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The subject of the DNA is of great interest to me because, combined with proper documentation, it can dramatically enhance the value of the often inadequately preserved records of previous centuries.
The Mallory DNA data is still inadequate. The Studley Royal affiliation to other Mallory lines can only, at present be hypothesized. My own belief is, that, if tradition can be relied on, they are, for many reasons based on circumstantial evidence, closely related to the Papworth St. Agnes branch. Tradition, though, is a slippery thing to rely when trying either to write history or to produce a reliable pedigree.
One thing which is interesting to me is that I remember reading several months ago in an English source that the Chestershire Mallorys were, in all probability, descended from the Studley Royal Mallorys. If so, there would have been an extra-paternal event on one side or the other perhaps sometime during the 1500s.
However, in researching medieval Mallory lineages, one thing that has struck me is that the life strategies of the Drayton and Litchborough Mallorys, generation after generation, differ fundamentally from the Kirkby Mallory/Papworth St. Agnes Mallorys. The basic strategy of the first group was to reproduce as quickly as possible and to plunge into things head on, with quite often disastrous results. The strategy of the other line was one of more caution and being as well-connected as possible, thus often reproducing somewhat later. The average generation length for the first group is about 21 years, but for the second it is 25 or 26. After all is said and done, we might very well be dealing with an extra-paternal event that could have happened as early as 1300, the most likely case having been an unrecorded instance of an outsider marrying a Mallory heiress and his descendants taking the Mallory name, something which could have very easily happened to the Litchborough Mallorys, in particular, though is conceivable at many points elsewhere.
In any case, it still seems too soon to me for anyone to jump to premature conclusions about past events. More DNA testing is needed and it needs to be carefully focused, before people should start using it to rewrite their family trees, though I think existing data is enough to assure both Northern and Southern Mallorys of the fact that they had ancestors in England who bore the Mallory name. They should also remember that the Mallory surname is, at best, only 900 years old which, as far as surnames go, is, indeed quite old, but that before they would have happily gone without, just as their associates did in those times.
From the perspective of an academic and a historian, every Mallory who legally bears the name seems equally a Mallory to me.
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