Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/424

  

MALEBYSSE, RICHARD (d. 1209), justiciar, was son of Hugh Malebysse, a Norman, who settled at Scawton, Yorkshire, in 1138, and married Emma, daughter and heiress of Henry de Percy of Acaster. Richard Malebysse held Acaster in 1176, and was forester for Yorkshire (, i. 316). He was one of the leaders in the savage attack on and massacre of the Jews at York in 1190 (, i. 321, Rolls Ser.) As a punishment for his share in this outrage his lands were seized by the king. Malebysse appears to have been a supporter of Earl John, and in consequence he was one of those who were excommunicated by William de Longchamp in December 1191 (, iii. 153). In 1193 he paid a fine of twenty marks for the recovery of his lands till the king's return, and eventually paid six hundred marks for full restoration (, Hist. of Exchequer, i. 473, 483). After the accession of John, Malebysse comes into some prominence. In June 1199 he, or it may be his brother Hugh, was sent as an envoy to Scotland to William the Lion to demand homage. In July 1200 he had license to fortify Wheldrake Castle, but the permission was withdrawn at the request of the citizens of York. In May 1201 he was sent on a mission to the king of Scots to ask him to defer his answer as to Northumberland till Michaelmas (, iv. 91, 117, 163–4). Malebysse was a justice itinerant for Yorkshire in 1201, and next year sat to acknowledge fines at Westminster. In 1204 he was employed in enforcing the payment of aids. He was keeper of the forests of Galtres, Derwent, and Wernedale. He died in 1209, leaving a son John, and a daughter Emma, who married, first, Robert de Maisnil, and, secondly, Robert de Stutevil. His grandson, Hercules Malebysse, is said to have married Beckwith, daughter of William Bruce of Pickering, and so to have become ancestor of the family of Beckwith of Silksworth and Trimdon, Durham. His brother Hugh survived him, and in 1210 took part in John's Irish expedition as one of the king's household (, Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, i. 65). Richard Malebysse was founder of Newbo Abbey, Lincolnshire, in 1198 (, Monasticon, vi. 887). Such importance as he had he seems to have owed to John's favour; William of Newburgh calls him ‘homo audacissimus, vero agnomine Mala-Bestia.’



MALET, CHARLES WARRE (1753?–1815), Indian administrator and diplomatist, was the eldest son of the Rev. Alexander Malet, rector of Combe-Florey, Somerset, and Maiden Newton, Dorset, and his wife Ann, daughter of the Rev. Laurence St. Lo, D.D., rector of Pulham, Dorset. He was a descendant in the twenty-first generation of [q. v.] of Graville. At an early age he entered the service of the East India Company, and after filling various posts, including a mission to the great mogul, he was in 1785 appointed resident minister at Poona, at the court of the peishwa. While at Poona, he negotiated and executed in June 1790, under the instructions of the governor-general, Lord Cornwallis, a treaty of alliance between the East India Company, the peishwa, and the nizam, against Tippoo Sultan, and for his services in this respect he was created a baronet 24 Feb. 1791. Subsequently Malet was for some time acting governor of Bombay, an office which he held until 1798, when he retired from the service and returned to England. He was F.R.S. and F.S.A., and died in 1815 (Gent. Mag. 1815, pt. i. p. 185). In 1799 he married Susanna, daughter of James Wales, esq., by whom he left eight sons. The second son, Charles St. Lo Malet (1802–1889), lieutenant-colonel, was stationed successively in Jamaica, Guernsey, Ireland, and at Portsmouth; and the third son, William Wyndham Malet (1803–1885), vicar of Ardeley, Hertfordshire, from 1843 till his death, was author, among other works, of ‘An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862,’ London, 1863, 8vo, and of ‘The Olive Leaf, a Pilgrimage to Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople in 1867,’ London, 1868.

The eldest son, (1800–1886), diplomatist, born at Hartham Park, Wiltshire, in June 1800, succeeded to the baronetcy in 1815. He was educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1822), and entered the diplomatic service in 1824 as unpaid attaché at St. Petersburg, where he was an eye-witness of the military insurrection which took place on the accession of the Emperor Nicholas in 1825. He afterwards became secretary of legation at Lisbon under Lord Howden [see ] during the Miguelite war of 1832–4. He served in a like capacity at the Hague, and was later secretary of the embassy at Vienna and British minister at Würtemberg. In 1849 he became minister plenipotentiary to the Germanic confederation at Frank-