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.

A Second Reconstruction of the Line of Descent of the the Mallorys of Papworth St Agnes and of Sir Richard Mallory, Lord Mayor of London

This is a new reworking of an earlier version, eliminating one generation, being that of Reginald Mallory whom I now see as a much older half-brother of the first Anketil Mallory and not as a father. The 14th century is the most confusing period of medieval Mallory family history in England. There is, in particular, much that deals with the ancestry of the Mallorys of Papworth St Agnes that, not being based on the full range of original records now available, has been mistakenly reported. It is, of course, unlikely that all questions will ever be answered with certainty, but it is, nevertheless, possible to propose new hypotheses to explain the historical data available that will be seen as an improvement over any preceding hypothesis, some of which have had currency as historical fact for at least 400 years. I am in the process of writing seven years of research up into a book form. The justification will be found in the said book when it comes out. It will, in outline, give the following reconstruction which, though not promising absolute certainty in every point, will be based on historical fact more fully than any reconstruction given so far, including those first attempts which were made by individuals connected with the College of Arms in the late 1500s. Please note that the spelling of names has been, in every instance, normalized to 21st century conventions.

1. Geoffrey Mallory (alive 1086), father of
2. Robert Mallory, father of
3. Anketil Mallory (b. ca. 1110), father, possibly by a second wife, of
4. Henry Mallory (b. ca. 1150 with an older brother Robert born much earlier), father, possibly by a second wife, of
5. Gilbert Mallory (b. ca. 1202, possibly the son of a second marriage), m. Cecilia Segrave, much younger sister (possibly, a half-sister) of Stephen Segrave, father of
6. John Mallory (b. ca. 1230), by an assumed first wife was the father of  Reginald (Reynald in French documents) Mallory (b. ca. 1255), m. (1) Joan and (2) Juliana, the second of whom was possibly a neice or cousin's daughter of Millicent de Monte Alto and who, at the time of her marriage to Reginald, was the widow of Roger la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe (with a fair degree of certainty the son of a William la Zouche of King's Nympton). My present belief is that the assumption that Reginald's step-daughter (a daughter of Juliana and Roger la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe) was the wife of his much younger half-brother, Anketil, the product of a second or third marriage.
7. Anketil (also known as Anthony) Mallory of Suthborough (b. ca. 1293), by a daughter of Juliana and Roger la Zouche, was probably not a father-in-law, as I previously thought possible, but rather the father of
8. John Mallory (b. ca. 1325), who is recorded to have outlived his son, Anketil (or Anketin/Anthony/Antoine, depending on the document). John's wife and the mother of his son was possibly a sister of William de Pappeworthe of Papworth St Agnes perhaps a woman by the name of Margaret. 
9.  Antoine (as his wife preferred to call him) and Alice de Driby (a rich heiress for whom Antoine was a third husband and a love match). Antoine (b. ca. 1247) and his wife Alice (most likely born around the same time as her third husband) were the parents of
10. William (b. sometime in the 1380s), who, by a family arrangement, inherited Papworth St Agnes from William de Pappeworthe. He became the second husband of Margaret (by her first marriage, a Corbet), very probably the daughter of John Burley and the sister of William Burley, a speaker of the House of Commons. She would seem to have been William's second wife. William and Margaret were the parents of 
11. Thomas Mallory (b. 1425, d. 1469), m. a niece of Thomas Palmer, a speaker of the House of Commons and also a possible brother-in-law by virtue of a first marriage to an older half-sister of Thomas Mallory. This Thomas Mallory is sometimes considered as a prime candidate for having been the author of Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of King Arthur), though recent scholars tend to prefer Sir Thomas Mallory of Newbold Revel. He was the father of 
12. Anthony Mallory who by an earlier unnamed first or second wife was the father of 
13. Sir Richard Mallory, Lord Mayor of London in 1565. By his wife Anne, the daughter of Andrew Smith, he was the father of a numerous family and has numerous descendants alive today through the female line, though it would appear that his male line descendants died out by 1620 in his grandchildren's generation. His younger brother, Sir William Mallory, to whom Papworth St Agnes descended by virtue of a patent to Anthony Mallory given by King Henry VIII, would, on the other hand, appear to still have male line descendants.

An update of further evidence regarding the earliest Mallory lords of Botley

I am now in a position to reconsider the matter of  Gilbert Mallory (son of Henry, younger son of Anketil, the presumed son of Robert, presumed son of Geoffrey) being the Lord of Botley. He appears in connection with this manor twice, once in 1226 and another time in 1232, when he would have been approximately 25 and 31 years old, respectively. As this manor does not seem to have figured in among the properties his guardians managed in his minority or which were part of his son John's inheritance in that individual's minority during the 1240s, I feel the first presumption must be that the properties were Gilbert's in the right of his wife, Cecilia Segrave, rather than his own and this is born out by her assigning this manor on her own authority and without reference to her heir, John, to another son, William in the early 1280s when she, herself, would have been in her early eighties. There are various scenarios possible, but it is best, when knowledge is lacking, to work with the simplest scenario available. In this case, the simplest scenario is that Botley, unlike Tachebrook (which would seem to have been her widow's dower) was hers by right of inheritance. 
However, the first lord of Botley, as has been discussed elsewhere, was Geoffrey Mallory and the grant would appear to have been made in the reign of William I. Cecilia was, therefore, likely to have been distantly related to her husband Gilbert Mallory. For her marriage to have been allowed under church law, there had to be at least four generations back to a common ancestor for either herself or her husband. If Botley, indeed, were an inheritance of Cecilia, it would have had to have come to her through her mother, who would have already been dead by 1225. Cecilia's mother, in turn, would have been the daughter of a Mallory heiress and a grand daughter of a presumed eldest son (name unconfirmed, but possibly Geoffrey) of Robert Mallory, the presumed son of the first post-Norman Conquest Mallory lord of Botley, Geoffrey Mallory. 
There is much the argument concerning Botley's descent to Cecilia that will have to remain inferred and will depend heavily on what might be best termed "theoretical genealogy", where the prosopography, the law, and the social customs of an era are viewed in terms of what might be considered somewhat loosely as a form of network theory. This is a very different form of genealogy from what might be termed "absolute genealogy" where nothing appears which cannot be justified by verifiable data. The results of theoretical genealogy neither form part of the realm of fiction or myth. They are built on clearly stated hypotheses and, as logically conceived theoretical constructs, retain great meaning as a tool for eliminating impossibilities and for directing the course of future research. 
In this case, one would expect that, as a result of possessing a theoretically valid historical construct of the descent of Botley, we will also be in a far better position than before to understand the descent of other properties of the first Geoffrey Mallory in southwest England, something which has so far not been possible. When I will be able to turn my attention to this, however, will be something I cannot now predict. Possibly, if things go well, there might be a certain amount of time available this year in August or possibly next year in March. I can only hope that it will be sooner than later.

Preliminary findings regarding the ancestry of Sir Thomas Mallory of Newbold Revel

Newbold Revel was brought to the Mallory family by the marriage, probably in 1332, of a certain Stephen Mallory with the heiress of the Revel family. This line has already been tentatively established by the ground-breaking research of P.J.C. Field. An examination of the notes I took in 2007 during a year of intensive research at the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London, the British Library, and the National Archives at Kew have enabled to confirm this lineage with rather more certainty than has been possible to date and to confirm my dating of the likely birth years of the earliest Mallorys. Instead of merely being a likely hypothesis, the following line of descent may now be categorized as "unlikely not to have been the case". New evidence could change things, though the likelihood of dramatic change should now be considered rather small, indeed, with the least certainty being in the first two generations. 

The lineage may be summarized as: Geoffrey Mallory, born before 1060. Robert Mallory born circa 1085. Richard Mallory born circa 1110. Simon Mallory born circa 1135. Sedgwyn Mallory born circa 1160. Simon Mallory born circa 1185. Richard Mallory born circa 1210. Simon Mallory born circa 1235. Roger Mallory born circa 1260. Simon Mallory born circa 1285. Stephen Mallory born circa 1310 and probably married in 1332. 

It is not entirely certain as to how many generations there are between Stephen Mallory and Sir Thomas Mallory of Newbold Revel, the knight often considered by contemporary literary historians to be the writer of very famous "Le Morte d'Arthur" (the story of King Arthur), largely because there is still no truly convincing academic consensus as to the estimated year of his birth, though, if the Mallory generation average continued to have held true in the case of his lineage, one would expect him to be the fourth generation after the above-mentioned Stephen Mallory and born circa 1410. The best fit would be a lineage also put forth as a possibility by P.J.C. Field (though only as one possibility and without estimated dates of birth), being John born circa 1335, Nicholas born circa 1360, John born circa 1385, and Thomas born circa 1410. I cannot, however, present the lineage after Stephen with the same certainty as the lineage before, only suggest that this should represent a first line of research for those interested in these individuals. 

Again, though I have every intention of eventually producing a work about the above lineage of academically acceptable standards discussing the above in detail with a thorough examination of the sources, I am not yet in a position to do so and do not expect to be able to begin writing what would be a full-scale book until after this school year ends for me in March of next year. In the mean time, I hope the above might prove useful to those who might be interested in the problems involved in properly identifying this particular gentry lineage. 


Please note that I am writing primarily for the benefit of the non-expert and have, therefore, choses to normalize my spellings, as the medieval spellings of Mallory are numerous. A common spelling during the time of Sir Thomas of Newbold Revel was Malory, but there were many others as well, before, during, and after the life of that particular knight. For this reason, I have chosen to normalize according to the most common modern spelling which is Mallory. Likewise, "Le Morte d'Arthur" is a normalization to modern spelling conventions of "Le Morte Darthur".

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.

"Disambiguating Leuric", a new book, and corrections to "Post Norman Conquest Mallorys"

This is to introduce a book I published in November of last year with lulu.com, a book called "Disambiguating Leuric" and also to alert potential readers of "Post Norman Conquest Mallorys" to the fact that research done for "Disambiguating Leuric" proved to me that certain matters were not properly addressed in "Post Norman Conquest Mallorys", something which means that a revised edition will be issued later this year.

I started "Disambiguating Leuric" on the assumption that a daughter or granddaughter of that man had married Robert Mallory, the first lord of Kirkby Mallory and had brought with her to the descendants of this marriage a certain property existing that lay partly in Welton and partly in what is now called Thrupp Grounds, two small neighboring hamlets in Northamptonshire. Further research eventually convinced me that I had misinterpreted available evidence and that the property, if an inheritance, as I still believe it is, would have come by marriage to a female relative of Leuric's neighbor, Vlmar (Woolmer in modern English). Unlike Leuric, extensive research has so far failed to uncover further certain information on his family background, though I have managed to turn up a certain amount of information likely to apply to him personally. 

I also have uncovered further information about the Novomercato family, which will necessitate a rewriting of that chapter of "Post Norman Conquest Mallorys". It would seem that the second William de Novomercato would have been the brother and not the father of Richard Mallorys wife. More information that would seem to apply to this woman's two sisters has also been uncovered. 

As for Leuric, my new book identifies certain relationships and supplements previous work done by British scholars whose work I admire greatly. Briefly summarizing the extensive evidence presented in my new book, it would seem that Leuric was the son of Leuuin (an abbot and later a bishop) who was the brother of Alwin, the father of Turchil, who was William the Conqueror's sheriff of Warwickshire and the ancestor the Arden family, from which William Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden was descended. Leuric and his family will be more carefully examined in another book I am planning for publication perhaps next year.

In addition to the above-mentioned publication plans, I am currently working on a book about how to better interpret the available tax surveys covering Northamptonshire. This will look at the Northamptonshire Geld Roll, the Domesday Book chapter dealing with Northamptonshire, and the 12th century Northamptonshire Survey. A fairly useful result I have found an elegant proof for is that the "hide", the basic land unit used in medieval England from the Anglo-Saxon period onward was originally, at least with regard for Northamptonshire, 200 medieval English acres. This is different from other estimates of 100 and 120 acres. Due to the fairly complicated nature of the research being undertaken, I cannot put a precise date on publication, but hope it might be sometime this year, because the research would have value in many different fields.

When the above works are finished, I plan to write the next volume dealing with the prosopography of the Mallory family, carrying it at least through the reign of Henry III and, if space allows, through that of Edward I.

Post Norman Conquest Mallorys -- The First Three Generations

I just published a book dedicated to S.V. Mallory Smith, a lady I admire greatly for her pioneering work on medieval Mallory history. It covers the first three generations of Mallorys after the Norman Conquest, as well as uncovering a connection with England's Anglo-Saxon past and providing an outline of the history of the Novomercato family of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire, a family whose properties were inherited by the Mallorys in the 12th century by virtue of direct descent. The book in entitled "Post Norman Conquest Mallorys" and subtitled "The First Three Generations". It's URL is:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/hikaru-kitabayashi/post-norman-conquest-mallorys/hardcover/product-21231781.html

It is 213 pages and probably too densely written for the average reader. Nevertheless, for those (probably almost all) who are interested in Mallory family history, but uninterested in reading through a closely argued academic work that depends on largely Latin documents, I would like to summarize my conclusions here. The first Mallory in England was a Geoffrey, who seems to have had his origin in Bessin in Normandy, and possessed property in Dorset, Somerset, and Warwick. He would have been old enough to have participated in the conquest, though whether he did or not must remain an open question. He seems to have lived to perhaps around 1120, give or take perhaps five years. Before he died he seem to have assigned Botley, a Warwickshire property of his to his grandson Anketil, the younger son of his younger son Robert. Robert, himself, was most likely born in the mid-1080s. This Robert would have entered into the service of the first Beaumont earl of Leicester by around 1110, at the latest, would seem to have been granted Kyrkby Mallory by the first earl, was married to the heiress of the family of an Englishman by the name of Leofric, and had a first son Richard around 1110 and a second son Anketil around 1114. Richard married Agnes de Novomercato around 1130 and had at least two and possibly three or four sons (William, Simon, and, probably, Ralph, but with less certainty Luke) in the 1130s. Anketil seems to have married in the mid-1130s with his oldest son Robert being born within this time frame. Anketil's second surviving son was a Henry who would have been born as much as 12 years after his older brother Robert. Another substantially well off Mallory from the time period dating to the second half of the 12th century was a certain Laurence Mallory of Bristol who seems to have been an adherent of the earl of Gloucester. Laurence would surely have been a descendant of Geoffrey by an older son, but his exact affiliation with the other Mallorys of his era will probably never be known. Another finding of importance is the the Mallory descendants of Anketil obtained their properties independently from those of Richard and, consequently, never owed homage to the descendants of Richard for the right to hold property.