Elizabeth MALLORY

Filiation incertaine.

In a pedigree of the Driby family in Nichols' Leics, vol. 2 pt. 1 page17*, Sir Thomas Mallory (son of Sir Anketil and Alice de Driby) is saidto have married Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Grendon. The Grendonfamily held the manor of Bramcote, near Grendon, in Warwickshire. Grendon is only 10 miles from Kirkby Mallory, the earlier seat of the Mallorys in Leicestershire. And Margaret Grendon was the widow of WilliamCharnells of Snareston, Leicestershire - thus another Leics connection.

There is some narrative of the Grendons of Bramcote in vol. 4 of VCH Watwickshire sub Polesworth. There are enough chronological details given there to conclude that the Mallory/Grendon marriage and the Talbot/Leeke marriage overlap, as Sir Thomas Mallory and his wife Margaret Grendon were both living in 1411, and Margaret survived him. (The evidenceof Alice de Driby's will of 1412 indicates that her son Thomas died before her, which is not inconsistent with what VCH states.) So this SirThomas Mallory cannot be the one who married Joan Talbot, and thus thetwo Sir Thomas Mallorys must have been separate men. As John Watson noted earlier, "there was more than one person called Sir Thomas Malloryalive in the early fifteenth century".

The Mallory/Grendon marriage is discussed at some length in the 1985 book "A History of the Mallory family" by S. V. Mallory Smith, who concludes that Elizabeth the wife of Robert Eure was a daughter of this marriage (although, to be fair, the author appears to be unaware of the Mallory/Talbot marriage). I don't think there's sufficient evidence to saywhich Sir Thomas Mallory was the son of Sir Anketil and thus the father of Elizabeth.

(John Higgins)

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