The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Malet of Wilbury, Baronet 1791.

A noble Norman family of great antiquity, who were of Baronial rank immediately after the Conquest, descended from William Baron Malet, whose grandson, another William Baron Malet, was expelled by Henry I. The elder branch of the family were long seated at Enmore, in the county of Somerset; but the ancestors of the present family, whose baronetcy was conferred for services in the East Indies, at Corypole and Wolleigh, in the county of Devon, and at Pointington and St. Audries, in Somersetshire. Wilbury was purchased in 1803.

See Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 106; Collinson's History of Somersetshire, vol. i. p. 90; and the Gentleman's Magazine for 1799, p. 117.

Arms.—Azure, three escallops or. Robert Malet bore Argent, three fermaux sable, in the reign of Edward I. as appears by Sir R. St. George's Roll, Harl. MS. 6137.

Present Representative, Sir Alexander Charles Malet, 2nd Baronet.

Gentle.

Codrington of Wroughton.

The name is local, from Codrington, in the parish of' Wapley, in the county of Gloucester, where this family was seated as early as the reign of Henry IV. John Codrington, Esquire, Standard-bearer to Henry V. in his wars in France, was the direct ancestor; he died in 1475, at the age, it is said, of 112; his monument remains at Wapley.