A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 21: 1451-1457

This is episode 21 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

 

On May 2, 1450, a small pinnace was intercepted in the English Channel by a larger ship “The Nicholas of the Tower.”  All but one onboard the pinnace were taken prisoner and subsequently released unharmed.  The one other was summarily beheaded.  His corpse was left splayed on Dover beach beside a pole upon which his head was spiked, a possible gruesome and vengeful play on his name.  He was, or rather had been, William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, Margaret Queen of England’s first favorite.  During the catastrophic three years of his ascendency, the majority of England’s vast French territory was lost through neglect and exploitation while the treasury was impoverished by incompetent administration and reckless distribution of royal property and sources of income to purchase political favor.  The Commons had finally insisted he be tried for treason; King Henry VI intervened and banished him for five years, which is how he found himself on a pinnace off the coast of Dover one May morning in 1450.

It is a signal incident showing how the social fabric and institutions of late medieval English society were fraying in the early 1450s. It was a trajectory that would culminate in the 35 years of the Wars of the Roses.

In February of 1452, Sir Thomas Malory was placed in the custody of the London sheriffs; in April he was handed over to the Marshal of the Court of the King’s Bench and imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison.  During the next five years and ten months he was incarcerated for all but 17 months of that time; his longest period of freedom being one year.  He spent four months in Newgate, three in Ludgate, eight months in the Tower of London and the remainder in Marshalsea.  He had “put himself upon his country” which gave him the right to be tried by a jury of men from his own county of Warwickshire (100 miles from London with a population 30,000 at the time.)  Yet, five times he was brought before the Court only to have judgment of his case postponed because no jury appeared.  He was granted bail twice.  In May of 1451 he himself provided  £200 (£142,000 in 2014) while 10 established and respected Warwickshire men each provided £20 (£14,200 in 2014.)  At least on one occasion it was easier to find 10 responsible and prominent members of the community willing to provide significant financial surety than it was to find jurors to sit on the case.

As the Paston letters show over and over again, the legal system had become partisan like so much else at the time.  Hardyment shows how Malory’s chances for trial or bail rise and fall with the fortunes of Sir William Oldhall, a supporter of the Duke of York and it is one of the Duke of York’s lieutenants, William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, who finally arranged for Malory’s freedom in 1457.  Indeed, Malory was able to provide £400 surety (£284,000 in 2014) possibly from Fauconberg.  Does this mean that Malory should be considered simply a Yorkist supporter and his years of legal persecution merely a consequence of his political alliance?  Hardly, as subsequent events will show.  It does establish that the easy characterization of Malory as an opportunistic, swashbuckling criminal is not justified by the extant evidence.  It is almost certain he was a victim of judicial persecution, the source of which was Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham and possibly others.

Of those specifically mentioned in the Nuneaton indictment only Coombe Abbey and its abbot reappear multiple times in the legal records related to Malory afterwards.  (Remember, Malory was accused of gathering a force and robbing Coombe Abbey immediately after his very first escape from the Sheriff of Warwickshire, William Mountfort. )  On multiple occasions Malory’s grant of bail specifically enjoined him not to retaliate against the abbot of Coombe abbey.  On other occasions he was ordered to be more closely held to prevent the same.  Coombe Abbey had a history of fractious relations with its neighbors, i.e. the Astleys as well as a reputation for oppression of its tenants.  Obviously, investigation of the abbey and abbot’s relationship with Humphrey Stafford merits closer examination.

On May 22, 1455 the first open battle of the Wars of the Roses took place at St. Albans.  Though Malory was in prison at the time he must have heard about it shortly thereafter.  I began this set of posts with an investigation as to why someone who was often characterized as a kind of upper middle class career criminal would compile a large and complex work concerned with the discovery and invention of a code of Chivalry.  That characterization of Sir Thomas Malory is ostensibly unfair and inaccurate.  But the question of who Malory was and why and how he wrote his book remains.  And that slightly different question leads to very dangerous territory for someone striving for the quaint goals of accuracy and objectivity.

Episode 22 can be found here.