Thomas Malory

Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author of Le Morte d'Arthur, the classic English-language chronicle of the Arthurian legend, compiled and in most cases translated from French sources.

Since modern scholars began researching his identity the most widely accepted candidate has been Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire, who was imprisoned at various times for criminal acts and possibly also for political reasons during the Wars of the Roses.

He is described as a "knyght presoner", distinguishing him from several other candidates also bearing the name Thomas Malory in the 15th century when Le Morte d'Arthur was written.

"[3] Finally, at the conclusion of the whole book: "The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthure Sanz Gwerdon par le shyvalere Sir Thomas Malleorre, knight, Jesu aide ly pur votre bon mercy.

", a mix of English and French roughly meaning: "The most pitiable tale of the Death of [King] Arthur, without reward for/by the knight Sir Thomas Malory; Jesus aid him by your good mercy.

"[3] With the exception of the first sentence of the final colophon, all the above references to Thomas Malory as a knight are, grammatically speaking, in the third person singular, which leaves open the possibility that they were added by a copyist, either in Caxton's workshop or elsewhere.

A claimant's age must also fit the time of writing; as described below, this has been a major point of contention among all modern scholars for determining the author's identity.

[3] Since the late 19th century there has been a great deal of scholarly research into the identity of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d'Arthur.

In the early 20th century, scholarly revelations of this candidate's extensive criminal record and multiple imprisonments threw further doubt on the matter because of a perceived discordance with the chivalric ideals espoused in Le Morte d'Arthur.

[6] However, Linton argues that Malory of Hutton Conyers was a knight of the church, and as her recent work garners scholarly attention, it may bring the matter into different focus.

[7][8] Kittredge discovered a record of this Malory's service under Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick in William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), stating of Sir Thomas: In K. H.5 time, was of the retinue to Ric.

He would therefore have been at least 75 when Le Morte was completed, as he must have been at least in his late teens or early 20s at the time of his commission: his peers of the same rank in Dugdale's record were in their mid- to late-twenties.

William Matthews emphasizes the importance of Malory's age thus: "There is considerable evidence that the medieval view was that by sixty a man was bean fodder and forage, ready for nothing but death's pit... it might be best to find out how old the Warwickshire knight really was in 1469.

"[11] Researching the question, Matthews made an original discovery: Sir William Dugdale's surviving 15th century notes and papers in the Bodleian Library on the Agincourt campaign contain a lengthy military roster (apparently in Dugdale's own hand) with the following detail: Thomas Mallory est retenuz a j lance et ij archers pr sa launce ouve j archer xx li par an et bouche de court et pour lautre archer x marcs saunz bouche de court.Because this original French note perfectly matches the English translation in Dugdale's published work, and because a number of the other knights listed on the same commission roster are known to have died long before 1436, Matthews concludes that these commissions cannot refer to the 1436 campaign; and therefore Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel must have been commissioned into Henry V's Agincourt campaign around 1414 or 1415, confirming Kittredge's original timeline and making this Malory in his mid-70s to early 80s at the time the book was completed.

"Chambers comments, "Surely the Sir Thomas of Monks Kirby [the parish in which Malory of Newbold Revel lived] could not have written this without a twinge.

[17] Malory's status changed abruptly in 1451 when he was accused of ambushing Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, a prominent Lancastrian in the Wars of the Roses, along with 26 other men sometime in 1450.

After a month, he was back in prison yet again, and this time he was held until the following May, when he was released on bail of 200 pounds, paid by a number of his fellow magnates from Warwickshire.

[22] Matthews, having shown that Malory of Newbold Revel was likely in his seventies by the time of the Northumberland campaign and living much further to the South, interprets this record as referring to a different candidate for authorship.

As Field describes, "Repeated scholarly searches of legal records have found no trace of arrest, charge, trial, or verdict"[22] that would place any Thomas Malory in prison at the time documented by the author in the Winchester manuscript.

[27] Thomas inherited his father's estates in 1425 and was placed in the wardship of the King, initially as a minor, but later (for reasons unknown) remaining there until within four months of his death in 1469.

This claim was put forward in 1966 in The Ill-Framed Knight: A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory by William Matthews,[30] a British professor who taught at UCLA (and also transcribed the diary of Samuel Pepys).

[1] Matthews makes many arguments for this candidate, with his main focus on linguistic clues both in the Winchester manuscript and the Caxton edition of Le Morte d'Arthur; including distinctive dialectal and stylistic elements such as alliteration that are characteristic of northerly writing.

His claim drew scholarly attention including a review co-written by eminent medievalist E. F. Jacob and the famed linguist Angus McIntosh.

[32] McIntosh's dialectal analysis states that: “To put the matter simply, the original Le Morte Darthur contained various forms which are too northerly for the everyday language of Newbold Revel”.

While McIntosh does not specifically support Matthews' claim of an origin in the Hutton Conyers area of Yorkshire, he ultimately concludes that the language would have been "most at home" in Lincolnshire but is characteristic of roughly anywhere north of a line from Chester to the Wash (see inset map).

[41] The entire work is eight romances that span twenty-one books with 507 chapters, which was said to be considerably shorter than the original French sources, despite its vast size.

[45] This argument has also been used to attempt to reconcile Malory's doubtful reputation as a person who continually changed sides with the unexpected idealism of Le Morte d'Arthur.

This cameo is included in the Broadway musical Camelot (1960), and in its film adaptation (1967), where his name is given as "Tom of Warwick"; reflecting the general acceptance of Malory of Newbold Revel (in Warwickshire) as the author through most of the 20th century, despite the criminal history of that candidate in his later life.

In addition to White's treatment, many other modern versions of the Arthurian legend have their roots in Malory, including John Boorman's film Excalibur (1981).

The discovery of Malory's book and its acquisition by William Caxton form key elements in The Load of Unicorn (1959), a children's novel by Cynthia Harnett.