Verdeire

Probably for Verdier, a forester. "The names of Verdier and Verderie signify the same functionaries as Vaultrier and Forestier, but perhaps of inferior rank. The names of Lavarde and La Verderie mark the space assigned to each watcher's beat. The Verdier was a judge of petty offences against the forest laws."—M. de Gerville (Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Normandie). In England a Verderer is an officer appointed to take care of the vert: a word applied "to every thing that grows and bears a green leaf within the forest that may cover and hide a deer."—Cowell.

It should, however, be borne in mind that the titles of Seigneurs de la Verdiere and de Fos were borne by one of the oldest of the great Provencal houses. "All the branches of the Seigneurs of the name of Vintimille established in Provence came," says Anselme, "from the Seigneurs de la Verdiere of the same country." They bore Gules an ear of millet Or; on a chief of the second three ears of millet of the first. Raffortiat de Castellane became their representative; and his descendant Boniface was Seigneur de la Verdiere in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Robson gives the arms of the English Verdiers as Azure a horse salient in bend Or. But I have only met with the name twice, once in Oxfordshire, where Walter de Verder occurs in the Hundred Rolls of 1272; and again, at about the same date in Yorkshire. "In 1261, Sir Galfrid Gumbald attests a grant from William Verder, of Out Newton, to Sir Simon le Constable."—Poulson's Holderness.

-- Cleveland