We who pursue the Briddell/Bridell/Breddell/Bredell/Bridle line that appears in Virginia have all heard the legend of the three French brothers who rowed a small boat across the channel to England to escape oppression in France.
The name doesn't appear in any French sources in Google books. It does appear as not only an ancient place name in Cardigan, Pembroke, Wales but of a surname also. It only seems to appear in that area of the British Isles. There is also mention of arms for Bredell. The earliest mention of the name that I've found so far was in the 1400s. Sir William Knighton's grandfather dispossessed his father for marrying Mistress Bredell, sister to a surgeon Bredell of Tavistock, in the mid 1700s. Geoffrey Bridell, on July 28 1489, was, with others ordered to pay a recognizance of L40 to make sure that another man would keep the peace in Wich-Walbank. There was a Walter Bridell, goldsmith and John Bredell, parson of Calais.
Unlike the northern colonies who wouldn't allow malcontents, criminals, and freeloaders to stay on their shores, the southern colonies were royal colonies and dumping grounds for people the crown felt were trouble makers, rabble rousers, papists and noncomformists, that included Catholics and Quakers, as well as dispossessed members of royal and noble Irish lines and daughters of poor tradesmen purchased by members of the Virginia Company to be transported to Virginia as servants and potential wives to male dominated colony there. At one point, one of the members of the company threatened to hang persons in charge of rounding up these poor young women if they didn't meet their quota and allowed anymore of them run away. But that's another story.
I think we can bury the legend of the three Huegenot brothers.
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