A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 23: A Glimpse of Character

This is episode 23 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

In my last post, several weeks ago, I lamented my lack of sense of Malory’s character and personal life.  The personal references Malory makes to himself in the colophons of Le Morte d’Arthur are short, circumspect and some of the deductions made from them are tenuous at best.  “Horror vacui,” as Parmenides observed; so does imagination.  In the absence of concrete personal biographical information some writing about Malory choose to envision him not so differently from Shakespeare’s Falstaff:  an immoderate, carousing criminal libertine who. imprisoned and prevented from following his preferred criminal pursuits, wrote Le Morte d’Arthur instead.  Others see him as an aspiring Lancelot.  In this post I’m going to begin looking more carefully at the seven years between November, 1455 and November 1462.  It was a particularly dramatic time for Malory and England generally.  Fundamental social and political boundaries were crossed and some of the most important events of the Wars of the Roses occurred, including the battle that remains arguably England’s most cruel and bloody.  Through them we can glimpse Malory’s character, and it is far more nuanced and interesting than those rather reductive fictions suggest.

When Parliament re-opened on 12 November 1455, six months after the relatively small but calamitous first battle at St. Albans, Richard, Duke of York was named Protector of the Realm; suggesting Henry VI may still have been too traumatized by the battle’s events when his guard was shot down, the King himself was wounded in the neck and the Duke of Buckingham was wounded in the face.  With York’s ascension, Malory was allowed to apply for a general pardon and immediately did so.   Before the King’s Bench on the 6^th of February, 1456 he requested dismissal of his case and presented letters patent in proof of his pardon.  Malory further produced six men willing to stand surety.

Yet the King’s Bench refused to recognize their sufficiency for surety or the validity of the pardon.  He was returned to prison and in the following months was twice sued for indebtedness:  once by one Robert Overton for an alleged promissory note for £3 which Malory denied and subsequently by Thomas Greswold for £4 9s which Malory admitted but could not pay.  The latter case is provocative:  Greswold was a Warwickshire lawyer who had served on the Nuneaton inquiry (which had produced the first, extensive detailed list of the serious and salacious accusations against Malory).  Further, he practiced at the King’s Bench and was the prosecutor who had demanded forfeiture of Malory’s sureties when Malory had failed to return from bail in 1454. Why would Malory have borrowed money from someone with such obviously questionable motives unless he was enforced to do so, possibly by circumstance?  During the same period he was also moved  multiple times from the Marshalsea, to Newgate and finally Ludgate.  Sir William Peyto was imprisoned at the Marshalsea at the same time and Field suggests that possibly he and Malory together made it difficult or impossible for the staff to run the prison as they liked, “to extract the most money from the most prisoners in the shortest time.”

I favor a different inference.  York was indeed Protector but had reached a temporary detente with Buckingham.  The highly politicized judiciary was accommodating the new real politic and the interests who wanted Malory imprisoned were still strong enough to guarantee he remain so.  Malory’s pardon may even have been a political test of strength by York in his new position.

Malory was finally granted bail twenty-one months later, in October 1457, to Sir William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, the Earl of Warwick’s uncle and the Duke of York’s brother-in-law, and two other esquires of Yorkshire and Arundel.   The period was for 2 ½ months.  Malory himself  provided £400 (£280,000 pounds purchasing power in 2015) personal surety whilst the others provided £20 each.

How was it that Malory, who had been unable to meet debts or 3 and 4 pounds a few months before, incarcerated in an environment in which continual financial extortion was the rule, was now able to provide £400 surety?

Almost certainly, the money came from Fauconberg, possibly indirectly from Warwick.  Hardyment speculates that it was to enable Malory to serve with the Calais garrison, England’s only standing force with a reputation not unlike that enjoyed by the UK’s SAS or the US Navy Seals today.  In July 1457 Warwick had asked Fauconberg to serve as Warwick’s deputy there until December 1458.  However, Malory’s bail, exorbitant as it was, was only for 2 ½ months.  Field notes that senior members of Warwick’s affinity had become feofees to Malory and it could have been part a larger scheme by Warwick to finally establish a dominant position in Warwickshire.  This is also consistent with Carpenter’s interpretation of the events.

I take a slightly different view.   The Monks Kirby Priory accounts for 9-1-1457 to 8-31-1458 has three Malory family references:  a 6 pence payment from Malory himself for use of a watermill called Hubbock Mill, 8 shillings rental for pasture from Elizabeth Lady Malory and Thomas Roche, and two pence for obsequies for Thomas Malory Jr., presumably Sir Thomas’s second son  (following common custom of naming the second or third son after the father).  Field writes  “we can only guess at what Sir Thomas and Lady Malory felt about their son’s death.”  True.  However, it isn’t unreasonable to deduce that Malory felt it imperative he be in Warwickshire for the period and the short but expensive bail enabled him to do so.  So what were Fauconberg and probably Warwick looking for in return?  For £400 I suspect it was something more than another link strengthening Warwick’s Warwickshire affinity.  York, Warwick and Fauconberg were willing to do whatever was required for the  commitment of service of an experienced field commander, recognizing that the uncertain peace was unlikely to last long.  The first battles of the Wars of the Roses were fought by relatively small and heterogeneous forces.  It didn’t take much to recognize that future conflicts would become larger and more professional affairs requiring the skills of people like Malory whom Carpenter’s statistics suggest were in short supply.

Nevertheless, I doubt anyone foresaw the tragic dimensions the conflict would reach in just a few months.  Malory dutifully gave himself up to the Marshal of the King’s Bench on December 28^th as he’d promised.  He was transferred from the Marshalsea to Newgate in Hilary term (Jan-Mar 1460).

The peace between the Duke of York and the King and Queen collapsed shortly thereafter.  On June 26, 1460 King Henry VI, Margaret, their son Edward of Winchester, Prince of Wales and a force of 5,000 confronted a force of 10,000 led by the Earl of Warwick, Lord Fauconberg and the Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward, Earl of March.  The Yorkist forces triumphed.  Warwick, Fauconberg and the Earl of March found Henry in his tent and knelt to him before taking him into protective custody, first to Delapré Abbey thence London.

Three hundred men had died during the battle.  Among them was Sir Humphrey Stafford, 1^st Duke of Buckingham, Malory’s great nemesis, killed by a squad of Kentishmen.  Field speculates that Malory was probably freed around the time the Yorkists took London, July 2-5, 1460.

It was time for Sir Thomas Malory, a taciturn, resourceful and experienced field commander who’d once mounted a siege of Coombe Abbey replete with siege equipment only 48 hours after escaping to freedom by swimming a moat, to pay the debt he owed to Lord Fauconberg and the cause of Richard, Duke of York. 

Episode 24 can be found here.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 18: Entrances

This is episode 18 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.
 

“Perhaps, if you happen not to have lived in the Old England of the twelfth century, or whenever it was, and in a remote castle on the borders of the Marches at that, you will find it difficult to imagine the wonders of their journey.”

This is T. H. White trying to help his reader engage imaginatively with his particular vision of Malory’s world, a quirky, archetypical place.  Whilst I’ve been investigating Malory’s life I’ve also been reading Le Morte d’Arthur, as I’ve stated before.  One of the things that strikes me is how much more pleasurable reading it this time is than when I first read it years ago.  Like many readers, I expect, I believe in the primacy of an imaginative reading by which I mean working to experience the narrative with as much imagined imagery, detail, perception, deduction and, yes, emotional engagement as possible.  Analysis, textual, linguistic  etc., come second, most often in a very different additional reading which, nevertheless, is directed in part by the experience of the first.  This time through, I’ve felt like my imagination is in high gear and hyperactive.  Even single words unravel into tapestries of detail and allusion.  (Oddly, I find myself thinking of how a single mathematical equation can blossom into a family of higher dimensional equations and the additional structure and information gained thereby.)  I think I know why.

It’s a consequence of studying his life.  I am literally schooling my imagination in unexpected ways with surprising results.  For example, even statistical information plays a role.  Correlating the data provided by Christine Carpenter and Stephen Broadbury (Episode 14), particularly the relative numbers of the commons, gentry and nobility and the scale of the population elaborates into a new perception of 15^th century English culture for me.  Even Carpenter’s discussion of Warwickshire geography causes me to see Malory’s landscapes in a new way.  Then there are the family histories and church window imagery in Dugdale (Episode 2) which have given me a new sense of the role of family and affinity in law, commerce and conflict.  Perhaps, most importantly, is the sense I have of the contemporary political landscape I’ve acquired from Hardyment (Episode 5) who makes the Wars of the Roses, (not to mention Malory’s life) immediate as few others have.  Then there’s my personal experience of England.  When I read Le Morte d’Arthur the first time I’d only visited Warwickshire once and hadn't yet seen Scotland, the Orkneys, the Borders, the Marches, or Wales.  

I didn’t read Malory at school or university; my academic preparation leapt from Chaucer to the Elizabethans and I was left to discover Malory on my own.  That may have been a very good thing.  We need entrances to literature, Malory particularly benefits from context, the study of his life is just one of many ways to develop it.  But my recommendation to anyone teaching Le Morte d’Arthur, particularly to undergraduates, would be to work hard and carefully to develop an imaginative context first.  Readers don’t need to know a lot stuff; they need to naturally imagine a lot of stuff.

For me, now, Le Morte d’Arthur doesn’t take place “in the twelfth century, or whenever it was,” as The Once and Future King does.  It takes place in a very specific and real early fifteenth century and is a kind of alternate history of that age.

When T. E. Lawrence was 21 and an undergraduate, he undertook a 1,000 mile walk alone through Syria and Palestine to visit the Crusader Castles to research his undergraduate thesis.  Malory was one of the few books he took with him.  Occasionally, I imagine him camped on a remote desert hill reading Malory by fire light or the sunset.  What an interesting context he must have brought to the labor of the 15^th century knight.

Episode 19 can be found here.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 14: The Two Accusations of Rape

This is the 14^th  episode in my investigation of the dramatic and difficult life of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

In August of 1451, the first set of specific charges against Sir Thomas Malory were presented in an indictment at a special court convened under the Duke of Buckingham at the Priory of Nuneaton.  Among the most serious were two counts of rape.  The indictment specifically states that on both occasions Malory had sexual relations with Joan Smyth, “felonice rapuit & cum ea carnaliter concubit.”  There is no indication the Malory was present to hear the charges read.

This is one of the most difficult issues in his life to address.  So many have written about it from so many points of view from so many different levels of understanding of the extant evidence of Malory’s life, of medieval law, of culture in 15^th century Warwickshire.  Notable, careful scholars take widely different positions, from complete acceptance of the accusations to insistence upon his innocence.  Then there is the problem that our own perception of the prevalence, severity and consequences of sexual assault in our own time is dynamic.  Is it possible for us to determine what happened almost 600 years ago?  Do we have the information and perspective to do so?

If the evolution of modern media teaches us anything it is that people will judge anyway.  It seems to me, therefore, that it’s incumbent upon anyone addressing the subject to present his or her evidence and reasoning with as much clarity and precision as possible with all pertinent context.

And context is where I want to begin.  My deductions from data in English Medieval Population:  Reconciling Time Series and Cross Sectional Evidence, by Stephen Broadbury, et al., place the population of Warwickshire in 1451 at around 44,000.  Carpenter’s study of Warwickshire landed society, indicates that in 1436 there were 55 gentlemen, 59  esquires and 18 knights residing in the county.  Given the demographic changes she discusses, I would expect that by 1451, the number of gentlemen and esquires to have increased very modestly while the number of knights would have decreased, possibly substantially.  The county itself was heterogeneous with the great proportion of farmland to be found in Feldon to the east and the greatest proportion of forest in the Arden to west.  The largest towns lay, not surprisingly, along the River Avon drainage, i.e. Coventry, Warwick, Leamington, Stratford.  Sir Thomas Malory, was one of relatively few at the top of the lesser gentry.  It is probable that he would have been commonly and easily recognized by many.

29 days after the indictment at Nuneaton, King Henry VI and Queen Margaret arrived in Warwickshire “to judge noble peacebreakers” in Coventry according to the chronicler William Worcester.  Malory’s case wasn’t among those arbitrated; instead on October 5, a writ certiorari was issued, elevating Malory’s case from Warwickshire to the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster.  Hardyment states that the reason for the writ was revealed a week later when Hugh Smyth stood personally before the Court of King’s Bench and appealed Sir Thomas Malory, William Weston, gentleman, late of Fenny Newbold, Adam Brown, weaver of Coventry and Thomas Potter, husband of Bernangle  for the rape of his wife Joan.

The accusation differs from the Nuneaton accusation:  no time(s) or place is specified and on this occasion  Malory is identified as one of four.  According to P. J. C. Field, the appeal again unambiguously states that sexual relations took place.

The Nuneaton indictment, the writ certiorari, and Hugh Smyth’s appeal together are an example of elegant 15^th century legal engineering.  The Nuneaton indictment, emanating as it did from a court, gave the accused no opportunity to appeal his accuser if he weren’t convicted, which would have been the case had the first accusation been a direct appeal by Hugh Smyth or Joan Smyth, whose voice is not present in the record.  The defendant was precluded from seeking ‘trial by combat,’ nor could he sue for damages.  However, the second personal appeal by Smyth meant that in the case of a conviction, Smyth could expect substantial financial compensation personally, both for incident and for the stolen property mentioned in the indictment.  Finally, the writ took jurisdiction from Warwickshire to London, which may have been essential for any hope of conviction.  The date for the hearing was the 20^th of January.

Malory didn’t appear.

Hardyment speculates he may have been in Warkwickshire restructuring the feofees (trustees) of his estates to insulate his property from the damages from a conviction should that come to pass.   Indeed, the Sherriff of Wawickshire who was ordered to “attach” them, i.e. confiscate all their goods and chattels as surety for their appearance, responded that “they had nothing.”  Their arrest was ordered.

Two sheriffs of London, Mathew Philip and Christopher Warton brought Malory to the bar 5 days later to answer the Nuneaton indictment.

Malory declared himself “in no wise guilty.”  Further, “for good or for ill” he put himself “upon his country.”  He was claiming the right to be tried by a jury of his own Warwickshire countrymen.  He was then returned to the custody of the sheriffs and a trial date of 9 February, 1452 was set.

Those are the events.  In subsequent posts I will be examining 15^th century English law pertaining to rape which is surprisingly interesting in its own right, both legally and culturally.  I also want to evaluate what evidence, if any, can be deduced, from Malory’s own writing in the context of the pre-eminent scholar’s opinions and the case of rape against Geoffrey Chaucer.  At that point it will be time to visit the accusations again and evaluate their meaning and veracity.

Episode 15 can be found here.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 8: the Witch in the Tower

This is episode 8 in a series of posts researching the mystery of the dramatic life of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

The city is under occupation; the occupiers are quartered in the castle north of the city. Their discipline and morale isn’t what it was, a common problem of occupying armies whose job is to hold and police rather than conquer.  On a spring evening in May, a group of men-at-arms, nearly all esquires but fully equipped with white plate armor, tend their weapons and harness.  Many are younger sons or brothers of those who fought in the great campaigns of the late king which enriched and sometimes ennobled their fathers or brothers.  This is different.  This is strange.

There’s a witch under guard in one of the towers.  Sometimes they talk about her, sometimes they don’t.  It’s a very good thing that she was finally captured and is now being examined.  It’s known she has satanic powers but also that she is a virgin who prays to saints and orders even her gaolers to stop swearing.  There’s a laugh:  tell an Englishman to leave off swearing.  Even their enemies nickname them “goddams” for their rugged speech.

Tonight they’re not talking about the witch.  It’s Sunday evening and they’re telling bawdy stories when the great Earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, enters the room.  The rain on his ermine tipped cloak glitters like stars in the candle light.  Two other senior commanders are with him, the younger, imperious Sir Humphrey Stafford and Count Jean de Luxemburg-Ligny, as well as two sallow faced Burgundian bishops.  Warwick says he needs two men and looks around.  The second one he gives the nod is one of the senior ones.  He fought in the late king’s campaigns and sometimes tells good stories about them.    His name is Thomas and he’s also from Warwickshire and devoted to the Earl who trusts him in return.  The Earl instructs them not to bother putting on armor but to bring weapons and a cloak.

The party crosses the courtyard to the prison tower where the witch is held.  The rain is soaking.  A guard opens a narrow door to let them in and they climb the close winding stairs to the second level where a gaoler admits them to the witch’s cell.  She stands very straight against the far wall.  She wears a plain dress of gray homespun and holds a rotting blanket about her shoulders.  The cell, like most cells, smells a little of shit and urine and rushes that need to be changed.  The witch is very white, her hair is ragged and she is shivering though it’s not so cold.  Thomas is shivering, too.  He wonders why the Earl wanted two additional men-at-arms to attend him.  Is it something about the witch?

“They say you’re sick,” the Earl of Warwick declares in French.

“Is it a surprise?” the witch answers.

Count Jean explodes at her, telling her it is no one’s fault but her own that she finds herself come to such a dolorous condition.  She should beware:  she is wasting the time of many great lords which will lead to her great sorrow.  The deep lines at the corners of his mouth betray his anger and stress.

The witch, just a girl, is not intimidated.  “I am abused by these English.  They are not knightly.  A knight should protect a maid, not threaten her, spit in her food, threaten her with violation.”  She turns to glare at Sir Humphrey.

“You surly bitch, I’ll kill you myself.”  Sir Humphrey lunges at her, drawing his dagger.  The others move to stop him, but it is Thomas who catches Humphrey’s arm before he can strike.  Humphrey shrugs him off but Thomas only releases Humphrey’s arm when Warwick nods.

“How dare you lay hands on me?” Sir Humphrey says.

Warwick addresses the witch.  “You are to come to trial, Joan of Domremy, and you are not to be harmed before.”  Warwick makes a point of looking at both Sir Humphrey and Count Jean.  When he glances at Thomas, Thomas realizes this why he was brought, not for fear of the witch but for her safety.

“Your guards will be changed,” Warwick tells her.  “Your sickness will be tended.”

Thomas follows the others out.  He is conflicted and sick at heart.  She probably is a witch but she spoke the truth.  Perhaps there was more chivalry in that unarmed maid than any other in that dolorous cell.

…

Of course, it may not have happened that way at all.  We do know that Joan of Arc received such a visit on May 13, 1331 and that she was verbally abused by Count Jean and that Sir Humphrey Stafford began to draw his dagger to stab her.  Thomas Malory may or may not have been one of the men-at-arms in the party.  However, Sir Humphrey Stafford, later Earl then Duke of Buckingham was to prove Malory’s nemesis in years to come and it may have developed as a consequence of Malory’s loyalty to the Beauchamp family and particularly Richard Beauchamp whom he served under.

The first criminal accusation against Sir Thomas Malory was 12 years later in October, 1443.  He and his brother-in-law Eustace Burneby were accused of swearing at, wounding and imprisoning one Thomas Smith of Spratton, a small town 24 miles east south-east of Newbold Revel.  They were also accused of taking £40.  (Why is it always £40 in such accusations?)  The sheriff sent two men to fetch them but they were not tried.  As Christina Hardyment, who recounts the story, suggests, perhaps some settlement was made out of court.  No more is known.

However, as it’s the first recorded accusation against Malory, the context merits careful examination.   Richard Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, exercised unusual hegemony over Warwickshire.  Usually, the county lived under a balance of power between the Dukes of Lancaster and the Earl of Warwick.  But Henry VI who was Duke of Lancaster as well as King at that time was a less than forceful presence in the county which allowed Warwick to dominate.  Warwick died in 1339 and was succeeded by his son Henry who at 14 was still in his minority which created a power vacuum into which stepped Sir Humphrey Stafford, the Earl of Buckingham.   According to Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity:  A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society 1401-1499, Stafford already exercised considerable control in the south of Warwickshire and aspired to control in the north.  If Malory was a faithful retainer of the Beauchamps it is easy to imagine that the changing political environment would have brought him into conflict with those seeking to rise with Stafford’s ambitions.  Further, a common strategy for establishing control was placement of one’s supporters in judicial positions, as the Paston letters prove.  This Stafford did.  Malory’s conflict with Thomas Smith may have been an example of Stafford testing his strength against a loyal Beauchamp supporter and the decision not to prosecute reflected that his strength was not yet ripe.  That time would come later.

Perhaps Sir Malory was bewitched in that cell in 1430 as my small fiction suggests.

The Elizabethans were great believers in analogy.  The state was like the human body:  the monarch was the head,  the shoulders and arms were the nobility,  the ears the judges, the “inferior parts” the lower orders responsible for sustaining the rest.  Here’s another kind of analogy:  Warwickshire in the middle of the 1400s serves as a kind of microcosm for England itself and the consequences of the death of the Earl of Warwick were analogous to those of the death of Henry V for England as a whole.

(To my knowledge Hardyment is the first to note the possibility of Malory’s presence in that cell in the castle of Rouen on May 13, 1331.)

Episode 9 is here.