir Edward Tyrrel This Sir Edward took so hearty a dislike to his eldest son Robert, that he attempted to oust him from the succession by surrendering his patent to the Crown in 1638, and obtaining a fresh one in favour of Toby his second son. But it was found that he could not legally prejudice his next heir; and thus, at his death, both his sons inherited baronetcies. Sir Robert, however, died unmarried, and both merged in Sir Toby. of Thornton was created a baronet in 1627: the title became extinct by the death of Sir Thomas Tyrrel in 1755.” - Lyons's Bucks. His daughter Christabella, Viscountess Saye and Sele, “the last of the ancient family of Tyrrels of Buckinghamshire, survived till 1789, reaching the great age of ninety four. She retained her youthful vivacity, and joined in the amusements of the young people about her till almost the last period of her life.” - Ibid.

The first Baronet had two half-brothers that took opposite sides in the Civil War. One of them, Sir Timothy of Oakley, was Master of the Buckhounds to Charles I., and both his sons served in the Royal army; the elder, another Sir Timothy, Governor of Cardiff, and General of the Ordnance under Lord Gerard, was heavily mulcted by the sequestrators; the second, William, was killed at Chester in 1644. His line ended with his great-grandson, Lieut.-Gen. James Tyrrel.

The other brother, Sir Thomas, of Hanslape, the only Roundhead of the family, threw in his lot with Cromwell, was a colonel in the Parliamentary army, a Judge of Common Pleas, and one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal to the Protector. His son Peter was created a baronet in 1665, and married a granddaughter of Sir Walter Raleigh’s, but the next in succession left no male heir.

The existing family derives from a younger brother of the loyal Cavalier who “lived in Purgatory for twenty years,” under the Commonwealth. They received a baronetcy in 1809. It is curious that Fuller, in his ‘Worthies,’ entirely overlooks this principal house of Springfield; for, in speaking of the family as “rich and numerous in Essex, of exemplary note and principal regard,” he adds: “This name (if still alive) is gasping in this county, but continues healthful in Buckinghamshire. "

It is, or was, also found in Ireland. “Hugh Tirell”was one of Strongbow’s knights; and “Castle Knoc,” says Camden, “was heretofore the barony of the Tirels, whose Estate by females was transferr’d to other Families about the year 1370.”

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Tirelde.