A Fine and Terrible Mystery Episode 29 - A New Conundrum

This is episode 29 of my exploration of the life, times and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.

I still find myself musing about the consequences of the battle of Towton.  1 in 114 of the total population of England and Wales died that day.  Further, the composition of the armies suggests there may have been soldiers from nearly every county in England.  A contemporary comparison gives me pause, 1 in 318 of Japan’s population died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  How did the battle of Towton change England as it must have done?

Nevertheless, according to  “Leicester Medieval Pedigrees” (edited by G. Farnham), Malory followed the king, Warwick and Lord Fauconberg north to sieges at Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstaborough along with his old companions Sir Robert Harcourt and Sir John Astley, a formidable jouster.  All brought squires, archers and men-at-arms.  Malory was clearly in good odor with the government of Edward IV.  On New Years 1462, King Edward IV offered a general pardon, Malory took it to the King’s Bench and had the slate wiped clean of the charges against him.

He then returned to Warwickshire.  In September 1464 Malory witnessed the marriage settlement of John, son of William Feilding of Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire, and Helen, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Walsh, esquire.  One can infer from William Dugdale’s drawing of the armorial window at Newbold-Revel that Malory was Helen’s uncle.  There are only three other references to Malory in the historical record, the last being the record of his death.  The epitaph on his tombstone read, “Thomas Mallere valens miles qui obit 14 die mensis marcii anno domini 1470 de parochial de monkenkyrkby in comitatu warwick..”,  “Thomas Malory, valiant knight who died 14, March, 1470 of Monkskirby Parish in the county of Warwick.”

To my knowledge, there are only two other explicit references in the historical record to Malory between 1464 and his death and they pose a new mystery about his life that is even more inscrutable than the events of 1450.

In the Spring of 1464 the Earl of Warwick and John Wenlock, 1st Baron Wenlock, joined secret negotiations with the French Court of Louis XI to arrange wedding the tall and dashing 22 year-old Edward IV to Louis’ sister-in-law, Lady Bona of Savoy.  The following September, Warwick attended a council meeting at Reading at which the king announced that he had secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the twenty-seven year-old widow of a minor Lancastrian, Sir John Grey.  King Louis was blind-sided:  he first learned of it when subsequently Warwick and Wenlock didn’t appear at St. Omer to complete the Lady Bona marriage negotiations.

Edward’s decision is often portrayed as thoughtless and ill-considered.  Shakespeare, for example, cleverly telescopes events and places Warwick at the French court negotiating the Bona marriage with Louis when both are informed of Edward’s marriage.  But it could have been the opposite.  Edward could have been attempting to heal a fractured and decimated country and marriage to minor Lancastrian gentry may have played very well politically.  The records of the politics surrounding the various marriage negotiations for Elizabeth I one hundred years later show how well a native marriage could play.  It’s even possible Warwick was supportive as the relatively minor Woodville gentry hardly looked like a threat.

Nevertheless, Edward having planted them, labored to make them full of growing to use Duncan’s metaphor from “Macbeth.”  From 1464 to 1466 Edward continually increased their status, honours and most importantly, revenues.  From a certain point of view it was shrewd politics:  the Woodvilles were totally dependent upon and indebted to Edward for their rise and so were much more likely to be subordinate and loyal than the powerful existing magnates such as Warwick to whom Edward was indebted for his crown.  Indeed,  the governor of Abbeville had once written to Louis  XI of England, "They have but two rulers, M. de Warwick and another whose name I have forgotten."

In July 1465 Edward’s court received superlative news:  Henry VI was captured in Lancashire whilst attempting to cross the Ribble River at a place called Bungerly Hippinstones.  The aging son of Henry V was returned to “gentle,” or not so gentle, captivity in the Tower.  Unlike previous kings, Richard II and Edward II, he wasn’t killed which bespeaks an attempt at civility early in Edward’s reign.

In the Spring of 1466 Warwick was commissioned to seek a treaty with Burgundy.  Then in February of the next year he led an embassy to Louis XI for which he was well rewarded with custody of all royal forests north of the Trent.  Trusting Warwick with necessarily sensitive diplomatic missions to the two then adversaries dominating northern Europe can be interpreted as continuing proof of great trust.  But it is also just possible that Edward was testing his most powerful peer by having Warwick negotiate with both.  Indeed Edward then undermined Warwick’s attempt to ally with the French by entertaining Antoine, the Grand Batard of Burgundy at a great tournament in June of 1467.  During the tournament Antoine fought a two day duel with one of Edward’s champions, Anthony Woodville during which Woodville infamously and unchivalrously lanced the Batard’s horse.   It’s possible Malory echoed the incident in Le Mort d’Arthur.

Also, early that year, Edward declined to allow his 17 year-old brother George, Duke of Clarence to marry Warwick’s daughter Isabel.    In October, Edward concluded new treaties with Denmark, Castille and most importantly arranged for his sister Margaret to marry the new Duke of Burgundy, Charles and Warwick played an important role in the ceremonies leading up to the marriage.  In the procession to Margate, Warwick and Margaret rode the same horse, he before, she behind.  It’s an image worthy of Edward Burne-Jones and calls to mind N. C. Wyeth’s illustration of Guinevere and Lancelot escaping though the context was clearly different.

The Warkworth Chronicler believed Margaret’s marriage created the decisive breach between Warwick and the king.  And late in 1467, rumors emerged that Warwick was communicating with  Queen Margaret, her son Edward and her small court in exile who were living with her father’s small court at Kouer, 150 miles east of Paris.
Then, on July 14, 1468, Edward IV offered a second general pardon.  There were 15 exceptions. After Henry, Margaret, their son and followers and the Lancastrian rebels holding Harlech Castle, the second name of the remaining eleven was Sir Thomas Malory.

What had happened?  How had Malory so alienated the new king, whose party had freed him after ten years of prison and persecution, for whom he’d fought?  Given the terrible price he’d paid for opposing a royal magnate in the 1550s, what possibly could have induced him to do so again?  And how did that affect and inform his work on Le Mort d’Arthur?

As I said at the beginning, the direct historic record is scant, to  say the least.  Both Hardyment and Field provide possible explanations which merit a careful look; their work on such barren ground alludes to their excellent scholarship.  And then there is Field’s good advice, which is to look at Le Mort d’Arthur itself as an historical artifact.  So in future posts I will be looking carefully as what Malory’s emmendations and explicits tell us and suggest.

Episode 30 can be found here.

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.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 24: Deductions about an Eventful Summer

This is episode 24 of my investigation into the life and works of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

 

 P. J. C. Field laments the lack of documentation for Sir Thomas Malory between December 1457 when he was returned to prison and early July 1460 when he was finally released.  It may be at the same time that a small, undated amendment was made to the King’s Bench Controlment Roll:  “acrtam allocatam sine die.”  Malory’s pardon from 1455 was finally allowed.  But what was his frame of mind when he was freed, probably in early July of 1460?  What was his physical and mental condition after years of imprisonment?  Had he finished Le Morte d’Arthur sometime in that period?  What did he do next? There is no direct evidence. 

But there is another alternative.  “When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad.  Because of all the things in the world, you're only looking for one of them.  When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of them,” to quote Daryl Zero.  In that spirit I decided to carefully consider events of that summer, the actions and locations of major figures, geography, and, of course, Le Morte d’Arthur itself to see what deductions might be made about Sir Thomas at that time.

The Earl of Warwick was summoned to Westminster in early 1459 and was personally assaulted in a brawl between men of the King’s household and his own.  The implicit lawlessness in a palace of state surely shook him.  Was it an assassination attempt?  There were rumours he was to be imprisoned in the Tower and he fled to Calais.

When he returned in September for a meeting with York at York’s castle in Ludow at the edge of the Welsh Marches, a period of rapid escalation began.  The Queen, the King, Edward of Winchester, Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Somerset and Buckingham had removed the court to Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, where they gathered artillery and recruited supporters who were given a small badge to show their allegiance and support:  an emblem with a chained swan, which at that time signified support for the Prince of Wales.  Meanwhile Warwick’s father, the Earl of Salisbury came south with a force of 5,000 and was confronted by a royalist force under the under the sixty-one year old James Tuchet, Lord Audley at Blore Heath.  Salisbury was victorious and Audley was killed.  The reunion of York, his family including his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, Warwick and Salisbury and their combined forces was perhaps half the size of the Queen’s forces under Somerset and Buckingham that met them at Ludford Bridge on October 12^th.  The scale of the forces, the risks for all, the potential consequences foreshadowed the battle that would take place at Towton 17 months later.  However, that night after a Calais soldier, Andrew Trollope led 600 to defect to the Queen’s forces, York and his generals decided their position was untenable and deserted their army and York’s wife and two youngest sons.  York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland fled to the west coast and Ireland, Warwick, Salisbury and Edward, Earl of March to Devon, Guernsey and finally  the relative safety of Calais.  In December, at a parliament called at St. Mary’s Priory in Coventry, the rebels and several others loosely affiliated with them were attainted, that is stripped of all property, rights and honours.  Later, it came to be known as the “Parliament of Devils.”  Events were spiraling out of control and predictability. Thomas Malory, though in prison, must have learned of some if not all of this.

So, what were his thoughts if he heard that Warwick, the Earl of March, Lord Fauconberg had landed with a force of 2,000 at Sandwich on the 26^th of the following June,  1460?  The force quickly grew to 20,000 or more and marched on London.  The city first decided to refuse them entrance and prepared defenses, but when 11 alderman rebelled, they changed their mind.  The Bishops of Exeter and Ely met Warwick in Southwark to ensure a peaceful and ordered entrance but there was a great crush on the bridge and 13 men-at-arms were killed.  Malory would have heard the noise.  Depending on the location of his cell and how high up it was he might have glimpsed what was happening on the bridge.

It was natural that Warwick, Salisbury and the Earl of March freed their supporters, including Malory.  That the records of the King’s Bench show also that his pardon was allowed, suggests two things.  That someone, probably Malory himself, was taking careful legal advantage of the situation and, not surprisingly given circumstances, that Buckingham’s influence on the Court of the King’s Bench was broken.  What, perhaps is most surprising given how far things had devolved, is what happened on July 3^rd.  In a public ceremony,  the earls of Warwick, Salisbury and March took a formal oath on the cross of Canterbury at St. Paul’s, declaring their allegiance to Henry VI.  Warwick, himself, then announced that they’d come with their people to declare their innocence or else die in the field.

Whether it was political theatre or an honest declaration it was probably essential in order to be certain of the support of those, like Malory, whose formative years had been spent in the service of Henry V.  But those were very different times.  The wars then were in France.   From Newbold Revel to St. Albans is a distance of 74 miles, to Wakefield 108 miles, 67 miles to Mortimer’s Cross and only 35 miles to Northampton.   War had come home to the Midlands.

Malory must have pondered his loyalties and reflected on how he could act both honourably and for the best safety and interest of his family and property.   It was natural that he would choose to follow Warwick first, not only because of Fauconberg’s help in procuring bail in 1457.  So, what did he do next?  Did he ride north with Fauconberg, Warwick and the Earl of March to confront Buckingham with Henry VI at Northampton, did he return home, or did he remain in London.  All are possible.  But I favor the latter.  Before he departed, Warwick began a siege of the Tower of London, still under Lancaster  control under Lord Scales,  according to one chronicle,

“…They that were within the Tower cast wildfire to the city and shot in small guns, and burned and hurt men and women and children in the streets.  And they of London laid great bombards on the further side of the Thames against the Tower and crased the walls in diverse places.” 

Among the relatively few emendations Malory makes in translating his sources is this one, when Mordred is sieging Guinevere who has taken refuge in the Tower, “…he layde mighty syge aboute the Towre and made many assaltis, and threw engynnes unto them, and shotte grete gunnes.”  Malory’s decision to color the event with modern weapons suggests he may have been reflecting on what he himself saw that July in 1460 and, if so, tells us that he had not yet completed Le Mort d’Arthur in spite of the time he might have had to do so.  Further, Malory, now around sixty years old, lately out of prison, may not yet have been fit enough to go on campaign.  That he would stay and aid the siege on the Tower seems most probable.

There is one last possible inference to consider.  Why did the Queen, Buckingham and Somerset issue badges with a symbol of the Prince of Wales?  Why not the royal heraldry or Lancaster?  Perhaps, it reflects that Edward of Winchester’s right of succession was a central issue and utmost in her mind.

Episode 25 can be found here.

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.