Mar 9, 2015

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.

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