Aug 1, 2014

The Lord Mayor of London Sir Richard Mallory's Papworth St Agnes ancestry now a certainty

I am running behind on my publishing schedule. I am responsible this year for an unusually large number of doctor's and master's level graduate students and it takes up too much time for me to get my own research materials into an academically acceptable format for publication. It will be perhapsseveral more years before I can get my next book on early medieval Mallory history published. In the mean time, I thought I should share a new discovery. It has been commonly asserted that Sir Richard Mallory, the Lord Mayor of the City of London for 1565 was the son of Anthony Mallory of Papworth St Agnes. Unfortunately, commonly asserted and being proven to an acceptable level of uncertainty are two different things. In search for other material, however, I have come across what, when combined with other sources, constitutes such proof. Sir Richard actually is the son of Anthony Mallory by either a first or second wife. It would seem he had an older brother, Henry, who may or may not have been a half brother. In any case, Sir Richard was at least nine years older than his younger half brother, Sir William Mallory who, by special permission of Henry VIII was designated as the eventual heir of Papworth St Agnes. Relations between the two brothers and between their children, however, appear to have remained cordial. Sir Richard's male line descendants appear to have died out by about 1620. His daughters, however, left numerous descendants. Of the two lines I am the most familiar with, the oldest, Julian, was the mother of a somewhat well known early 17th century individual called Lionel Sharpe. A younger daughter, Elizabeth, married William Cotton of Staffordshire, leaving numerous descendants in both England and America.

Sir Anthony was the son of Thomas Mallory (1425-1469) of Papworth St Agnes and of a Palmer woman who was a member of a locally important gentry family of that name in Northamptonshire and Rutland, providing important members of parliament from her immediate family group. Thomas Mallory was the son of Sir William Mallory and Margaret Burley, the sister of William Burley, the speaker of the House of Commons. Sir William was the second son of Sir Anketil (also known as Anketin and Antoine) Mallory and Alice de Driby. Anketil's father was John and his grandfather Roger according to county visitations of the College of Arms, although a detailed examination of contemporary evidence would indicate that, though Anketil's father would have been a John's father would have been an earlier Anketil and John's mother the daughter of Roger la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe. John's wife and the later Anketil's mother would have been a member of the Papworth family of Papworth St Agnes and probably a sister of the last Papworth lord, Sir William Papworth. The great-grandfather of Anketil Mallory is variously described as either Thomas or William, depending on the genealogy being cited. All genealogies point to Kirkby Mallory as a point of origin, though contemporary evidence would seem to point rather more strongly to Walton-on-the-Wold..

On the other hand, Alice de Driby's immediate ancestry is more clearly documentable. Her father was John de Driby, the son of Thomas de Driby, and her mother Amie, was the illegitimate daughter of Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Cornwall and also the lover of Edward II. Piers was murdered when Amie would have been quite young. Nevertheless, she, too, was able to make her fortune in royal service, in her case that of Philippa, the wife of Edward III. Though currently unprovable, Amie's mother might possibly have been an earlier Alice de Driby (and somewhat distant relation of the above-mentioned Thomas de Driby) who eventually became the heiress of the extensive de Driby family properties in Lincolnshire and through legitimate descent, the ancestress of the Lords Cromwell. A book on these individuals is planned for sometime in the future when I will not have as many graduate students to take care of. In the mean time, I hope this abstract of what I have uncovered will be found of use.