The “Valley of the Red Horse” in southern Warwickshire describes the location in England that lies between Stratford-Upon-Avon and Banbury. Southern Warwickshire has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age. Circular stone arrangements such as the Rollright Stones validate this assumption. This area is very rural in nature and has always been composed of many small villages such as Shipston, Honington and Tysoe.
Rollright Stones in Warwickshire
© 1982-2003 Diego Meozzi
During the Roman occupation (50 A.D. - 400 A. D.), the valley was on the western frontier, with several roads crossing it. A main road stretched between Coventry and Bath which passed through here. After the Romans pulled out in the fifth century A.D., the invasion of the Angles and Saxons began. During this period, the heathen religion of the Anglo-Saxons dominated society. To honor the God Tiw, the figure of a horse was carved on a hill overlooking the valley. This god was commonly associated with the Roman god Mars, so when the Roman calendar was adopted, the Saxons substituted the name of Tiw for Mars, hence the name Tuesday. The village below the figure was called Tysoe, meaning Tiw’s hill.
The clay beneath the horse carving was red, so when viewed from the valley it was the Red Horse. During the period of Anglo-Saxon rule, the carving was maintained as part of the religious duty of the inhabitants. After the slow conversion to Christianity, the horse became less important and after the 17th century it eventually was overgrown. It was a dominating icon when the Merrill family name is first documented in the valley.
The Red Horse measured 100 By 70 yards
In the 17th century, two sets of Merrill families migrated from England to America. The first were from the Suffolk area of England and settled in New England. Most of these Merrills made homes in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The other Merrill family was from the southern Warwickshire area. There is some dispute among family historians about the exact family relationships, but the most likely scenario is that Richard Merrill and William Merrill, sons of William and Alice Merrill, brought their families to America. They both settled initially on Staten Island. Speculation is that the Merrill name was derived from the French “De Merle” so that the first Merrills were probably from France.
Research by genealogists has determined that the Merrill family was documented in southern Warwickshire as early as 1540 in the village of Honington. A William (1540-1610) Merrill and his wife Elizabeth (died November 30, 1583) lived there. They had a son named Richard (1575-1652) who was an innkeeper and grocer, along with his business partner Richard Duppa, in Shipston-on-Stour. Richard married Elizabeth West and they had a son named William.
William Merrill and Alice Duppa married on September 27, 1637 in the Whitchurch Parish of Warwickshire. The spent their lives in the village of Shipston-on-Stour. Besides the sons mentioned above, they had three daughters named Elizabeth, Alice, and Mary. Richard was born around 1642 and William sometime between 1645 and 1649.
Shipston-On-Stour (being on the River Stour, a tributary of the Avon) is about 10 miles south of Stratford-on-Avon, the home of Shakespeare. Richard married Susannah Wells in 1669 and settled in the nearby village of Upper Tysoe. The record is not clear on whether William had married prior to leaving for America, but he did have a wife named Grace.
The Valley of the Red Horse
The area shaded in pink shows the general location of the Tysoe area
The area of the Red Horse Valley was ideal for agriculture and livestock breeding. Raising sheep and selling their wool was one of the more lucrative endeavors in this part of England.
The village of church of Tysoe, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is mentioned in the Doomsday Book prepared for William the Conqueror after 1066. The building has a Norman and Saxon foundation with suggestion that it might be on site of a Romano-Celtic temple. There is a Knights Templar tomb and an old window dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentino who lived in Tysoe briefly. For a small village, the church is very large and grand. The scale reflects the wealth created by medieval sheep trade.
View of the old village of Shipston by Patricia L. Harris
A view of Red Horse Valley
St. Mary’s Church at Tysoe
By the 17th century English politics and religion had divided the country into near chaos. The clashes between religions, parliament and monarchy were much more pronounced in the large cities. Rural middle England was more concerned with its own welfare. The religious fracture between Roman Catholic, Anglican, and the more radical protestant groups such as the Puritans did lead to opening the Americas for relocation of the English people. In 1620, the Pilgrim group settled in Massachusetts to escape religious intolerance. Other religious groups followed suit with other settlements in the new world.
The in-fighting led directly to the Civil War in England. A group of anti-monarchists in Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, rebelled against King Charles I. In the year that Richard Merrill was born, the famous battle of Edgehill was fought just a few miles from Tysoe. The battle itself was deemed a draw, but it indicated that the royalist backers of King Charles were in trouble. As the war dragged on, villagers were enlisted to help one side or the other. Tysoe, however, was among the few that resisted by simply ignoring the summons. Again, the southern Warwickshire area proved to be more self-involved than being part of the national English problems.
The war ended in 1649, won by the Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell. King Charles was beheaded, Cromwell was named Lord Protector, and the Anglican Church was dropped as the official religious arm of the state. For ten years this situation was endured by the people of England, with bitter feelings still being aired. After Cromwell’s death, the monarchy was restored by the crowning of King Charles II. Parliament retained a great deal of power, which did not set well with the King.
Other chaotic events occurred in England in the 1660’s, including outbreaks of the plague (1665 in London) and the Great Fire of London in 1666. In 1668, Richard married Susannah Wells.
Around 1680, Richard and William made their move to America. The chaos around them must have seemed threatening to their families maintaining a living. The Merrills of this time were of the yeoman class – definitely not royal – but more likely to be tradesmen such as millers or carpenters. Richard is recorded as having paid the hearth tax, so he did have some small net worth. It is not likely that the Merrill family departed due to religious consequences because the area they left and the area to which they moved did not exhibit the kind of zeal that is found in the Puritan colonies of the New England or Quakers of Pennsylvania. It is probable the prospects of being able to earn a decent living without much government or religious interference was what led to the decision to leave England. This is not to say they were not religious. Christian values and customs were never in doubt, just how to practice them.
Marker at Site of Edgehill Battle
In the winter of 1680-1681, Richard, his wife Sarah (married for 12 years), and sons William (age 12) and Phillip (age 2) made the voyage to Staten Island. There is no record of daughters Mary and Anne being with them, so they either died before (or during) the move or were left in care of relatives. William (and probably his wife Grace) Merrill and Susannah’s brother Phillip Wells also immigrated to Staten Island about this time. The New York colony had been wrested by England from the Dutch in 1664, so it was not like they were deserting – they were just looking for better opportunities.
And so the Merrill tale was shifted to America.
Typical 17th Century Sailing Ships
©National Maritime Museum, London