Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Malet, Robert
MALET or MALLET, ROBERT (d. 1106?), baron of Eye, was the elder son of William Malet [q. v.] of Graville, and succeeded to his father's possessions on his father's death in 1076. He appears in ‘Domesday’ as the owner, among other properties, of thirty-two manors in Yorkshire, of three in Essex, of one in Hampshire, of two in Nottinghamshire, of eight in Lincolnshire, and of two hundred and twenty-one in Suffolk. At Eye Malet built and endowed a monastery of Benedictine monks. From his position he enjoyed considerable influence in the eastern counties, and he took a prominent part in repressing the rebellion of Ralph, earl of Norfolk, in 1075–6, and in the capture of Norwich Castle which followed. In King William's grant of the manor of Fracenham to Archbishop Lanfranc, Malet is styled vice-comes or sheriff, and later on, at the beginning of Henry I's reign, he appears as great chamberlain of England. In the struggle between Henry and Duke Robert, Malet espoused Robert's cause, and shortly after Henry's accession he was banished from England, together with other adherents of Robert, and his estates in England were confiscated and bestowed by Henry upon Stephen of Blois. He retired to Normandy, and is supposed to have been killed at the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. By his wife Helise or Elisée de Brionne, great-granddaughter of Richard I, duke of Normandy, Malet left a son named William, who, though banished from England in 1109, succeeded to his father's possessions in Normandy, and was the ancestor of the family of Malet or Mallet de Graville in France, and of some other branches of the family in England.
[Dugdale's Baronage, i. 111, and Monast. i. 356; Stubbs's Constitutional Hist. i. 308; Freeman's Norman Conquest, 1876, iv. 579, 583, and Reign of William Rufus, ii. 417; Ellis's Introd. to Domesday, i. 449, ii. 183, 351; Ordericus Vitalis, pp. 804–5; A. Malet's Notices of an English Branch of the Malet Family.]