The Death of King Arthur

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIKING
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Translation, retelling and introduction copyright © Peter Ackroyd, 2010. All rights reserved.

ISBN : 978-1-101-54590-4

 

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Sir Thomas Malory came from a family steeped in the values and traditions of the chivalric code. His ancestors were ‘gentlemen that bear old arms', and their blood relationship with both the Normans and the Vikings suggests that they were sufficiently robust to do so. They had settled at Newbold Revell, in Warwickshire, and had managed to acquire vast estates throughout that county. As the inheritor of a name and domain, Malory himself was ineluctably drawn into the contests of the wider world.

He was born, in the first decade of the fifteenth century, at a time of great violence and uncertainty. Richard II had been deposed and murdered in 1400; his successor, Henry IV, was continually beset by all the confusion that surrounds any successful rebel. So the realm was disordered. This context of suspicion and almost continual violence can be glimpsed in the pages of
Le Morte d'Arthur,
most particularly in the conflict between Arthur and Mordred.

In this period of battles, and rumours of battles, there can be little doubt that Malory would have been acquainted with the great chivalric tales of the age. They were part of any gentleman's education. He would have heard readings of
Brut
and the alliterative
Morte Arthur
, those great clarion calls to the knightly spirit. He would also have attended jousts and tournaments, where the words of the ballads and epics took on a formidable and glamorous life. We may apply to the young Malory his own words, ‘This child will always be shooting or casting darts, and is glad to see battles and prancing knights.'

He was also trained in all the feudal arts of chivalry – arts that included hunting, riding, hawking and archery. His earliest biographer, writing in the sixteenth century, described him as ‘outstanding from youth for his heroic spirit and for many remarkable gifts'. At the age of fourteen, in fact, he went to war against France in the retinue of the Earl of Warwick. He served as a ‘lance' at Calais and four years later he was mentioned at a muster roll in Normandy. In that capacity he may have participated in the siege of Rouen, and was part of the army under the command of Henry V. It is perhaps not coincidental that Henry V was often compared to the legendary Arthur.

In 1433 or 1434, while he was in his early twenties, Malory inherited the familial estate; eight years later he became a knight, the goal of all chivalric ambition. He also became Justice of the Peace, Member of Parliament, and Sheriff of Warwickshire. These were all highly significant positions, emphasizing Malory's status at the very summit of the county hierarchy. To be sheriff was, indeed, to be the most important person of the shire. He was directly responsible to the king. The house at Newbold Revell was enlarged, no doubt because he was in the process of acquiring a wife and family. He had in any case a large household of servants, one of whom was a harpist whose task was to sing of love and chivalry as the wine was being passed around. He must also have owned a large collection of books, which in those days were locked and guarded as precious objects.

Yet he was in no sense the embodiment of literary or courtly virtue. At the beginning of the twentieth century an American scholar discovered a court record, partially burned, that accused Malory of rape, ambush, intent to kill, theft, extortion and gang violence. That is probably a good summary of the career of a fifteenth-century knight, even though it is not a model example of the ideal of medieval chivalry. In 1451 he was briefly imprisoned at Coleshill Manor, but escaped by swimming across the moat. It sounds a romantic feat, but at the time the moat was filled with sewage. Then he gathered up a motley army and attacked Coombe Abbey in his own county, from which place he stole money and valuables. He was taken into custody, and for the next eight years he was in and out of prison. He broke out of gaol in Colchester in 1454, while threatening his gaolers with an assortment of weapons. He was never formally put on trial, owing to the annoying inability of jurors to turn up on the appropriate occasions, and as a result he was often freed on bail. He spent a further period in Newgate, but the cause of his imprisonment is not known.

Life in prison was not necessarily as hard as it is in the twenty-first century. He had his own set of chambers, and was granted access to his family. He had enough money, too, to purchase the comforts of home. At the end of one of the Arthurian stories he refers to himself as ‘a knight presoner', so we know that he wrote at least part of
Le Morte d'Arthur
while incarcerated; this great epic may therefore be seen as a towering example of prison literature, to be compared to Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress
and
The Consolations of Philosophy
by Boethius. The setting may also help to explain the tone of melancholy that seems to invade the narrative, a wistfulness combined with a dour sense of fate. The story of Arthur is accompanied by sensations of loss and transitoriness, as well as a note of stoic resignation, which may reflect the author's own experience.

The judicial pardon of Sir Thomas Malory was inscribed on an official roll in the autumn of 1462. He is mentioned in a list of knights about to march into Northumberland. He was by now an old, as well as an experienced, warrior. Then once more he disappears from the record until his death in the spring of 1471. It is not known how or where he died. He was buried in the Greyfriars Church by Newgate, however, and the proximity to that famous gaol suggests that he was once more a prisoner. The church and graveyard are now no more than ruins. But of course he left behind a greater monument.
Le Morte d'Arthur
was published by Caxton's press in the summer of 1485, and has been continually in print since that time.

Malory's work is suffused with the imperatives and rituals of the chivalric code, the important testament of military virtue that had first emerged in the twelfth century. King Arthur was supposed to fight, for example, and a warlike ruler was considered to be a good ruler. If God looked kindly upon a monarch, He would bequeath him success in battle. It was the law of life. It was one of the essential prerogatives, or duties, of sovereignty, reflecting a period in which warfare was endemic. Throughout Malory's narrative kings are constantly engaged in sieges and in battles. No land goes uncontested, and no crown is necessarily safe. So military valour was crucially important.

The medieval nobleman was trained in courage and prowess. The young squire, so noticeable a feature of Malory's adventures, was always a boy of noble birth. He was educated in a great household, where he served his master and was also taught the use of arms. His highest ideal was that of knighthood, preferably gained on the battlefield but acquired, as a rule, on reaching the age of twenty-one. It was, in one sense, another form of baptism. Before the honour was conferred upon him he took part in a ritual bath and repeated a vow of chastity; he fasted until nightfall, and then spent the night in prayer. At dawn he confessed his sins, attended mass and took Holy Communion. He then kneeled before his godfather and promised to obey the rules of knighthood and to protect the virtue of all women; he also declared that he ‘would speak the truth, succour the helpless and oppressed, and never turn back from an enemy'. There were material, as well as spiritual, benefits to be gained from his new status. Henry II ordered that a knight arrested for debt should not be consigned to a common prison; his property could be sold to pay his debts, but his horse was protected from confiscation.

Chivalry can on one level be understood as the practice whereby the laws of honour supersede those of right or justice. There were elaborate laws of warfare, for example, that governed the conduct of sieges. There were also principles concerning the treatment of hostages, the respect for envoys, and the terms of truces. In warfare knights would spare the lives and privileges of other knights, while happily massacring the women and children among the local population. There are no tears shed in Malory's account for the fate of peasants or of shepherds. He is a frankly aristocratic writer without the sensibility of Chaucer or Langland.