A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 26: The Velocity of History

This is episode 26 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

Does it make sense to think about the velocity of history?  Possibly not, it’s a little like trying to think about the speed of time itself.  Yet, there are periods when crucial, signal historical events can follow, one upon the other, relentlessly, with such speed that it’s apparent that institutions and individuals have insufficient time to respond appropriately.   Wars often follow.  When I think of such times in modern history, the year 1968 comes to mind as does 2001, 2003 and 2008.  I think 1460 was like that.

On October 10^th, when Richard, Duke of York’s royal procession into the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster was met by silence, he must have been amazed.  Indications from the chronicles are that he expected to be acclaimed king by the assembled lords and peers.  Instead, according to the Registrum Abbatiae Jonanis Whethamstede, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, a sometime York supporter, stonily asked, “Have you come to see the King?”

York replied, “I know of no person in this realm whom it does not behove to come to me and see my person rather than that I should go and visit him.”  He then turned and departed with less than perfect dignity.  He took up residence in the king’s apartments whilst Henry VI was sequestered in the Queen’s apartments.

Was Malory in the Great Hall that day?  I’ve spent the last week searching and combing through Le Morte d’Arthur for clues suggesting he might have been or, indeed, how he felt about the event.  Hardyment writes “Malory must have been appalled.”  Field is more circumspect but recalls a sentence in Le Morte d’Arthur original to Malory,

“Thenne stood the reame in grete jeopardy long while, for every lord that was mighty of men made hym stronge, and many wende to have ben kyng.”

He then suggests that it could be implicit criticism of York.

I’m not so sure, I can most easily imagine that Malory was just deeply conflicted:  the party that had rescued him from imprisonment was also the party usurping the crown, whilst many around the king himself were patently corrupt.

Here is one of my favorite observations of Professor Field,  “…it is easier and more compatible with the generosity of spirit that informs the Morte Darthur to suppose that Malory’s sympathies were aroused less by causes than by individuals behaving chivalrously in difficult circumstances….It is not surprising that most of the apparent contemporary allusions are sympathetic:  Malory as author is a notably uncensorious person.” 

Indeed, I’d suggest that this hints at what may have been Malory’s raison d’etre for undertaking his great work and what he may have hoped to discover by assembling and translating it.  Over and over again, Le Morte d’Arthur presents knights  challenged to discover a chivalrous course of action in a unique situation.  Malory, in London, possibly among the lords and peers in the Great Hall that 10^th of October, was in just such a situation.

Karen Cherewatuk, in her fine essay “Sir Thomas Malory’s “Grete Booke”” places Le Morte d’Arthur in the context of the contemporary commissioned books of chivalric instruction, didactic anthologies such as the one compiled for Sir John Paston which contained excepts of writers such as Christine de Pisan and Vegetius.  In that context, Malory becomes uniquely interesting because of his implicit choice to tell stories and pose questions. 

So much more would happen that year and the next.  Episode 27 can be found here.