In 1645 many of a Scottish army of some 12,000 encamped on Aconbury Hill overlooking Dewchurch and at nearby Dinedor, overlooking Hereford City. A contemporary report says - "We have been constrained to flee with our wives and children from our habitations, had our houses rifled, our cattle driven away and our corn threshed by barbarous Cavaliers of the Welsh parts under the command of a dangerous Papist, so that many of us are wholly deprived of maintenance."

The VERRIOR's, with their farms just below Aconbury Hill almost certainly fled and suffered the horses let loose to forage their corn. The Black Swan Inn too provided sustenance, at the point of a gun apparently as musket shot still sits in its beams.

It was a time of fear and commotion. Rumbling supply carts, marching feet, horses, shouting - thousands of Scottish dragoons, their women armed with daggers, all needing somewhere to sleep and feed their horses. Up the Worm Brook came the opposition repeating the desecration, past sleepy Dewchurch, rummaging the houses and barns, stealing the horses and killing the milk cows for meat. But Herefordshire got its revenge. Many of the Scots, unused to cider or apples sickened quickly. With opposition raised against them Leven and his wild Scots withdrew back to "North Britain". It is remarkable that they had got so far.

The bulk of Herefordshire landowners were Royalists. Their tenants and labourers naturally followed, many tacitly I suspect - they were farmers not warriors. I would like to think that the Pye's and Bodenham's made good my ancestors' losses. Perhaps not - the working classes have seldom benefitted from their masters' wars.

(There is a petition dated 1662 of Jane MERRICK who was injured while working to move earth for the defence of Hereford City when it was besieged by the Scots, and who, when the king later visited the city, was presented to him. The king promised that she should be cared for. But although she asked several times, it was never granted.)

One casualty may have been Richard VERRIER. He was born in 1617, an appropriate age to have been a soldier. He disappears from the record, possibly dead on a far-off battle field, with an anonymous mention in some parish register like these at Much Dewchurch - "buried John a poor wounded souldier", "buried Francis LEA a poor maymed souldier". So far from home no doubt, with anguished parents awaiting their return which never came.

Of Herefordshire at this time one of Cromwell's Parliamentary officers wrote, with Puritan bias no doubt - "The inhabitants are totally ignorant in the ways of God and much addicted to drunkedness, but principally to swearing so that children who have scarce learned to walk swear stoutly". Indeed, the toughness of some of these children is illustrated by a baker's boy who shot a Scottish officer from the City Wall during the siege of Hereford.

The Elizabethan Much Dewchurch Register records the name as FERRYOR (ie F for V - ff for F) and VERRIOR. Towards the end of the reign it was sometimes writtern VERRIER.

The devolution from VERRIOR to VERRYcan best be illustrated by some examples. The nuncupative (verbal) will of Ann VERRYOR written in 1664 recorded her name as VERRY, but the clerk later squeezed in "or" - Verryor. Her kinsman Robert VERRIOR of the Lowe Farm is both VERRYER and VERY in a lease written in 1666. He was Robert (VERRIOR) a churchwarden at various times, 1653-1680. As a witness to his brother's Will he signed VERIOR, but to that of his cousin, VERRY. And so by around 1700 the name was to be forever written VERRY. The Much Dewchurch register also records this transition, with numerous examples - the same families having children christened as VERRIOR and buried (some shortly after) as VERRY. Apart from the local historian's assertion of a French speaking origin, the only evidence of first names possibly pointing to this is a PERIN VERRY.

Here is an example of a 17th Century document illustrating the transition from Verrior to Verry. It is the nuncupative (verbal) will of Anne Verry(or) as attested by her daughter Anne Knapp. Note how "or" has been squeezed in after "Verry" was written.