On the origin of the Mallory family of Hutton Conyers and Studley Royal

According to a visitation of 1563, Christopher Mallory married Joan Conyers, the heiress of Hutton Conyers, and was, through her, the ancestor of the Mallorys of Hutton Conyers and Studley Royal. Christopher Mallory was recorded in the visitation as the son of a Sir Thomas Mallory and a daughter of "Lord Zouche". When Christopher Mallory first appears in 1347 together with William la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe, the nephew of the Archbishop of York, he would have already been an adult, indicating a birth year not later than the mid-1320s.

Although one cannot expect that a visitation taking place 200 years after the fact and relying on family tradition to be entirely accurate in every respect, one cannot entirely discount it either. In fact, the Mallory coat of arms mentioned in the visitation do not perfectly match the contemporary arms of any late 13th century or early 14th century Mallory family to the extent that they have survived or have been otherwise recorded. One would not expect that the Zouche coat of arms mentioned (those of the only surviving Zouche baron in 1563) to be the same, though obviously one cannot not discount this as being impossible, either.

One would expect that Christopher Mallory would have been closely related to the William la Zouche, the Archbishop of York during most of the 1340s, especially as he is named as an executor of the Archbishop's will. If Sir Thomas Mallory (b. ca. 1242) were the father of Christopher, then we must assume Christopher to be a contemporary of the Archbishop and to have been born sometime in the first years of the first decade of the 14th century at the latest. If the coat of arms evidence is to be taken at face value, then one would expect that the mother of Christopher to have been a daughter of Eudo la Zouche, the husband of Millicent de Monte Alto (nee Cantelou), though not necessarily by Millicent who may have been a second wife. If the coat of arms evidence in the visitation is not to be taken at face value, another possibility as Christopher's mother would have been a sister of the Archbishop's father who would have also been closely connected to Eudo la Zouche (the Archbishop's father, Roger, was the son of a William who would have been the brother of Eudo). 

It will, in fact, be argued in the book I am working on that that the coat of arms evidence cannot be reliably used in this case and that Sir Thomas Mallory would have married as a second or third wife, the daughter of William la Zouche, a woman who would, as is indicated above, been the sister of the archbishop's father. It will also be argued that Christopher Mallory would have been either the youngest or close to the youngest of the children born to this marriage. Christopher Mallory would, thus, have been a first cousin of the Archbishop, thus explaining the archbishop making him an executor of his will.

A suggestion for further research on the origins of Peter Mallory of New Haven

This is not based on research, merely a suggestion for further research originally made by S. V. Mallory Smith, a scholar for whom I have the highest respect and whom I once had the privilege of meeting together with her husband at their home in Cambridge. On page 101 in her book, A History of the Mallory Family, she suggests that Peter might have been the son of a certain John Mallory, the putative, posthumous, son of Sir Chistopher Mallory of Studley Royal who passed away in 1555 by Mary, the daughter of Sir Christopher Danby and Elizabeth, the daughter of Lord Latimer. This John Mallory was said to have been dispossessed by his father's brother, William Mallory, though an attempt was made in 1578 to recover a third part of Sir Christopher Mallory's property.
My suggestion is that it might be worthwhile to go over these cases quite carefully. One might find that the Mallory of John Mallory was actually a legal fiction and that genetically speaking he might not have been of the same male-line Mallorys as other bearers of that name. It would appear, however, that chronologically speaking, if there is a connection between Peter Mallory of New Haven and John Mallory, it would have been that of a grandson rather than of a son, which could still account for the very different y-chromosome profiles of Peter Mallory of New Haven Mallory men (and their English counterparts) and other Mallory lineages.

When I met S. V. Mallory Smith some seven or eight years ago when I was on Sabbatical in England, she assured me at length that Peter Mallory of New Haven's ancestry represented at that time a genealogical black hole for which no genealogically acceptable answers had so far been forthcoming. She also assured me that this was of interest to her, as she herself had her origins in the same genealogical line as Peter Mallory of New Haven. She also expressed disappointment at people appropriating her work verbatim as their own and for others who have passed themselves off as her. 
Though this is not a research I intend to get involved in, it is nevertheless something worth pursuing, if for no other reason than out of respect for a great lady and impeccable scholar.

First hypothesis regarding Mallory Anglo-Saxon pre-history

This is a much simplified abstract of ongoing research on the possible Anglo-Saxon antecedents of the presumed second wife of Robert Mallory, the presumed first Mallory lord of Kirkby Mallory. There is no way to reconstruct the name of this woman, but one can assume that she was the heiress of a small enclave inside Welton in Northamptonshire held directly of the king and that, passing away no later than the early 1140s, this land, and perhaps other property, was inherited by her son and possessed by him while her husband was still alive. As a working hypothesis, one can now assume that she was the daughter (or, less likely, a sister) of a Richard who was the son of a certain Ralph and a woman who would have been the daughter of Vlmar (Woolmer), a minor English aristocrat, who held the small, approximately, 20-acre enclave in Welton, not only in 1086 at the time of the Domesday Book but also in 1066 at the time of the Norman Conquest. Domesday Book data would indicate close relations with the important native English Arden family. (The family name is used here for convenience only. It came into actual use much later.) This family was one of the extremely few native English families to have actually benefited in terms of increased lands, power, and prestige, as a result of the Norman Conquest. Because of the close connection that is indicated between Vlmar and those most closely associated with him with Arden family related land transfers, a family relationship is indicated and, as a working hypothesis, it will be assumed that Vlmar was possibly nephew by marriage, of the two powerful Arden brothers Aluuin (Alwin, a sheriff of Warwickshire for William I and the direct male-line ancestor of William Shakespeare's mother) and Leuuin (Lewin, Bishop of Litchfield at the time of the Norman Conquest and later abbot of Coventry, Warwickshire's most important town at the time of the Conquest).

The actual argument is, of course, quite complicated, being based on an analysis of many pages of data taken from the Domesday Book and analyzed for underlying patterns. This research is, of course, not new, being based on that of previous scholars. However, it is quite a bit more focused and, as such, goes deeper, covering more comprehensively a smaller number of individuals than previous research was able to do. It is to be hoped this will take shape in a book form sooner rather than later.

Theoretical Genealogy and the Earliest Mallorys

I recently had a chance to read three books in French by the famous genealogist, Christian Settipani, a gentleman whose research is impeccable and whose writing style is everything that academic writing should be. This has prompted me to review my material on the earliest Mallorys from the viewpoint of onomastics (the study of names and how their are inherited), canon law (church law) with regard to prohibited degrees of marriage, and medieval English common law real estate inheritance systems. I am planning to incorporate this into the book I have been working on now for almost two years. Basically, I will argue that the first Robert Mallory of Kirkby Mallory is likely to have had two sons by a first wife and two by a second, that his oldest was possibly a Geoffrey named after his father and who inherited, through his father, his grandfather's possessions. I will argue that the Laurence Mallory found in the Pipe Rolls was probably the son of this hypothetical Geoffrey. I will also argue that this line of Mallorys daughtered out with Laurence's generation and that one of the daughters (possibly a Cecilia) to whom the manor of Botley devolved would have been married to a man who may have been a William and who had a son would have been a John. This couple would have also had at least one daughter who was a second or third wife of Gilbert Segrave and the mother of Cecilia Segrave, probably a second wife of the second Richard Mallory of Kirkby Mallory and certainly the first and only wife of Gilbert Mallory of Walton on the Wold. I will argue that it would have been through Cecilia Segrave that the originally Mallory property of Botley became a Mallory property once again around 1225.

I will argue that the first Robert Mallory's second son was Anketil Mallory. I have already outlined his career in considerable detail in a book I published in 2013. Anketil was basically a self-made man. His first son Robert, it will be argued, must have married an heiress of sorts and had at least one son Anketil before this line either daughtered out or became extinct. Anketil's second son, Henry, used his service to king John to recover properties of his father which had been alienated to the crown during an unsuccessful revolution during the reign of king Henry II. Gilbert would have been a son of Henry Mallory's by a second wife and was born rather late in his life. It is from Gilbert Mallory and Cecilia Segrave that the Mallorys of Walton on the Wold descend. Gilbert will be shown to have had a younger brother, Anketil, from whom the first line of Yorkshire Mallorys would have descended.

As for the Mallorys of Kirkby Mallory, it will be shown that they descend, as has previously been described, from what I now consider to be Robert Mallory's third son, Richard, and the first son by a wife who would have been a minor heiress in Northampton, being probably the daughter or the grand daughter of the daughter of an Anglo-Saxon land-holder by the name of Ulmar, about whom practically nothing is known. Richard would have inherited certain properties from his mother before the death of his father and would have been the inheritor of the properties given to his father by the earl of Leicester. Richard, himself, married another Northampton heiress. His son William had in turn a son named Richard. It will be argued that this second Richard married firstly a daughter of Thomas Despencer and, in this way, would have been a brother-in-law of Stephen Segrave. By his first wife he would have had two sons, Thomas, who inherited Kirkby Mallory, and Robert who became a priest. The second Richard's second wife would have been Stephen Segrave's younger half-sister Cecilia Segrave who would have been not more than two or three years older than her stepsons, Thomas and Robert, or her second husband Gilbert. It is from Thomas Mallory that the future Mallory's of Kirkby Mallory descend, something for which their is solid documentation.

It will be argued that the Ralph Mallory, the crusader, who is mentioned elsewhere in this blog as a possible son of the first Richard Mallory would be better considered as a second son of the first Robert Mallory of Kirkby Mallory by his second wife. This particular Ralph Mallory will probably have left no descendants.

This represents an attempt at theoretical genealogy which makes use of network theory to create genealogical frameworks that can be used as models for testing historically surviving data in a logical, rather than in a romantic, fashion. As such, it will probably be unsatisfactory to those who find comfort in dogmatic approaches and perhaps will be misused by those attempting to create new genealogical dogma. I hope there will be some who can accept what will appear for the purposes for which it was designed to bring forward discussion on. In any case, this delays furtherthe appearance of my already much delayed new book, but I think for a good purpose.