This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Malet.'

Malet fil. Henry. C. Baldwin Malet, Somerset, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Sarra Malet, Cambridgeshire, ibid.

Harvey Malet, Buckinghamshire, ibid.

Alan Malet, Derbyshire, Henry III-Edward I: Testa de Nevill, sive Liber Feodorum, temp. Henry III-Edward I.

Malet Molendinarius (Malet the Miller), Jersey: 20 Edward I: Placita de Quo Warranto, temp. Edward I-III.

Magota Malet, 1379: Poll Tax of Yorkshire.

Yohannes Malet, 1379: ibid.

1586. Gawen Mallett, Somerset: Register of the University of Oxford.

1619. Married — Anthony Mallet and Margaret Meredeth: St. James, Clerkenwell.

(English, French) Descendant of little Mal, a pet form of names like Malcolm, Malcull and Maldred; descendant of little Malo or Maclou, a saint of the seventh century.

No figure stands out more vividly in the great battle of the Conquest than does “Guillame whom they call Malet,” as Wace suggests for his bravery. But his name was in fact derived from a Norse ancestor. He was Baron of Gerardivilla or Graville, near Havre, and probably descended from “Gerard, a Scandinavian prince, one of the companions of Rollo, who gave his name to his fief, as his son (or grandson) Maleth, did to his posterity. Robert, the son of Maleth, about 990 united with Osbern de Longueville, William de Breteuil, Gilbert de Menill, and others, in giving the church of Pictariville to religious uses. The gift was confirmed by his family (Gall Christ xi. Instr. 139). William Maleth witnessed a charter before the Conquest (Ibid. xi. 328).”—The Norman People. The family was of great account in the Duchy: “Les Malets et les Marteaux Sont les plus nobles de Caux.”

It is proved beyond doubt that William Malet had English blood in his veins. His mother, it is believed, was an Englishwoman, though no one exactly knows who she was. It has been suggested that she was a daughter of Earl Leofric and the famous Godiva, “for it was doubtless through William Malet the Earls of Chester had their descent from the old Earls of Mercia, of which they boasted, but it seems they never knew correctly how, nor has any genealogist since entirely explained the mystery.”—A. S. Ellis.

But if Malet’s name was not given him in honour of his courage, he was none the less emphatically the “chevalliers durs e vaillanz” that Benoit de S. More terms him, and his feats of arms at Senlac are eulogized in the Roman de Rou. “He threw himself boldly in the midst: with his flaming sword he terrified the English. But they pierced his shield and killed his horse, and he would have been slain himself, when the Sire de Montfort and William de Vez Pont came up with a strong force, and gallantly rescued him, though with the loss of many of their men, and mounted him on a fresh horse.” It was to him that, at the close of the hard-fought day, the Conqueror gave in charge the dead body of Harold, “to provide for its decent interment;" and he accordingly escorted the remains of the fallen King to the unconsecrated burial place on the cliffs of Hastings, where, according to the cruel irony of his epitaph, he was to watch the shore and sea he had so lately guarded. William Malet was probably selected for this melancholy office because, as Guy de Poitiers tells us, he was “partly English and partly Norman,” and Compater Haraldi: that is, joint sponsor or compère with the English King. According to Saxon custom, they had thus become “God-syb,” or relations in God. In Brazil, to this day, the godfather and godmother of the same child, called “Compadre” and “Comadre,” cannot marry without violating public opinion. He followed the Conqueror on his expedition to the North; was present at the surrender of York: and with Gilbert de Gand and Robert Fitz Richard, took charge of the conquered city with its new Norman garrison. We next find him Sheriff of the county, with extensive grants of land; and Constable of the newly-built castle of York, where, in the autumn of. 1068, he was besieged by the Northumbrians under the Saxon prince Edgar. The townsmen were disaffected, and he was threatened from within as well as from without He sent word to the King that “he must surrender unless help came quickly and the King himself hastened to his rescue, defeated the insurgents, and fortified York with a second fortress. In the following year, when the Danes landed in England, William Malet and Gilbert de Gand were still in command of the city; but this time either strangely over-rated their own strength, or under-valued their opponents. Far from asking for aid, they told the King they could hold out for a year as they were: and “this message, it appears, was actually sent after Waltheoff, Edgar, and the rest had joined the Danish fleet in the Humber.”—Freeman.

They prepared for a fresh leaguer: and lest the enemy should use the materials of the adjoining houses to fill up the Castle ditch, fired those that were nearest at hand. The flames spread till the whole city was ablaze and the greater part of it destroyed. When, two days later, the Danes drew nigh, the garrison sallied forth to meet them in the burning streets, and fought desperately to cut their way out. But Earl Waltheoff held York gate with his terrible battle-axe, and no man might pass through alive. One hundred Normans are said to have fallen by his single hand, and three thousand were slain in all. Gilbert de Gand, and William Malet —with whom were his wife and two of his children—alone were spared for the sake of their ransoms.

Two years after this great disaster, William Malet, as appears from a passage in Domesday, “died while in the King’s service in the Marshes” of Ely, during the beleaguering of Hereward, as Mr. Freeman infers. By his wife Hesilia, daughter of Gilbert Crispin, he left three sons: 1. Robert, his successor: 2. William, who held the Norman barony, and died a monk at Bec: and 3. Gilbert, ancestor of the Malets of Somersetshire. His daughter Beatrix married William de Arches; and it is suggested by Mr. Ellis, that the famous Countess Lucy, who was three times married, first to Ivo Taillebois; secondly to Roger Fitz Gerald; and thirdly to Ranulph Earl of Chester, was another daughter of his. But in 1152, her son Earl Ranulph, “obtained the Honour of Eia as Robert Malet his mother’s uncle held it” Had she been William’s daughter, she must have been Robert’s sister: unless, indeed, as Mr. Stapleton and others have supposed, there were two Countesses Lucy, mother and daughter.

Robert succeeded to his father’s barony, According to Dugdale, William Malet bore a much higher title, though it appears not to have been hereditary. “This William was a witness to the Charter of King William the Conqueror, made to the Dean and Canons of St. Martins le Grand, in London, and subscribed next to the Earles, having then the title of Princeps." and appears in Domesday as one of the greatest landed proprietors in England. With the Honour of Eye, he held two hundred and twenty-one manors in the county of Suffolk alone; and founded a Priory near his castle as a cell to the Norman Abbey of Bernai. He was Lord Great Chamberlain to Henry I., and for some short time high in favour at Court, but having taken part with Duke Robert lost his life and fortune in his cause. He was killed in 1106 at Tinchebrai: the honour of Eye escheated to the Crown, and the office of Great Chamberlain was granted to Alberic de Vere.

The Somersetshire estates, however, appear to have been restored either by Stephen or Henry II., and in 1168 William Malet of Shepton Malet held twenty-two knight’s fees in the county, twelve of them of the Abbot of Glastonbury. Collinson derives him from Gilbert Malet, and he is, through his second son Hugh, the direct ancestor of the present house.

The eldest, William, whose caput baroniæ was Cury-Malet, was, as Lord Lytton informs us, “one of the twenty-five illustrious conservators of Magna Charta,” and suffered excommunication in addition to forfeiture. “A short time before his death, he made his peace with the King, who, on his decease, compelled the husbands of his daughters, Hugh de Vivonne, who had married Mabel, and Robert de Mucegros, who had married Helewise, to pay a fine of two thousand marks! This Helewise afterwards married Sir Hugh Poyntz, and between these two coheirs the Barony of Malet was divided, Shepton going to Hugh de Vivonne and Cury to Sir Hugh Poyntz.”—Phelps' Somerset.

Hugh, the younger son, took the name of Fitchett, “during the disgrace of his family,” says Collinson; but more probably from his marriage with an heiress, as the coat of Fitchett appears among the family quarterings. Moreover, his son continued to bear it, and it was his grandson Baldwin who resumed the name of Malet. For a long series of generations they were seated at Enmore in Somersetshire, which passed away through Elizabeth Malet to Wilmot Earl of Rochester in 1680. The representation of the house then reverted to the posterity of Baldwin Malet, solicitor to Henry VIII., who, having married two Devonshire heiresses in succession, settled in that county. His great grandson Sir Thomas, of Poyntington in Somerset, received a patent of baronetage from Charles II., but suffered it to lie dormant; and the existing title dates only from 1791. Their present seat, Wilbury in Wiltshire, was bought in 1803. Their coat of arms, Azure three escallops Or, is, according to Sir W. Pole, that of the Deandoms of Devonshire, derived through an heiress. The ancient bearing of the Malets, three buckles, fibulae or fermails, was no doubt allusive, as the diminutive of fermails would be fermaillets. Robert Malet, temp. Ed. I., bore Argent three fermeaux Sable (Harl. MS. 6137): and the coat of the Malets of Lincolnshire (formerly to be seen in a stained glass window in Irby Church) Gules, three buckles Or, two and one, was the same as that of the Norman Sires de Graville. These Malets descended from Durand Malet, who appears in Domesday as a tenant in chief in Lincolnshire, and is believed to have been the first Lord Malet’s brother. They continued at Irby for many generations.

In Normandy, as in England, this long descended house is still represented by heirs male; though the elder line, holding the old Scandinavian fief of which it was wont to be said— "Syre en Graville premier Que roy en France:”

ended in 1516 with Louis Malet, Admiral of France and Governor of Normandy.

A name remarkable from its having withstood the innovations of orthography and nation, from the period when modem history is lost in obscurity. Its origin is undoubtedly Teutonic; for we find it has arrived in England from two distinct sources, and is, strange to say, both Saxon and Norman. Of the former, the descendants are possibly extinct long ere this; but their name appears in the Saxon Chronicle. And whilst the family tree has flourished with hardy vigour in its native Norway, from time immemorial to the present day, its Norman branch, constituting the great and distinguished house of Malet-de-Graville, which also occupies so prominent a place in the history of England, during the XL, XII., and XIII. centuries, and retaining the principle of undecayed vitality, has added lustre to the annals of France, by the greatness and honours to which it attained, and by the benefits which its services conferred on that country, from the early days of Rollo to the end of the XVI. century; and of this, a branch also established itself in the island of Jersey, in the latter part of the reign of the Conqueror, and the name is still borne by one of the most ancient families in this "isle of long lineages," where it held a seigneurie, or lordship in capite, of the Dukes of Normandy, bearing its name. It is now represented by John Mallet, Esq., Robert Philip Mallet, Esq., and William Edmund Mallet, Esq., surviving sons of the late Rev. John Mallet, rector of his original ancestral parish of Grouville, in that island. This name is derived from the word mall, the northern noun for the ponderous iron mace, in the use of which the Norse-men were such dreaded and doughty adepts, and is most properly spelt, in accordance with its derivative, with two L's, although written frequently with one only.-Contributed by W. E. Mallet, Esq.

This name has been ascribed by some to a place so termed in Normandy, and by others to the courageous blows of the family in battle. Malleus, Maule, Mall, and Mallet was one of the offensive weapons of a well—armed warrior, being generally made of iron, and used to destroy by pounding or bruising the enemy through or under the armor, that could not be penetrated by edged or pointed weapons, Edward I. was called Malleus Scotorum. All the families of this name in England trace their descent from the renowned William Lord Mallet de Graville, one of the great barons who accompanied William the Conqueror.

A well-known Norman baronial family, Barons of Gerardivilla or Graville, near Havre, Normandy. The ancestor was probably Gerard, a Scandinavian prince, one of the companions of Rollo, who gave his name to his fief. Maleth, his son or grandson, was father of Robert Malet, who c. 990 united with Osberne de Longueville, William de Breteuil, Gilbert de Menill, and others in giving the Church of Pictariville to religious uses. The gift was confirmed by his family (Gall. Christ. xi.; Instr. 139). William Maleth, whose name is conspicuous in the history of the Conquest, witnessed a charter before the Conquest (Gall. Christ. xi. 328). Robert M. his son, 1086, held the vast barony of Eye, Suffolk, and was one of the greatest proprietors in England. From him descended the Malets of Normandy. Several brothers of the family settled in England, of whom Durand M. occurs 1086 in Leicester, Notts, and Lincoln; Gilbert and William in Suffolk.

From a branch possessed of the Lordship of Corry Malet, Somerset, 1165 (Liber Niger), descended the Malets of Somerset and the baronets of the name.

From the Old Norse, from the French, The Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings, committed the body of Harold to W. Malet to see it buried. His son Robert was a tenant in chief in the Domesday Book, (Surrey). He founded the Monastery of Eye. Malet held lands temp. King John.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Malet.

Malet: a great favourite with the Conqueror, who appointed William Malet to hold his newly-built castle in York.

Mallett is a slightly altered form of a very ancient name in Norfolk, where it has remained ever since the time of William the Conqueror, when Roger Mallet or Malet, lord of Eye in Suffolk, received an extensive grant of lands. The name of Malet was common in the adjoining county of Lincoln as well as in the distant county of Somerset in the reign of Edward I. (H. R.).