In 1379, Wilhelmus Beruby (William Beruby) lives in Willoughby, in the Merton Hundred, according to The Roll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, Part 2 – Lincolnshire. It says on Wikipedia that Willoughby is a village and civil parish about 5 miles (8 km) south of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. The village is about 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Daventry in neighbouring Northamptonshire and the eastern boundary of the parish forms part of the county boundary. The village is just west of the main road between Daventry and Coventry.
Barby, the village known as Beruby in old time, is located nearby, on the east side of this road. They are linked by a road named Longdown Lane. If there are 7 km between Willoughby and Daventry, there is on a map, at first sight, half of this between Willoughby and Barby. Willoughby’s toponym is derived from Old Norse Viligbýr meaning « willow farmstead ». The Beruby and Kilsdesby names (the next village) have also a Norse origin. We are in a part of the country which has long been marked by the presence of the Danes.
Remember John Barube, apparently a rich merchant involved in the wool international trade. He made his will at Coventry in 1519 while an epidemic prevailed. This city is located about 20 kilometres from Barby, the same for Willoughby. All of this suggests that our William, inhabitant of Willoughby, belongs as this John to what we identify in the book as the Beruby line of Daventry.
This trace of William Beruby also appears 30 years after the black plague which killed so many people in England. Some Berubys from this region have survived this pandemic as have those from the lineage around Leeds, West Yorkshire, 200 km further north. On page 67 of the book “The Saga…”, we also mention several surnames present in Warwickshire in the 18th and 19th centuries under different spellings: In Warwickshire, in central England,…the spelling differs a little: there are Barhbys, Barrebys, Bareobys, Bearobeys, Borbys, Burbays, Burbeys, Burbeays, Burbeyes and Byrbies or Byrrbies. I even found a John Byruby (y = ey?) from Warwick, in the Land Tax Redemption of 1798, as well as Annie and William Beryby, born in Devon, in the south-east of the country, in 1874 and 1876. During the four or five centuries after the William of 1379, the surname has simply evolved.
If we presume that a first Beruby came to Rouen around 1420-1430, when the English began to occupy the city (Joan of Arc died at a stake in 1431), our surname could have not yet started to evolve in the county of Warwick. It did afterwards while the English language, Modern English, took shape. This first Beruby living in France could therefore come from this area. A Robert Burbe is also present in Rouen in 1577, in the parish of Saint-Herbland, which indicates that the spelling of the surname may have varied there as well over time.
