Research Notes:
"Malger, one of the principal tenants of William de Perci, was holding of him the manor of Edlington, with its berwicks in Braithwell and Doncaster, but rated now only at 30s., though formerly at 4l., also the manor of Barnby. He and Rozelin were holding all the lands of the Perci fief in the vicinity of Doncaster. Elsewhere he held of the same lord two manors in Steeton, two in Haselwood, also Saxhall (Saxton). We also find Malger, as a vassal of Gilbert de Gand, holding of him Ilkston and two manors in Shipley in Derbyshire. [Robert Strelley (aet. 23 on the fest. of St. Matthew, 1302) married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William Vavasour of Shipley, which place had thus fallen to a junior branch.] He is also, doubtless, the same Malger who held Hasle of Ilbert de Laci. No other notice of Malger occurs, and whether the name which distinguished his descendants originated in him or not, is by no means certain. Mauger, as the name is more generally spelt, called "Le Vavasur," the first found with this designation, a benefactor to Salley Abbey, who died 1168, must have been his grandson, and son of Mauger, father also of "Robert fitz Malger," called Avunculus[At this date the distinction between avunculus and patruus was still sometimes made, and we find Malger le Vavasur the first of Denton, confirming the gift of Richard le Vavasur, his "patruus," to Salley Abbey, in time of Hen. II.] by William le Vavasour, the justice itinerant, at the end of the reign of Henry II. The heirs male of this family continued in possession of Haselwood until the death, unmarried, of the last of them, Sir Thomas Vavasour, bart., in 1826. The Vavasour arms, a fess dancette sable, may be a corruption (of which there are other instances) of the fess fusily of the Percys, their feudal lords, to whom they were, no doubt, related also by blood. The arms first occur on the seal of Malger le Vavasour, younger son of the judge and ancestor of the branch of Denton and Askwith, and, as in other early instances, the fess had then but two points upwards, like the letter M, which, being the initial of their frequent name, has been suggested as the origin of the coat. The cock, as the crest of the family at Haselwood, no doubt, came from Cockfield of Cockfield, the only heiress married by any of the line." [1]
"The Vavasours ... have from very early times been one of the leading families in Yorkshire. Their ancestor, Malger or Mauger, is recorded in the Doomsday Book as holding manors in Hazelwood, Steeton, Saxhall [Saxton], and elsewhere in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, under William de Perci. The main line of the family was for many centuries seated at Hazelwood near Tadcaster." [2]
"tenant in Yorks 1086 of among others William de Percy" "either this Mauger (I?) or another person of the same name (Mauger (II?)), possibly Mauger (I?)'s s, witnessed a charter of Alan de Percy temp Henry I) [and] had, with an er s (Robert), a son or dau [who] had, with a yr s (Robert), William Le Vavasour"[3]
[1] Alfred S. Ellis, "Biographical Notes on Yorkshire Tenants Named in Domesday Book. II The Under-tenants," Yorkshire Archeological and Topographical Journal 5 (1879), 289-330 at 313-4, [GoogleBooks].
[2] W. Paley Blaidon, Baildon and the Baildons, A History of a Yorkshire Manor and Family, Vol. 1 (St. Catherine's Press, 1912), 505, [InternetArchive].
[3] Charles Mosley, ed., Burke's Peerage, Baronetage, & Knightage, 107th edition, Vol. 3 (Willington, Delaware: Burke's Peerage & Gentry, LLC, 2003), 3984.