Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/427

Rh was refused. Sir Thomas Malet died 19 Dec. 1665, and was buried in Pointington Church, Somerset. His son, Sir John, who was knighted at Whitehall in the year of his father's death, was recorder of Bridgewater.

 MALET or MALLET, WILLIAM (d. 1071), of Graville in Normandy, companion of the Conqueror, is described by Guy of Amiens (Carmen de Hastingæ Prælio, l. 587) as ‘quidam partim Normannus et Anglus.’ Several points of evidence seem to justify Mr. Freeman's conjecture (Norman Conquest, 1875, iii. 779) that his mother was an Englishwoman, and a sister of Godgifu or Godiva and of Thorold the sheriff. This relationship, if true, would help to account for the unsupported tradition noticed by Mr. Freeman (ib. 1877, ii. 679), that Ælfgifu, the wife of Ælfgar of Mercia, and the mother of Aldgyth, Harold's queen, was a sister of William Malet. In most readings of Guy of Amiens' poem Malet is described as ‘Compater Heraldi,’ a term which is unexplained except by a conjecture of Mr. Planché (The Conqueror and his Companions, ii. 95) that Malet and Harold may have been joint sponsors of Duke William's daughter, Adela, who was born in 1062, the year of Harold's visit to Normandy. But in Michel's ‘Chron. Anglo-Normandes,’ iii. 27, ed. 1836, a different reading of this line, viz. ‘Compatit Heraldi,’ is given, which, if correct, would dispose of the difficulty. The exploits of ‘Guillaume ki l'en dit Mallet’ at the battle of Hastings are celebrated by Wace in his ‘Roman de Rou’ (ll. 13472–84), and he was entrusted by William with the duty of burying the body of Harold. After the capture of York by William in 1068, Malet received the office of sheriff, and was appointed with two other Norman captains to command the garrison of the castle of York. In the following months, with the help of the king, he repelled the attacks of the enemy, but he shared in the defeat of the Norman garrison in 1069, when a strong force of Danes and English attacked and captured the city, and he was himself carried off as a prisoner. Subsequently it seems that he recovered his freedom and re-entered the service of William, although he lost his sheriffdom and some of his lands. It is almost certain, from the references to him in the second book of ‘Domesday,’ that Malet died in the campaign against Hereward in 1071 (Norman Conquest, 1876, iv. 787–90, note W). Malet received large grants of land in England, chiefly in the eastern counties, and at his principal lordship at Eye in Suffolk he built a castle and established a market. He is noticed in ‘Domesday’ as having been one of the tenants in chief, and in a charter granted by William I to the church of St. Martin's-le-Grand in London he signs as ‘Willielmus Malet, Princeps,’ after the bishops, abbots, and earls. By his wife Hesilia Crispin, a descendant in the fourth generation of Rollo, first duke of Normandy, Malet left two sons, Robert [q. v.] and Gilbert, and a daughter Beatrice. His brother Durand also settled in England, and from him the Lincolnshire branches of the family are descended.

 MALET or MALLET, WILLIAM (fl. 1195–1215), baron of Curry Mallet and Shepton Mallet, Somerset, was the descendant in the fourth generation of Gilbert, brother of Robert [q. v.], and the younger son of William Malet [q. v.] of Graville. He was in Normandy with King Richard in 1195; in the following year he paid a fine of 100l. for livery of his inheritance; in 1204 he paid to the king a hundred shillings for liberty to sue William de Evermue for the lordship of Swinton; in 1211 he was appointed sheriff of Dorset and Somerset; and in 1214 he served King John with ten knights and twenty soldiers in Poitou. In the following year Malet took a prominent part on the popular side in the struggle between the king and the barons. He joined the confederacy of the barons at Stamford in Easter week, 1215, and was one of the twenty-five barons subsequently elected to guarantee the observance of the Great Charter. For the part which he took in the events of that year he