General Notes

The following is excerpted from a post to SGM, 27 Jan 2002, by Adrian Channing:

From: ADRIANCHANNING@@cs.com (ADRIANCHANNING@@cs.com)
Subject: Malemaine was Joan Knowght
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
Date: 2002-01-27 16:19:17 PST

Dear Rosie,

Thanks for your message.

Yes, I find Yeatman difficult to follow (overworked pronouns) and he makes same silly mistakes.  The 23 page preface to the Betchworth book is nothing more than a diatribe against his former printers.

DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND's "Battle Abbey Roll", 1889, Vol ii pp 246-8:

Malemaine: evil-handed;  a redoubtable nickname, akin to the talons of the ferocious Malegriffe (John Malegreffe, 9 Ed. II., held North Okendon, in Essex): and boding no good to the peace of the neighbourhood. This family became powerful in East Kent; and their allusive coat, Ermine on a chief gules, three sinister hands coupled at the wrist Argent, is several times carved on the roof of the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral. Le Malesmains, or Maliis Manibus, occurs more than once in the Norman Exchequer Rolls of 1180-95; and a Sieur de Mallemains, bearing the same three silver hands in their scarlet field, was to be found in Normandy during the present century. (Nobiliaire de Normandie.)

In England the name has long since perished, and is only retained by some of their former possessions; Alkham Malemains, Pluckley Malmains, Stoke Malmains, and Waldershare-Malmains, in Kent. It is not written in Domesday; but Hasted retails a family tradition-for which no authority is given, nor probably could be furnished-that "John de Malmains was standard-bearer to the Norman foot soldiers at the battle of Hastings."

Their principal seat, Waldershare, was originally held of the Mamimots, and then of their descendants the Sayes; and their ancient manor house, Malmains Hall-the name has in course of time degenerated to Maaman's Hall-is now one of Lord Guilford's farmhouses. "Near it an open unenclosed down is called Maimage Down, corruptly for Malmains Down."-Hasted. They were, he tells us, "of eminent account in those parts." Gilbert Malesmains, in the latter years of the 12th century, married the widowed Countess of Salisbury, Alianor de Vitre." She married, first William Paynell (obt. 1184), by whom she had a son who died young; secondly Gilbert de Tillieres (obt. 1190), by whom she had a son, Gilbert, under age at his father's death, and two daughters, Juliana and Joanna ; and thirdly William Fitz Patric Earl of Salisbury (obt. 1196), by whom she had a daughter Ela, Countess of Salisbury in her own right. A fourth husband, Gilbert Malesmains, in 1198 held Cooling in right of his wife, together with the lands in England of her dower, viz. Westcote in Surrey, Kingsbury and Edgeware, Middlesex, Wooton, in Oxon, and Gatesden in Herts, and held them to the year of the conquest of Normandy by Philip Augustus, when they were in the King's hands as an escheat of the land of the Normans."- _T Stapleton._ 

It does not appear that she had children by this last marriage; but Gilbert's son by a former wife, Thomas Malesmains, married one of her daughters by her second husband, Joanna de Tillieres.