This is a discussion of the possible identification of Geoffrey Mallory of Todber (1086) with the Geoffrey Mallory who was granted the manor of Botley by Robert Stafford (an ancestor of the Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham). It will be argued elsewhere that he could have been the father of a certain Robert Mallory and, through him, a grandfather of Anketil (Botley, Walton-on-the-Wolde, and Tachebrook Mallory) and Richard Mallory (Kirkby Mallory) who appear with varying degrees of frequency in the records of the mid to last half of the 12th century.
The first mention of any Mallory in England is Geoffrey Mallory (Goisfrid Malloret) who appears in the Exeter Doomsday of 1086 as the lord of Todber in co. Dorset, a tenant of William de Moyon. The Exeter Doomsday, as it exists at present, is a partial set of returns for southwestern England which gives more detailed information than can be seen in the more famous chancery Doomsday which covers all of England and is what people are referring to when they use the term Doomsday Book. The Exeter Doomsday seems to have been one of several compilations from which the more complete chancery Doomsday Book was extracted. The possessions of Geoffrey in Todber consisted of one pack-horse, 8 beasts (cattle), 12 pigs, 100 sheep, a mill valued at 10 shillings per year, land in demesne for two ploughs, 12 acres of meadow, and woodland ½ league in length and one furlong in width. The total value of Todber (Todberia) was 4£, having increased in value from 3£ in the time of King Edward. (VCH, A History of Dorset, vol. iii, p. 92)
Not only did Geoffrey Mallory possess Todber, but it would appear he also possessed the manor of Steepleton Iwerne (Werne), also of William de Moyon. Here, if the identification is correct, he had 6 villeins, 6 bordars, 2 serfs, one pack-horse, 6 beasts, 282 sheep, 1 ½ hides of land and two ploughs in demesne, and 8 furlongs of woodland and 10 furlongs of pasture in length, both woodland and pasture being 3 furlongs in width. This particular manor’s value was 4£, a value unchanged since the time of King Edward. (VCH, A History of Dorset, vol. iii, p. 94)
Possessing a recorded surname as early as the reign of King William I was quite unusual and almost completely ignored in the chancery copy of the Doomsday Book. Also, the possession of land under various lords and in various counties was a quite common matter. This particular Geoffrey Mallory can be shown, with absolute certainty, to have time of the lord of one manor and with great, though not absolute, certainty to have been a lord of another, both as a tenant of William de Moyon. He could have also possessed other manors at the time of the Doomsday Book in other counties and under other feudal overlords, as there were many feudal tenants throughout England at the time by the name of Geoffrey who cannot be identified by any particular surname, something which seems to have generally gone unrecorded, even when in existence.
The first mention of a Mallory possessing Botley is made in a charter of Robert de Stafford granting it to Geoffrey Mallory (Galfrido Mallore).1 The charter is undated but considered by the Warwickshire County Record Office to be early or mid 12th century. With regard to documents from the Conquest to after 1200, paleographical evidence is usually not enough to date a document with any hope of precision, due to the many cultural cross-currents between France and England during the period. The surest way to date documents of the period is by identifying people mentioned in the documents concerned or their witnesses. Here, the only individual for which there might be independent contemporary historical evidence is Robert de Stafford (Robert de Stadford). Unfortunately, there were three Robert de Staffords during the period of Anglo-Norman kingship, a grandfather (Robert I) who came with the Conqueror, a grandson (Robert II) who was active from toward the end of the reign of Henry I until toward the end of that of Henry II, and a greatgrandson (Robert III). Of the three Roberts, we can eliminate Robert III as being too late. If we wish to choose between Robert I and Robert II, we must seek out internal evidence within the aforementioned charter.
There is, fortunately, one phrase “omnibus baronibus suis Francis et Anglis” found in the charter which is of help. It is a phrase which is characteristically found in royal charters throughout the Anglo-Norman period and, to a much lesser extent, of charters granted by English Earls. In spite of a search of all the readily available published collections of Anglo-Norman charters of the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London and in the British Library, I have yet to find another example of the above-mentioned phrase being used among the charters of the nobility who were not at least an earl, though surviving non-royal charters for the reigns of William I and William II are rare, so no generalization about phraseology can be safely asserted until we reach the reign of Henry I, when we can see the phrase “omnibus hominibus suis” or one of the many variations thereof being put to common use among non-royal charters.
In fact, two surviving charters of Robert de Stafford II do survive, one dating as early as 1120-3 during the reign of Henry I. In the earlier charter, Robert II uses the phrase “omnibus hominibus” without the word “suis”, probably because his father Nicholas would still have been alive and the men referred to would have owed feudal loyalty to his father rather than himself. The second charter, which could have been granted practically anytime during the reigns of King Stephen or King Henry II, used the more exclusive phrase “omnibus hominibus suis” which would indicate it was being granted after the death of Robert II’s father Nicholas and that the men referred to owed loyalty only to him. Clearly, as in the case of other colleagues of the same rank, the use of the phrase “omnibus baronibus suis” does not appear to have been the usage of Robert II, thus eliminating him as a serious candidate for being the one who granted Geoffrey Mallory the manor of Botley. (See Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, The Basset Charters, edited by William T. Reedy, 1995, charter no.’s 10 and 12.)
On more purely linguistic grounds, too, one would expect the phrase “omnibus baronibus suis” to represent an earlier usage rather than a later one. Due to its uniqueness among non-royal charters of the lower nobility, it must have been used at a time when the phrase would have had the meaning of “all his men” rather than “all his barons”, a period which other charters would indicate could have lasted no later than the early years of the reign of Henry I. This, too, would indicate a grant made by Robert I rather than Robert II.
Likewise, the nature of the grant was important. The property was granted to Geoffrey Mallory, his heirs and assignees, meaning that this was the original grant, that this grant did not, of itself, represent an entailment, and that Geoffrey was free to assign the property to anyone he wished. This, too, would indicate an earlier rather than a later date, when land was more available for disposal rather than less so. Yet again, this would point to Robert de Stafford I being the granter.
If Robert I can be accepted as the likely granter, as internal evidence would indicate, then the dating of the document can be narrowed down fairly closely to a period from roughly 1086 to 1088. This is because, as of the compilation of the Doomsday Book, Botley would still not seem to be considered a separate manor from Ullenhall. However, Robert I is considered to have passed away around 1088. We are, therefore, likely to be looking at a grant probably made in the last year or two of his life.
Could this 11th century Geoffrey Mallory (Galfrid Mallore) of Botley be the same individual as the Geoffrey Mallory (Goisfrid Malloret) of Todber and Steepleton Iwerne to be found in the Exeter Doomsday? That Malloret and Mallore, until the end of the 12th century, were alternative spellings of the names of future individuals who must have held the manor of Botley is clear from the use of a symbol which signified the loss of two or more letters and which was used with the contracted form Mallor in the Pipe Rolls. That this can be taken as an abbreviated form of Malloret, rather than Mallore, can be assumed by the fact that individuals of this same family with the surname Malloret or, in one case, Malhoret, appears in various charters of the second half of the 12th century, but also appear as Mallore in other charters. It would appear that for practically all of the 12th century, the spelling Malloret was an accepted alternative to Mallore.
Although there is no absolute proof to identify the Lord of Todber as the same individual as the Lord of Botley, there is also no evidence that would preclude such an identification. Furthermore, considering the relatively small percentage of individuals possessing surnames at the time of the Doomsday Book and the years immediately after, and considering the later relative rarity of the Mallory surname, it seems rather more likely than less, that the same Geoffrey Mallory possessed land in the counties Dorset and Warwick and perhaps Somerset (also under a feoffment of William de Moyon).
By the terms of the grant by Robert de Stafford, Botley was granted to Geoffrey Mallory’s heirs and assigns, not to his right heirs. This would indicate that the original grant of Botley was made with the intent of passing it on to someone who would not have otherwise been in line to inherit it. Considering the mores of the time, this would, at least, indicate the possibility of a younger son, perhaps of a second marriage, already existing in 1087/8. As Anketil Mallory, the next Mallory with whom Botley can be identified, would, as will be argued elsewhere, probably have been born more than 20 years later, this would indicate an intervening generation.
It has been proposed by others that this individual might have been a Richard Mallory in the service of the Earls of Leicester from the 1130s through the 1150s and that he is different from a second Richard Mallory, also connected with the Earls of Leicester, who was a brother of the Anketil Mallory mentioned immediately above. I would propose that there also exists the alternative that we are dealing with only one Richard Mallory rather than two and that a certain Robert Mallory as the father of Anketil and Richard might represent another possibility. This will be discussed further elsewhere.
In any case, Geoffrey Mallory, if he were the lord of manors in Dorset, Somerset and Warwick, would have had more than one son inheriting his property. If this assumption holds, then his descendants in Dorset and Somerset would have soon daughtered out with a certain Laurence Mallory who seems to have resided in the southwest of England and who appears in the Pipe Rolls at the end of the 12th century perhaps being one of the last male representatives of this branch of the family. Botley would have gone to a different son. Under this scenario, the Dorset and Somerset properties would have descended through an older son. Be that as it may, the identification of the possessor of Todber with that of Botley would tend to strengthen the assumption that Anketil Mallory and his brother Richard would more likely have been the grandsons of Geoffrey than nephews or cousins, as the co. Dorset properties, in the course of the 12th century, came into the possession of other families rather than returning to the direct possession of the Moyon overlords, something which would normally indicate the regular laws of lineal inheritance at work.
1. Warwickshire County Record Office, GREVILLE OF WARWICK CASTLE, Catalogue Ref. CR 1886Creator(s): Greville family, Earls Brooke and Earls of Warwick
CONTENTS FORMERLY IN MUNIMENT ROOM, FIRST FLOOR.
FILE - Bottelea, (Warwickshire). Rob' de Stadf' omnibus baronibus suis Francis et Anglis salutem sciatis quia dedi et concessi Galfrido Mallore heredibus & assignatis suis dee serviciis in Bottelea terras & hommagia & servicia ? q'm de mee tenuit quare volo ut predictus Galfidus habeat et teneat ipse hered' et assignatis suis de me et heredibus meis per un' sperva per illa(m) bene et libere teneat t'i erl'i de bose' & Ric. Fravell', Ada de Broc. (Tag and seal missing) (measures 4 x 2.) (Summary: Rob't de Stadf(ord) to Geoff. Mallore: lands (etc) in Botley.) (HMC, Freer) - ref. CR1886/Cupboard4/Top Shelf/B5 - date: Not dated (early or mid 12th cent.)
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