A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 27: A Queen in Wild Seas

Back from Chaco Canyon, I find myself musing about dramatic cultural change.  At Chaco, it may be expressed in the architecture itself, for example in the existence of cardinal and solstitial alignments in Pueblo Bonito.

Returning to Sir Thomas Malory (half a world away and 400 years later) I wonder if the political changes of the summer of 1460 didn’t presage a cultural change which would reach its culmination on January 30, 1649.  This is episode 27 in my exploration of Malory’s life; episode 1 can be found here.

At the Battle of Northampton, King Henry VI was taken prisoner by the Yorkist lords.  They discovered him in his tent, abandoned by his Lancaster army.

Nevertheless their first action was to kneel to him:  he was the anointed king.

Henry was then conveyed back to London and isolation and house arrest in the Palace of Westminster.  Two months later, on October 10, 1460, when Richard, the Duke of York, entered the Great Hall, ostensibly to claim the throne, he was met with silence from the attending lords and peers.  Yet, what happened next is even more interesting, (and particularly English.)

For two weeks the lords and commons negotiated and debated.  Some of the issues, were fundamental, such as who even had a right to decide who should be rightful king.  Yet, at the end of those two weeks, a solution emerged, a compromise:  “the Great Accord:”  Henry should rule in peace for the remainder of his life but the crown would then pass to York and his heirs.  I expect many argued that it was the best solution possible, that it was even the most just:  if, for example, one believed in the illegitimacy of King Henry’s son and/or that York’s genealogical claim was superior to Lancaster.

In a previous post, I wondered generally to what extent Malory was witness to these events since he was free and almost certainly in London at the time.  I’ve personally found no specific evidence in Le Morte d’Arthur, nor in the academic literature.  However, Malory’s most famous personal editorial addition to his book is pertinent:

Lo, ye all Englysshemen, se ye nat what a mychyff here was?  For he that was the moste kinge and nobelyst knight of the worlde, and moste loved the felyshyp of noble knyghtes; and by hym they all were upholdyn, and yet myght nat thes Englysemen holde them contente with hym.  Lo thus was the olde custom and usayges of thys londe, and men say that we of thys londe have nat yet loste that custom.  Alas! Thys ys a greate defaughte of us Englysshemen, for there may no thynge us please no terme.

The passion of this despairing and notably timeless declamation about the end of Arthur’s reign and Mordred’s campaign against him suggests it was inspired by personal experience.   Malory is also commenting on the history he lived through, possibly including events he personally witnessed that summer.   However, so much was yet to come that it’s unreasonable to deduce he was speaking of 1460 alone.  And what we can deduce of his role in those events argues that this was written later.  Did Malory have a contemporary counterpart for Arthur in mind?  That’s a question best addressed in a later post.

“The Great Accord” failed.  The Queen and her son, Edward of Winchester, who had been disinherited by the compromise, were encamped at Harlech Castle on the west coast of Wales with her brother-in-law Jasper Twdyr.  In her son’s name she wrote an open letter to the city of London denouncing the Duke of York as a “horrible and falsely forsworn traitor… with an “untrue pretensed claim.”  She demanded the citizens aid to free the king.  But she knew her situation was desperate, so much so that in November she and her son took their chances against the winter gales of the Irish Sea and took ship for Scotland.  There, with the aid of Mary of Guelders, the widow of the recently deceased King James II, she organized and collected the opposition, most notably the earls of Somerset and Northumberland.  They were summoned to gather at Hull on the Humber Estuary in the northeast of England.  Her accomplishment of gathering an army of almost 20.000 in the middle of winter when roads were muddy and impassible argues not just formidable will but tremendous organizational skill as well.

In London, York was caught off guard  by the Queen’s uprising.  However, he soon organized, divided and dispatched his forces to face the threat.  His eldest son, Edward Earl of March, marched northwest toward the Welsh Marches to face Jasper Twdyr whilst York and the Earl of Salisbury marched north.  Warwick and Norfolk remained to hold London.  I concur with Christina Hardyment that Malory probably remained in London as well, though there is no direct evidence.

On December 30^th the Queen’s army of northerners and Scottish mercenaries famously confronted York at Sandal Castle at the Battle of Wakefield.  It is the subject of some of Shakespeare’s finest imagined drama in the “Henry VI” trilogy of plays and controversial as well.  York’s motive and strategy in accepting battle with a force 2 ½ times the size of his own is still debated.  The outcome is not.  York, his 17 year-old 2^nd son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland and Salisbury were killed and their heads were placed on spikes above the gates of York.  It was a catastrophe for the Yorkist cause.

When Edward, Earl of March, learned of his father’s death and defeat he turned his army of 11,000 around to march for London.  But he soon learned he was being pursued by Jasper Twdyr and a force of 8,000.  He turned again and on February 2^nd defeated Jasper at Ludford Bridge before continuing to London.

So very much had happened in seven months.  You can appreciate what I mean when say one has the sense that history was accelerating.  But what about Malory?  What did he think and do when he heard the news?  Again, we have no direct evidence.  But the Paston letters, particularly one from Clement, a 19 year old student in London, gives us a good sense of the mood and situation in the capital.  And we can draw some reasonable conclusions about Malory’s probable feelings and decisions, which are supported by another small, but important emendation in Le Mort d’Arthur all of which I will discuss in my next post in the series.

The photo is Lynn on the walls of Harlech Castle. 

Episode 28 can be found here.