Malet held substantial property in Normandy – chiefly in the Pays de Caux, with a castle at Graville-Sainte-Honorine [fr] (now a suburb of Le Havre).
According to unverifiable, apocryphal accounts, Malet had significant, multiple ties to the Anglo-Saxon elite before the Norman Conquest.
However, modern historians discount any blood-links to Anglo-Saxon royalty or aristocracy, noting instead that there was considerable Norman influence in England even before 1066.
He made Eye his caput, his main headquarters, built a motte and bailey castle there, and started a highly successful market.
His efforts at defending the shire from Danish raids were, in the end, a terrible failure, for the next year the city was burned and the garrison slaughtered.
[7] William Malet died around 1071, probably during the rebellion of Hereward the Wake, although Kirk, referencing Stapleton's Norman Pipe Rolls, assigns his death to 1069 and the siege of York.