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Sir Thomas Malory—Historian?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Nellie Slayton Aurner
Nellie Slayton Aurner*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Extract

“A little less than certain,” is the summing up by Eugène Vinaver of the evidence in regard to the identity of Sir Thomas Malory. The new material recently brought to light by Mr. Edward Hicks has practically established the theory presented by Professor Kittredge in the nineties. Of course, since other contemporaries of the same name have been pointed out, it is still possible that an extraordinary group of coincidences may have led to an erroneous conclusion, but the probabilities of this seem slight. One argument supporting this identification has not as yet been fully presented. This is the fact that the Morte Darthur gives an unmistakable reflection of the impressions which would have stamped themselves on the consciousness of a man living through the events which this Malory of Warwickshire must have experienced. As one of the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, he would have had his youthful enthusiasm enlisted in the efforts of Henry IV to establish his royal title and quell rebellions against it; he would have had a share in the continental victories of Henry V and have gained a vivid impression of the terrible conditions in France resulting from the savage feuds of the Burgundians and Armagnacs; he would have witnessed the crowning of Henry VI in Paris and probably have been on duty in Rouen at the burning of Jeanne d'Arc.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1933 , pp. 362 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 Eugène Vinaver, Malory, p. 116.

2 Edward Hicks, Sir Thomas Malory.

3 John Rous, Pageant of the Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp.

4 Hicks, op. cit.

5 On Nov. 6 of the year in which Sir Thomas died Robert's heir appears as 23 (Hicks, p. 73). Since Robert was eldest (named as heir), the marriage of Sir Thomas has been inferred as taking place soon after, or shortly before, the parliamentary session of 1445.

6 Gordon Home, Medieval London (1927), p. 170. Stow in his Survey notes: “The yeare 1422, the first of Henrie 6, license was granted to John Coventre, Jenken Carpenter, and William Grove, executors to Richard Whittington, to reedifie the Gaile of Newgate, which they did with his goods.”

7 John Paston was on three different occasions in Fleet prison. After a visit at one of these times his wife Margaret wrote “thanking you of the great cheer that you made me and the cost that you did on me,” adding with her accustomed thrift, that it was “more than my will was that you should do.” (Letter 529.)

8 Kingsford, Stow's Survey of London, I, 318. “Richard Whittington in the yeare 1429 founded the Librarie Greyfriars which was in lengthe one hundred twentie nine foote, and in breadth thirtie one: all seeled with Wainscot, having twentie eight desks, and eight double setles of Wainscot. Which in the next year following was altogither finished in building, and within three years after, furnished with Bookes, to the charges of five hundred fiftie sixe pound, ten shillings, wherof Richard Whittington bare four hundred pound, the rest was borne by Doctor Thomas Winchelsey, a Frier there.”

9 H. N. MacCracken, P.M.L.A., xxii, 597–607, “Richard Beauchamp's Virelai.” The writer of this article refers to Beauchamp as “hardly to be equalled in the annals of chivalry, even by that earlier Richard Coeur-de-Lion. He points out that the poem was dedicated to the Lady Isabel who became his second wife. Its tone may be gathered from the following stanza:

“So wolde God! my lady dere,
At my request and at my prayer
Yowe list to ruwe
On me hir man that hole and truwe
Have been, and chaunged for no muwe,
Ne never wol myn hert remuwe
From hir servyse; …“

10 Bennett, The Postons and their England, iii, 1922.

11 “Eleven years before the Warwickshire knight's arrest, Charles, Duke of Orleans, had been released from Newgate after a captivity in various English Strongholds extending over a quarter of a century.” Hicks, op. cit., p. 67.

12 Scudder, Le Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory and its Sources, p. 211.

13 Hilaire Belloc, History of England (1925), Vol. iii, 229.

14 This summary follows the admirable outline of Miss Scudder.

15 He had won fame in various tournaments and crusades. He was prominent at the great jousts of St. Ingelvert, planned to join the crusade of Bourbon, Boucicault, and the Genoese against Barbary, but instead joined the Teutonic Knights in Lithuania and later took part in the second crusade in Prussia. He had also made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.— Cf. D.N.B. “Henry IV.” Stubbs, Constitutional Hist. of Engl., 5th ed., (1903), iii, 7.

16 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, Bk. vii, ch. 3; quoted in Stubbs iii, 10–11.

17 Turner, History of England (1825), ii, 322.

18 Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 11; Turner, op. cit., ii, 335.

19 Stubbs, iii, 11.

20 Ibid., p. 11.

21 Ibid., p. 19.

22 Ibid., p. 52.

23 Jos. Pote, History and Antiquities of Windsor (1749), p. 130, supplied the following. Edward III restored Arthur's Round Table at Windsor with jousts and tournaments to “inflame the Minds of his own Lords with military Glory, and to invite hither the galland and active Spirits from abroad; and upon discoverie of their courage and ability in the exercise of Arms, to draw them to his Party, and oblige them to himself.” According to Leland's statement Arthur's Round Table was established at Windsor in the sixth century with twenty-four knights. Not only Britons but others who, desiring glory, “came to make proof of their Sufficiency in the exercise of Arms, must be persons of Nobility, and Dignity, renowned for Vertue and Valour, and admirably well skilled in the knowledge and use of Arms.”

An extract from the preface of the Black Book of the Order (Pote, 143) states that the Round Tower was begun by Arthur who instituted there the Round Table with twenty-eight knights. The circle stood for equality in brotherhood. Richard I before Cyprus and Acon, in gratitude for the help of St. George wore a leather thong about his leg as a reminder of divine aid and a sign of Richard's intention to institute an Order of St. George on his return. The plans of Arthur and Richard found fulfillment in Edward's institution of the Order of the Garter with the object of maintaining unanimity and concord among its members, who were bound by a solemn oath to be loyal to their vows.

24 Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 74.

25 Ibid., p. 77.

26 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, ii, 139.

27 Gairdner, Lollardry and the Reformation in England, (1908), 125 (note from Wilkins, Concilia, iii: 392–393).

28 Stubbs, iii, 89.

29 Wylie, Henry V, ii (1914-19), 62.

30 “It is one of the penalties which great men must pay for their greatness that they have to be judged by posterity according to a standard which they themselves could not have recognized, because it was by their greatness that the standard itself was created.”—Stubbs, iii, 75. In his summary of Henry V's character Stubbs says: (ibid., p. 77) “He was religious, pure in life, temperate, liberal, careful and yet splendid, merciful, truthful, and honorable … a reconciling and uniting force.” The record of his death reads (ibid., p. 95) “Departed this life the most Christian champion of the church, the beam of prudence and example of righteousness, the invincible king, the flower and glory of all knighthood. …”

31 Wylie, op. cit., ii, 239.

32 Cott. MS. Claud. A. viii. f. 10b.

33 Wylie, op. cit., ii 89,—quoted from Monstrelet: “L'Epee dou rois Artus qui valoit tant de finanche que on ne le savoit expose.”

34 Wylie, op. cit., i, ch. xv. One of the best known eulogies of Henry V is that of Holinshed, from which the following was taken: “This Henrie was a king of life without spot, a prince whom all men loved and of none disdained, a capteine against whome fortune never frowned, nor mischance once spurned, whose people him so severe a justicer both loved and obeyed (and so human withall) that he left no offense unpunished, nor friendship unrewarded; a terrour to rebels, and supressour of sedition, his vertues notable, his qualities most praise-worthie.”

35 Wylie, op. cit., i, 190.

36 Ibid., 229.

37 This poem belongs in that interesting group which marks the revival of alliterative verse in the fourteenth century and which includes Piers Plowman, the Pearl, and Gawain and the Green Knight. “Under the guise of a poem derived from Geoffrey it really has reference to contemporary history and the wars of Edward III.” (Geo. Sampson, The Cambridge Book of Prose and Verse, i, 313).

38 Michelet, History of France (1857), ii, 105.

39 The fierce and vindictive traits of Queen Margaret have been so dramatized by Shakespeare that they have obscured the lovable and attractive qualities which most chroniclers dwell upon. “One of the finest women in the world; the very impersonation of the lady,” is the character given her by Chastellain (Michelet, ii, 193). Her feminine qualities are also stressed by Hall and Grafton: “she had one pointe of a very woman, for oftentimes when she was vehement and fully bent in a matter, she was suddenly like to a whethercock, mutable and turning.” Her plan to save Suffolk when all other efforts failed, by having the king banish him for five years was clever strategy which would doubtless have succeeded had its execution been conducted with equal cleverness.

As to Guenevere, her ability when thrown upon her own resources is shown by the stratagem of gaining Mordred's permission to shop in London and then shutting herself and attendants within the defences of the Tower until released by Arthur's return. Her vindictiveness appears in her refusal to grant Meliagraunce's appeal for mercy (xix, 9). Again and again was she “wood wroth with Sir Launcelot and would by no means speak with him, but estranged herself from him.” Her unreasonable caprice is a commonplace among Launcelot's kin. “But madam, said Sir Bors, ye have been ofttimes displeased with my lord Sir Launcelot, but at all times at the end ye find him a true knight,” (xviii, 8). Her repentance is equally impulsive. “And ever the queen beheld Sir Launcelot, and wept so tenderly that she sank almost to the ground for sorrow that he had done to her so great goodness where she showed him great unkindness” (xviii, 7). The climax of inconsistency is reached when, after banishing him in wrath because she has heard of his wearing Elaine's sleeve, she reproaches him on hearing the letter borne by the dead maiden in the barge; “Ye mighthave shewed her,” said the Queen, “some bounty and gentleness that might have preserved her life.” The discipline of the Grail quest is evident in the response “This is not the first time,” said Sir Launcelot, “that ye had been displeased with me causeless, but madam, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force” (xviii, 20). And yet she was not lacking queenly virtues. When men were injured in her service, “in no wise the Queen would not suffer the wounded knights to be from her, but that they were laid within draughts by her chamber, upon beds and pillows, that she herself might see to them, that they wanted nothing” (xix, 6). Bors, who did not hesitate to remind her of her faults, insisted on her royal qualities: “At all times as far as ever I could know, she was a maintainer of good knights; and ever she hath been large and free of her goods to all good knights, and the most bounteous lady of her gifts and her good grace that ever I saw or heard speak of” (xviii, 15).

40 Strickland, op. cit., ii, 218. “The Earl of Warwick [this is the later Earl Richard Neville] publicly proclaimed at Paul's Cross that her child was the offspring of adultery or fraud and was not the lawful issue of the king.” (Quoted from Chastellain).

41 Turner, op. cit., iii, 68.

42 Suffolk hotly resented the charge of treachery to his king or to the realm of England. After recapitulating the services of his father and his brothers he continued: “I was myself armed, in your father's days and yours, thirty-four winters, and have had the garter thirty. For seventeen years I abode in the wars without coming home or seeing this land and have served you since my return fifteen years.” He then emphatically added: “All these things considered, if for a Frenchman's promise I should be either false or untrue to your high estate or to this your land that I am born of, there could be no earthly punishment but it would be too little for me.” (ibid., p. 69).

43 Malory, xxi, 3 and 5. Henry VI was worshipped in Yorkshire as saint and martyr and credited with many miracles. Excessively humble, he was easily dominated by stronger wills and readily deceived. The latter part of his reign he was the puppet of every faction.—D.N.B.

44 Quoted in Green, History of the English People (1900–03), ii, 5.

45 Guizot, History of France (tr. R. Black), ii, 370. “For thirty years, from 1392 to 1422, the crown remained on the head of this poor mad man, whilst France was a victim to the bloody quarrels of the royal house, to national dismemberment, to licentiousness in morals, to civil anarchy, and to foreign conquest.” In the following year a tragic accident brought on his second attack. At the wedding of one of Queen Isabel's maids of honor the king and five of his noblemen dressed as satyrs in tight linen suits flaked over with tow, which was stuck on by means of pitch. In this outfit they burst in among the dancers as a surprise feature. A torch thrust close to discover their identity set fire to the group. The king was saved by the quick action of a lady who threw her mantle about him. One of the others leaped into a water vat, but the rest lost their lives.

46 A. M. F. Robinson, The End of the Middle Ages (1889), pp. 118–119, “Queen Isabel was the idol of the court. Radiantly beautiful, eighteen years old, she was not satisfied with the devotion of her husband. … At his side, more brilliant and more eloquent than he, rode the first knight of chivalry, the king's only brother, Louis of Touraine … eighteen years old … handsome, witty … so wise that in the University of Paris there were no doctors proof against his bonne memorie et bonne loquelle … skilled in making rondels, songs, and ballades … so irresistible a lover that popular fancy endowed him with a magic wand and an enchanted ring, making him absolute master of all women. The charm of his youth and beauty of his rhetoric and laughter, of his gentle manners and brilliant knightliness still exhales from the dusty pages of Christine de Pisan and Juvenal des Ursins. … Even chroniclers hostile to him, Monstrelet, the Monk of St. Denis, and Froissart, witness to his enchanting personality.”

47 Louis was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy's men as he was returning one night from a visit to Queen Isabel. This was in 1407. Michelet (ii, 29) says of him: “Wept by women, no less regretted by church, wept by saints, (Religieux de St. Denis) … brilliant, courteous, graceful … the spirit of the Renaissance (born in him) continued in his son Charles of Orleans, exile and poet, in his bastard Dunois, in his grandson Louis XII. … Kind to clerks and priests, liberal to the poor … he was the spoiled child of nature and grace.”

48 Brothers of Caterina, the stepmother of Valentine Visconti, were named Palamedes, Lancilotto, Sagramoro; cf. Robinson, p. 105.

49 Burcarius in La Pastoralet, quoted in Robinson, p. 120. See also Cartellieri, The Court of Burgundy, p. 166.

50 Michelet, op. cit., pp. 59 and 60.

51 Frightful tales are told of these brigands. In Bourbonnais they dug an immense moat with a great fire night and day called Hell. Persons who refused ransom were thrown into Hell. Rich caravans were robbed; peasants brought tribute; the whole country trembled. (Funck-Brentano: The Middle Ages, tr. O'Neill, 459.) They hid in rocks, caves, and among reeds of marshes or thickets in woods (ibid., p. 473). Many nobles rivaled the brigands in cruelty and oppression.

52 Michelet, ii, 97, described the prison massacre of sixteen hundred persons accompanied by a similar reign of terror on the streets. A child prematurely delivered from a woman thus cut down was seen to stir. “See, the little dog is still alive,” some one cried, but no one dared to take it up. The priests of the Burgundian party would not baptize the little Armagnacs in order to ensure their being damned (loc. cit.). In 1421 the famine was so terrible that “the men employed to kill the dogs were followed by crowds of poor who, as they killed, devoured all, flesh and guts” (op. cit., p. 115). From these conditions sprang the grim amusement of the Dance of Death. This was represented first as a spectacle in Paris in 1424. Michelet notes (op. cit., p. 119) the grim humor of fate which brought the great Henry to within one month of his coronation as King of France and then summoned him to lead instead the grotesque procession of this dance.

53 Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris (ed. A. Tuetey) (1881), pp. 11, 129, 134, 135, 137, 139, 156.

54 Bourgeois, 171–172. This passage is one of the most terrible I recall. The Bastard Vaurus had seized a young man at work, tied the unfortunate laborer to his horse's tail, and galloped to his castle at Meaulx. Here the victim was tortured until he consented to a ransom three times larger than he was able to raise. He sent word of his situation to his wife—they had been married one year and she was about to give birth to a child. Thinking she might be able to soften the tyrant's heart, she hastened to the castle, but gained nothing except a threat that if the ransom was not paid by a certain day, her husband would be hanged. With her most frantic efforts she was not able to raise the entire sum at the time set. Her husband was promptly hanged. She came back with what she had, so exhausted that she fainted, but as soon as she revived, begged to see her husband again. The only response was that she would never see him until the ransom was paid. Still hoping, she lingered and saw a number of laborers brought before the tyrant and drowned or hanged because they could pay no ransom. Spurred by love and fear she finally succeeded in borrowing the required amount, but the moment it came into the tyrant's hands he brutally told her that her husband was dead like the other villains. At this she lost control of her emotions and raged against his cruelty. Her punishment was swift. She was beaten cruelly, dragged to the great tree and tied; then her clothing was cut away. Above her swayed the corpses of eighty or a hundred men, some high, some so low that their feet touched her head as the wind moved them. As her legs gave way from exhaustion and terror, the cords by which she was tied cut into her flesh. As night came on she was seized with labor pains and her cries were so terrible that they could be heard in the city, but no one dared to go to her rescue. No one, that is, except the wolves, who gathered from all directions and soon ended her cries. This happened in March, 1420, during the season of Lent. The details as given by the Bourgeois de Paris make the effect much more harrowing than this summary.

55 Strickland, op. cit., ii, 96, quoted from Walsingham, Parl. Rolls, 7 Henry V. “On witness of John Randolf, Joanna's confessor, she was convicted of planning Henry's destruction by sorcery … she with Roger Colles and Petronel Brocart her helpers was deprived of all property. This was restored by act of Henry shortly before his death. Miss Strickland notes (p. 108) a tradition that the ghost of ”Jone the Witch-queen haunted the site of her favorite palace Havering-atte-Bowes.“

56 Wright, Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, Camden Soc., xxiv, p. x. Wright also notes that in 1432 there were two orders from the privy council for the arrest of persons charged with sorcery—both friars.

57 Turner, op. cit., iii, 46.

58 Michelet, op. cit., ii, 26. Another treatment was that of “a magician of Languedoc with a wondrous book Smagorad, the original of which had been given to Adam.” (Rel. de St. Denis).

59 Wright, op. cit., int. iv.

60 Michelet, op. cit., ii, 79. Also Turner, op. cit., ii, 413.

61 Wilkins, Concil, iii, pp. 237, 245.

62 S. R. Gardiner, Stud. Hist. of Engl., 292. Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 33.

63 Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 83–84.

64 Ibid., 60, 90.

65 Turner, op. cit., ii, 4888.

66 Ibid., iii, 19.

67 A. Pauphilet, Étude sur le Queste del Saint Graal.

68 The family of Lot comprises Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and their half brother Mordred. Pellinore's sons are Lamorake, Percivale, Aglovale, Durnore, and their half brother Tor. Launcelot's relations number among them Bors, Ector, Lionel, and a score or more subordinate knights.

69 For Pellinnore's death see Malory, viii, 22; for Lamorake's, x, 21, 4, 24, 46, 54, 58.

70 Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 88.

71 Stubbs, op. cit., iii, 186. The final clause seems like an attempt to explain the position of the new Earl of Warwick (Richard Neville) in his opposition to the royal House which the bear and the ragged staff had always so valiantly upheld.

72 Ibid., p. 164. This proposal to declare the Duke of York heir to the throne in the parliament of 1451 is thus chronicled: “A parliament wherein all the commons were agreed, and rightfully elected him (York) as heir apparent of England, nought to proceed in any other matters till that were granted by the lords, whereto the king and lords would not consent nor grant but anon brake up the parliament.” (W. Worc., p. 770; Chr. Lond., p. 137).

73 Launcelot weeps as he is banished. “Alas most noble Christian realm, whom I have loved above all other realms, and in thee I have gotten a great part of my worship, and now I shall depart in this wise” (xx, 17). When he is imprisoned on the Joyous Isle “every day once, for any mirths that all the ladies might make him, he would once every day look toward the realm of Logris. … And then would he fall upon a weeping as if his heart would to brast” (xii, 6).