Monday, 5 February 2018

The Myrings in Sheepy Magna, c.1393-c.1682

In my exploration of the origin of the Myring name we saw that one of the earliest Myrings on record is one Francis de Meryng of Meering, Nottinghamshire, and that he held land in Sheepy Magna, Leicestershire in 1393. It’s in Sheepy Magna, some 235 years later, that I find my oldest Myring ancestor in a continuous traceable line, John Myring.

Sheepy Magna, along with the neighbouring hamlet of Sheepy Parva, lies some 60 miles southwest of Meering, and it’s possible to see the settlement of Myrings there as a stage in the gradual westward migration of the family which would eventually land them in Birmingham.

Sheepy Magna is mentioned in the Domesday Book as a small settlement with a population of about 70 people [1]. Some have suggested that it predated the Norman Conquest, or indeed could be much older; it lies on the Atherstone-Burton turnpike which is said to be old Celtic track predating the Roman occupation. 

While we have no records of the Myrings in Sheepy during the two centuries between Francis and John, it is interesting to note that the Battle of Bosworth occurred on 22 August 1485 in fields less than six miles away, and the night before the battle Henry Tudor’s army encamped at Whitemoors little more than an hour’s walk from Sheepy. It’s tempting to wonder whether any Myrings bore witness to the battle or its aftermath. 


This alleged hunchbacked child-murderer had an unfortunate time near Sheepy Magna

My oldest confirmed ancestor in the Myring line is not actually John, but his mother Margaret. We are fortunate that Sheepy’s parish records from the 17th century still survive, and they note the burial of one Margaret, recorded as the mother of John Myring, on 17 January 1628. We can assume that this burial was in the graveyard of the original All Saint’s Church, believed to have been built sometime before the year 1150. Sadly this is all we know of Margaret.

We know rather more about her son John. We know that he married one Hester Freeman in Sheepy Magna on 30 July 1609, and that they then proceeded to produce no fewer than ten children over the following 21 years: Ellyna (1610), Jane (1612), Hester (1614), Edward (1617), John (1619), Francis (1621), Briget (1623), Arthur (1625), Dorothy (1628), and finally my ancestor Joseph (1630).

Hester died in 1649, with John following in 1655.


The oldest known Myring generations that can be linked to the present day
Click for larger image. (Ancestry.com)


While in Sheepy the family lived through a period of tumultuous change, not least the English Civil War; we know that the North Warwickshire garrison was quarted at Sheepy at one point, leading to a dispute over a stolen horse [2].  

In 1659 the open fields were enclosed (though that process may have begun considerably earlier), with the cottagers receiving four acres each [3]. It’s notable that Edward is recorded in 1662 as paying a hearth tax under legislation introduced that year by the restored Stuart dynasty; each household had to pay one shilling per hearth in their home. Only eleven people in Sheepy Magna were eligible for the tax, of whom six, like Edward, had a single hearth. Sheepy Magna probably had a population of around 190 at this time [4]

Several of the children had a good innings. Edward lived until 1681 (aged 64). John lived until 1682 (aged 63), and is recorded in the Sheepy Magna register as being a ‘wanderer’. His burial is the last recorded link between the Myrings and Sheepy Magna. Joseph, the youngest son, made it to 1710 (aged around 80), but by the time of his death he had long since moved west to Kingsbury, Warwickshire.

All Saints Church, Sheepy Magna – picture credit: Steve Stain

I look forward to visiting Sheepy Magna one day; it will be interesting to see whether there are any Myrings left among the headstones. The Church itself is not the building that they Myrings would have known, having been almost totally rebuilt in 1788; only the original tower remains. During the reconstruction the armorial glass and monuments to local families were destroyed, not that it’s likely that a lowly family like the Myrings would have left any permanent trace inside the church – indeed Burton’s 1630 description of the building doesn’t mention them at all [5].  

My next article will follow Joseph Myring to Kingsbury, where the family remained for five generations. Joseph was a fornicating blacksmith, so do tune in.


Roll Call

Margaret buried 17 Jan 1628, Sheepy Magna, Leics.
Had issue:
1) John MYRING(E), son of Margaret (?-1628), died 1655, Sheepy Magna, Leics.

John MYRING(E), son of Margaret (?-1628), died 1655, Sheepy Magna, Leics.
Married Hester FREEMAN died in May 1649 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was buried on 28 May 1649 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
Had issue:
1) Ellyna MYRING(E) was born in 1610 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was christened on 29 Jul 1610 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
2) Jane MYRING(E) was christened on 25 Apr 1612 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was born in 1612 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
3) Hester MYRING(E) was christened on 28 Jun 1614 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was born in 1614 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
4) Edward MYRING(E) was born in 1617 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He was christened on 14 Dec 1617 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He died in 1681 at the age of 64 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. Edward was buried on 20 Sep 1681 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. Sheepy Parva Leics Edward Myringe has 1 hearth in 1662. Eleven people in village paying tax one with 7, one 6, 3 with 2 and 6 with 1.
5) John MYRING(E) was born in 1619 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He was christened on 5 Dec 1619 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He was buried on 14 Apr 1682 in Sheepy Magna,            Leics. John died in 1682 at the age of 63 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. Possibly his death            in the parish register, described as wanderer
6) Francis MYRING(E) was born in 1621 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He was christened on 5 Nov 1621 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
7) Briget MYRING(E) was christened on 3 Mar 1623 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was born in 1623 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
8) Arthur MYRING(E) was christened on 4 Feb 1625 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. He was born in 1625 in Sheepy Magna.Leics. He was buried on 7 May 1635 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. Arthur died in May 1635 at the age of 10 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
9) Dorothy MYRING(E) was born in 1628 in Sheepy Magna, Leics. She was christened on 26 Dec 1628 in Sheepy Magna, Leics.
10) Joseph MYRING (MIERING), born 1630, Sheepy Magna, Leics; died 1710, Kingsbury, Warks.


Endnotes
[1] http://www.mdlp.co.uk/resources/Sheepy/history.htm
[5] http://www.mdlp.co.uk/resources/Sheepy/history.htm

Friday, 5 January 2018

The Myring Origin Story

I’ve always been rather ambivalent about my surname – it wasn’t a great asset for the rigours of the playground – but I’ve always wondered about its origins.

During my family’s first phase of family tree research we came across the theory that ‘Myring’ was Dutch in origin, possibly being brought to the UK when Dutchmen led by Cornelius Vermuyden were employed to drain The Fens in the 1650s. The name Myring, it was rumoured, meant ‘bog dweller’. This failed to endear me to the name, but did further arouse my curiosity.

I think I have now unpicked this myth, and in the process – as has often been the case in my research – come across equally interesting possibilities.

‘Meyrink’ (or Meyerink, Meijerink, Meijering(h), Meyerinck) is indeed a Germanic name found in the Netherlands, and early example being the Dutch landscape painter Albert Meijeringh (1645-1714). The name means ‘from the estate of the meier’, ‘meier’ being the historical name for a bailiff in parts of the Low Countries.

So where did the idea that Myring means ‘bog dweller’ come from? I may have found the answer in an unlikely place – an Old English poem (first found in a 10th century collection) called the Widsith.

The Widsith tells of a people of Saxon origin called the Myrgings who lived in Schleswig and Holstein (on the modern German-Danish border in the Jutland peninsula) in the 5th century before the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain. According to the etymologist Kemp Malone[i], ‘Myrging’ means ‘mire-dweller’ or ‘mire-district dweller’, i.e. they lived in a marshy habitat.



I suspect that the Dutch name ‘Meyrink’ and the Saxon ‘Myrgings’ at some point became mistakenly conflated to form the theory that I heard in my youth. However, Kemp Malone does suggest something particularly interesting in his brief paper on the Myrgings:

According to the Widsith, the Myrgings were defeated in the mid-5th century by Offa, King of the Angles, and were then largely confined in Holstein south of the Eider River. However, a sub-group of the Myrgings (known as the ‘With-Myrgings’ due to their dwellings on the Vidå river) remained in western Schleswig. Malone argues that Offa’s victory over the Myrgings led to the With-Myrgings being assimilated by the Angles, and subsequently travelling with the Angles to settle England as part of the Anglo-Saxon migration during the 5th-7th centuries. Further, Malone notes that the Angle migration would not have occurred without their occupation of the With-Myrgings territory on the west coast of the peninsular. Interestingly, the Angles settled mainly in what would become Lincolnshire, East Anglia and the East Midlands.



Why is that interesting? Because, as we will see, it is precisely that area of England where we first find people with variants of the surname Myring.

The latest (2016) edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland suggests that ‘Myring’ is a variation of the name ‘Merrin’ (along with Mearing, Meering, Merren, Merring and Merron). They argue that it is a locative name (i.e one first given to people living in a certain place) originating in Mareham le Fen and Mareham on the Hill in Lincolnshire (recorded as ‘Maring’ in the year 1202), or alternatively from Meering in Nottinghamshire.



The Oxford Dictionary also lists a number of ‘early bearers’ of these name variations, and where they are found:
  • John de Meryng, 1327 in Patent Rolls (Notts);
  • Richard de Maryng, 1348 in Patent Rolls (Spilsby, Lincs);
  • Alexander Meryng', 1374 in Feet of Fines (Radcliffe on Trent, Notts);
  • Thomas Maryng, 1378 in Patent Rolls (Louth, Lincs);
  • Roberto de Maryng', 1379 in Poll Tax (Louth, Lincs);
  • Roberto Meryng, 1379 in Poll Tax (Long Whatton, Leics);
  • Francis de Meryng, 1400 in Patent Rolls (Derbys);
  • William Meryng', 1458 in Feet of Fines (Herts);
  • John Meryng, 1476 in Feet of Fines (Shrops);
  • Thomas Meryng', 1480 in Feet of Fines (Newark on Trent, Notts);
  • Joahn Maringe, 1563 in IGI (Belleau and Aby, Lincs);
  • Ann Mearing, 1567 in IGI (Crowle, Lincs);
  • Emmota Mearinge, 1582 in IGI (Whitgift, WR Yorks);
  • Alice Mering, 1587 in IGI (Worksop, Notts);
  • Alce Merin, 1587 in IGI (Whaplode, Lincs);
  • Brigget Meringe, 1588 in IGI (Doddinton, Lincs);
  • Elizabeth Mearinge, 1610 in IGI (South Collingham, Notts);
  • John Myring, 1628 in IGI (Sheepy Magna, Leics);
  • Mary Mearing, 1631 in IGI (Sutton on Trent, Notts);
  • Hanah Meerin, 1699, Henry Meering, 1701, Jeane Mearin, 1724, George
  • Mearing, 1729 in IGI (Shinfield, Berks);
  • Elizabeth Merrin, 1703 in IGI (Derby, Derbys)

We can see that the Myrings do appear to originate in lands settled by the Angles, and it is tempting to make speculative leaps. Yet it seems to me that the Oxford Dictionary’s explanation is the more prosaic one, and that the Myrings originated in towns like Mareham-le-Fen which were doubtless named after their proximity to ‘mires’ in Eastern England rather than mires in the Jutland peninsular.

Other than the location of these towns being in lands settled by the Angles there is no evidence to link their names - or the names of their residents - to the Myrgings who may have settled the area six or seven centuries before the first ‘Myring’ pops up in historical records. Still, it is a romantic thought, and would be a link to the Anglo-Saxon era that precedes even that of the Arden family.

It is also notable that the early Myrings provided by the Oxford Dictionary appear three centuries before the Dutch involvement in the draining of the Fens, so we can perhaps dismiss the Dutch origin theory too.

You’ll note that I have highlighted one name in that list of early Myrings: John Myring, recorded as living in the delightfully-named settlement of Sheepy Magna, Leicestershire, in 1628. John is the very earliest Myring that can be connected in a direct and complete genealogical line to the present day (excepting his widowed mother Margaret, who was buried in Sheepy Magna on 17 January 1628). He is my oldest confirmed Myring ancestor.

However, he was not the first Myring connected to Sheepy Magna. The compilers of the Oxford Dictionary did not include one Francis de Meryng of Meering, Nottinghamshire, who is recorded in the Chancery papers[ii] on 22 June 1393 as granting: “a toft [homestead] in Sheepy Magna and the advowson [the right to recommend a member of the clergy for permanent office] of half the church to the prioress and convent of Fosse, who may appropriate the [right to nominate the clergyman], the grantors retaining the manor of Meering, Notts.This shows that there was a connection between Meering - a probable location of the earliest bearers of the Myring name - and Sheepy Magna some 250 years before we find my earliest confirmed ancestor in Sheepy.

Sadly the gap between the Francis de Meryng of 1393 and John Myring of 1628 cannot be bridged as complete parish records do not stretch back that far, but perhaps further investigation will help to make further connections between the Myrings of Sheepy Magna and the very earliest recorded Myrings three centuries before.

My next article on the Myrings will look in more detail at John Myring and his family in Sheepy Magna, and examine his descendants’ move to Kingsbury, Warwickshire in the 18th century.


BM January 2018

NB: I am heavily indebted here, and in future articles, to Di Eaton née Myring of the Guild of One-Name Studies, who has strived for decades to compile much of the information used to trace the Myrings back to Sheepy Magna.

------------
[i] Malone, Kemp. "The With-Myrgings of Widsith." The Modern Language Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 1944), pp. 55-56.
[ii] Chancery papers C/143/423/14. This Francis could conceivably be the same as the one mentioned in the Derbyshire patent rolls for 1400.

Wednesday, 13 December 2017

Laura Septima Arden 1892-1990

I was barely nine years years old when my great-grandmother died, and so sadly I have few clear memories of her.

I recall her house. In my proto-memories it seems old and fusty, protected by high hedges, stuffed with a jumble of antiques, every surface covered in embroidered cloth. Dimly lit rooms, connected by goosebump-raising corridors lined with faded photos of the frowning deceased, every door guarded by a serpentine draft-excluder.

I remember something of her too. A stately silver-haired old lady, sat straight-backed in a chair that looked insufficiently comfortable. Few words, at least expressed to me (she usually mistakenly addressed me as Robert, after a second cousin of mine, but who could blame her for losing track of her growing hoard of grandchildren and great grandchildren). The words I do remember usually orientated around the regularly offered cups of tea, which at the time I only ever drank at her house. She had a faint, kindly, knowing smile held effortlessly on her face at all times. Someone lifted from another era. The last of the Victorians.

I do recall her last birthday, her 98th. Someone purchased her two small ceramic bears, one holding a number nine, the other an eight. My father waggishly suggested that she could always swap the numbers around so as to appear to be merely celebrating her 89th birthday; I still remember her bemused chuckle. It’s a happy memory, though relatives recall her saying at around this time that she was “ready to go now”. Eight months later she did. It was thirty-six years and four days since her husband had died – after thirty-six years of marriage. A strange coincidence.

Laura on her 98th birthday.

Laura’s father William Richard Arden came from a long line of Cheshire farmers. He was the last in his line to be born and baptised in Cheshire, in 1856; his two younger brothers were both born in Wem, Shropshire after their father moved the family across the County border in the late 1850s to farm in the tiny village of Coton near Wem. It seems that William Richard met his wife-to be, Harriet née Mosedale, in Coton. They married in the beautiful country church of St Mary the Virgin in the nearby village of Edstaston, half-way between Wem and Coton, on the first of February 1882.

Laura Septima Arden was born on 16 February 1892 in the village of West Felton, Shropshire where her father had moved the family five years earlier. Laura was not only the seventh child (hence Septima) born to her parents, but the seventh girl in a row. Eventually the brood would grow to fifteen, of whom only five were boys.

For the first ten years of Laura’s childhood the family remained at West Felton, but thereafter they became somewhat itinerant; every few years they moved to another farm, mainly in Shropshire (Rednal, Oswestry), but, by 1907, even as far as Wootten Hawen in Warwickshire. Their descendants speak of a problem with drink, which may have affected William Richard’s employability. The family are said to have made their own beer, butter, cheese and bread which were sold at local markets.

Sometime between 1907 and 1909 he made the extraordinary decision to move the family to a farm near Onchan, on the Isle of Man. This is an interesting story which I will outline in a subsequent blog post on Laura’s family. It is worth addressing separately, in part because it had lasting consequences for the family. Suffice to say the venture was not a success and, after a spell as a hotel manager in Douglas, by 1911 William Richard was back in England where the census lists him as a ‘Cowman on farm’ in King’s Heath on the outskirts of Birmingham along with his wife and youngest children.

That same year found Laura, aged 19, working as a domestic servant for the Colebatch family at Bank Farm, Little Witley, Worcestershire. She was tasked with the care of two girls and a boy, the latter of whom suffered from a serious disability. She then worked elsewhere as a ‘mother’s help’ for a further four years, the mother in question being Esther Huxley, aunt of her future husband Charles Harold Myring.

Charles was a Birmingham-born adventurer who had spent eight years in Canada before returning to England on the Lusitania (sometime before that ship was sunk in May 1915) to join the war effort. He enlisted on 27 October 1915, serving as a motor driver in the Royal Army Service Corps, and (after a proposal rumoured to be by telegram) they married at a registry office in Erdington in February 1918 whilst he was on leave; he was not transferred to the reserves until 1919. At some point during the conflict Laura worked as a munitions inspector in Tyseley, Birmingham; this was her last period of employment.

Laura & Charles

As attested to by the above photo, perhaps taken at the time of their marriage, Laura was uncommonly beautiful in her youth. Her remarkable dark curls are tied back, yet  allowed to fall loose here and there with studied informality; she looks like a gypsy queen, or an image lifted from a Byzantine mural. It is hard to connect the picture with the old lady that I knew – but wait, there is that faint half-smile I remember, and the kindly, knowing eyes.


Laura (r), Charles Harold (m), Laura’s oldest sister Dora Arden (l)

By 1922 they were living in Longbridge, Birmingham. Three children followed: Mary (known as ‘Olive’) in 1922, Eva in 1927, followed by David, my grandfather, in 1929. Her husband worked at the Austin motor factory until his death in November 1954. Thereafter Laura live alone, in the same house in Longbridge, until her own death in 1990. This Edwardian property had featured a central heating system when first built, but this had been removed by Laura’s husband, perhaps for reasons of thrift (perhaps his time in Canada had also made him impervious to winter conditions). Consequently, the windows of the house had a tendency to freeze on the inside and lead pipes bulged and occasionally burst during a frost.

Laura and Eva

Laura and Eva

Laura, Mary & Eva at Laura's home in Longbridge
Three generations - Harriet Arden née Mosedale, Laura Myring née Arden, Eva Myring c.1940


All who remember Laura speak of her kindness and her non-judgmental and loving nature. She seemed to take everything in her stride despite the world around her changing beyond all recognition. Over the years she continued to visit various of her siblings; the photo below is of her with her brother David (in a suit! on a beach!) and sister Willis Mary: a prize to anyone who can identify the location. She also spent time at her sister Willis Mary’s farm near Arley.

Laura, her sister Willis Mary Levi née Arden and brother David Arden

  
She was neighbourly. Despite being half-hobbled by bunions she would start the day by visiting the homes of other widows to make up their fires; a task at which she must have been adept given her own lack of central heating. My father recalls that in the evenings she would often play host to an especially ‘wizened’ neighbour by the name of Mrs Duggins, who “kept turning up late in the evening presumably for the cups of tea, company and to keep warm until bed time”.


  
Among the possessions that have come down to me are a lock of her hair, a communicants book, and a small trove of notebooks. Discovering the latter was a real boon. They are filled with her jottings; lists of birthdays and addresses, remedies for migraines and shingles, recipes for everything from ‘refreshing drinks’ to homemade polish, and, delightfully, numerous aphorisms that she evidently considered of sufficient merit to commit to paper in her querulous hand (many of these seem to have been sourced from the ‘Friendship Book’ which she acquired every year)

Some of these are quite brisk. “Smile please – we too have problems”. “Sometimes it’s easy to think that we have all the worries and others have none – think again”. Others show a humanist bent to her character: “To live a day at a time, to do what seems right at that particular time, this surely is the way out of confusion and the path to peace”.

There are also lists of her siblings (and the years that they died). On the back of one such page we find the following, a poem by William Clarke entitled ‘After the Funeral’:

Those who made the most fuss
Were, I noticed, in effect,
Those who had least called on us and now repented their neglect.

Under this transcription, clearly added later in a more fragile hand, she wrote “Maisie Died June 1990”. Maisie was the last of the siblings to go, apart from David and herself. Six months later Laura was gone too, and David followed seven months after that. And here I am, writing down their names, their lives, their deaths, in the hope that they would not feel so neglected.

BM December 2017


Laura Myring née Arden

Laura surrounded by family, including her grandson (my father) Peter and my mother Jane (left)

Laura sat next to her daughter Eva and son David, with Mary in the background





Tuesday, 12 December 2017

Introduction

               
Families, like nations, often develop and pass down myths about their origins that have little to do with historical reality. In my own family, these included the belief that the unusual surname 'Myring' was of Dutch origin and meant 'bog dweller' (happily untrue), and that my mother's ancestors the Pheyseys were descended from Russian aristocrats by the name of Vesey (hogwash). The real answers were just as interesting (if more parochial) than these legends.

There was one other family name that also raised curiosity, that of my great-grandmother Laura Septima Arden (1892-1990). My father sometimes wondered whether there was a connection with the Forest of Arden, an area of northern Warwickshire not so far from our home in North Worcestershire. I was also aware that Shakespeare’s mother was an Arden from Warwickshire. It was my research into this question that led to the most exciting discoveries. 

For the Arden family is one of only three in Britain who can trace their origin back to before the Norman Conquest, and did indeed originate in the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire. But while Laura’s father did briefly farm in Warwickshire, I was to discover that he was born in Cheshire, scion of the Arderne family, an offshoot of the Warwickshire Ardens who were established in Cheshire in the thirteenth century. The Ardernes formed a storied part of the landed gentry of the county for centuries, fought in the Civil War, included famous physicians, priests and dandies, acquired the curious name ‘Pepper Arden’, and were later ennobled as the Barons Alvanley before finally becoming extinct – in the main family line - in the nineteenth century.





But there was a mystery; Laura Arden’s branch of the family descended from a junior line who had been modest farmers for centuries, yet her father was clearly aware of the Pepper Arden connection and named one of his sons ‘John Arthur Pepper’. Was he staking a claim to the Arderne family titles and fortunes?

This blog will address that question, as well as exploring other parts of the history of the Arderne-Ardens, Myrings and other family names that crop up in my tree.

I have dabbled with exploring my family history on-and-off for 25 years. Like many families we were able to create a family tree going back four and sometimes five generations based only on living memory and a few scattered documents. Going back further, though, required the sort of research that frankly seemed like too much effort; namely rooting around in records offices. Though I have a degree in history, and therefore a passable skill in finding and interpreting sources, my admittedly enormous capacity for developing a mono-focused obsession with researching something if I find interesting did not surmount the obstacle presented by the need for hard graft.

However, genealogical research is now much easier due to the proliferation of family history websites such as Ancestry.com. It was via a half-hearted browse of the latter website in 2016 that I discovered that it is now possible to push your family tree back centuries into the past with relatively little effort. 




This is very much a work-in-progress, and I suspect that the concept will evolve over time, but I intend that posts on the blog will fall into three broad categories:

1) Profiles of individual family members
2) Examinations of particular generations of the family, and their historical and social context.
3) Broader articles reviewing branches of the family tree over longer periods of time.

So I’ll be exploring the ‘roots and branches’* of my family, hence the name of this blog. It seems only fitting that I start with that grand old lady, Laura Arden.

Ben Myring

PS: If anyone has any questions or has information to contribute then please do get in touch!


*Roots and Branches is also the name of one of the greatest ever Bob Dylan bootlegs.






The Myrings in Sheepy Magna, c.1393-c.1682

In my exploration of the origin of the Myring name we saw that one of the earliest Myrings on record is one Francis de Meryng of Meering, N...