V - ‘Traytoures’ and ‘Treson’: the Language of Treason in the Works of Sir Thomas Malory

Summary

In Morte Darthur, Malory employs two distinct modes of the word ‘treason’. In one mode, the senses and applications of the noun ‘treason’ are extrapolated from the ways in which Malory assimilated legal terminology and in which the definition of ‘treason’ is founded in the English statute law 25 Edward III Statute 5 (the Treason Act of 1351). Malory developed the other mode from his French source texts, which in turn based their use of ‘treason’ on the way it was understood in thirteenth-century France. I propose to call these two modes of Malory's respectively ‘legal’ and ‘literary’. The first objective of this essay is to examine Malory's uses of the vocabulary of treason. The second objective is to examine the ways in which this dual usage of the language of treason impacts upon the movement and message of the final two books: ‘Launcelot and Guenevere’ and the ‘Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon’.

The Treason Act of 1351, quoted at length since it is referred to regularly in this article, defines treason as occurring when

Man doth compass or imagine the Death of our Lord the King, or of our Lady his Queen or of their eldest Son and Heir; or if a Man do violate the King’s Companion, or the King’s eldest Daughter unmarried, or the Wife of the King’s eldest Son and Heir; or if a Man do levy War against our Lord the King in his Realm, or be adherent to the King’s Enemies in his Realm, giving to them Aid and Comfort in the Realm or elsewhere, and thereof be probably attainted of open Deed by the People of their condition… and if a Man Slea the Chancellor, Treasurer, or the King’s Justices of the one Bench or the other, Justices in Eyre, or Justices of Assise, and all other Justices assigned to hear and determined, being in their Places, doing their Offices: And it is to be understood, that in the Cases above rehearsed, that ought to be judged Treason which extends to our Lord the King, and his Royal Majesty.