The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (74 page)

MORIAEN,
anon. (Dutch, early 1300s).

A Dutch romance which may have been based on a French original, and may have variant versions, because the surviving version incorporates some of the Dutch
Walewein.
It
is an offshoot of the Perceval story and concerns Moriaen, a Moorish knight who is seeking his father, who in this version turns out to be Perceval’s brother Agloval, but who in the original
was probably Perceval himself. Walewein and Lancelot are also seeking Perceval for different reasons, and the three knights separate in order to complete their quest. Curiously it is
Walewein’s brother Gariet who eventually helps Moriaen find his father.

ARTHUR AND GORLAGON,
anon. (Latin, early 1300s).

Another tale which, like
Walewein
, is a blending of traditional folk tales with the Arthurian legend. Guenevere admonishes Arthur for kissing her in public and tells him
he has no understanding of the nature of women. Confused, Arthur sets off secretly with Kay and Gawain to find an answer to the feminine psyche and is directed to the castle of Gorlagon, who tells
Arthur the story of a lord who is turned into a werewolf by his unfaithful wife and who strives to retain his humanity despite his animal traits.

MELIADOR,
Jehan Froissart (French, completed 1388) 30,771 lines survive.

A late French verse romance written by Jehan Froissart at the request of Wenceslas, Duke of Luxembourg. Early in Arthur’s reign Hermondine, daughter of the King of
Scotland, declares that she will marry the knight who shows the greatest valour over the next five years. Various knights vie for her hand and there are frequent quests and tournaments but of
course Meliador, son of the Duke of Cornwall, prevails.

GISMIRANTE,
Antonio Pucci (Italian, 1380s)

Gismirante is the son of a former Round Table knight whose adventures help revive an otherwise moribund Arthurian court. He vows to find the most beautiful woman in the world,
starting with a strand of her hair given him by a fairy. He undergoes many perilous adventures to find her and rescue her from an enchanted castle where she is held captive with other ladies by a
giant. He of course wins her hand and they are married at Arthur’s court.

LE CHEVALIER DU PAPEGAU
(The Knight of the Parrot), anon. (French, 1390s)

A late French prose romance unusual in that for once Arthur is the hero and not one of his knights. Even stranger, Arthur is accompanied by a parrot in a beautiful gilded cage
that both keeps him company and urges him on. Early in his reign, Arthur responds to a damsel’s plea to help her mistress who is being oppressed by a knight. Arthur achieves his quest and
meets a fascinating array of strange adversaries including a sea creature in the shape of a knight on horseback and a giant who is the son of a dwarf.

THE AVOWING OF KING ARTHUR,
anon. (English,
c
1400), 1,148 lines.

Like
The Carle of Carlyle
and
The Awntyrs off Arthur-e
, this story starts during a hunt in Inglewood Forest in Cumbria. It also features Arthur, Gawain, Kay and
Baldwin. All four declare different vows. Arthur’s is to slay a giant boar, Gawain’s to stand guard all night at Tarn Wadling, Kay’s to keep watch through the forest. Baldwin has
three vows, unconnected with the hunt: not to be jealous of his wife, not to refuse food to anyone, and not to fear death. Arthur puts him to the test and he passes all three. Baldwin then recounts
the past experiences that caused him to take these vows and these show Baldwin as a matter-of-fact, worldly-wise individual who has experienced life’s vicissitudes.

EACHTRA AN MHADRA MHAOIL
(The Adventure of the Crop-Eared Dog), anon. (Irish, pre-1450)

One of several little-known Irish Arthurian stories which were circulating in the early fifteenth century but may have originated a century or more earlier. Though this has some
elements in common with the Cumbrian Gawain stories, it otherwise gives full vent to the Celtic imagination. At the end of a day’s unsuccessful hunting Arthur and his knights are challenged
by a bejewelled knight with a lantern. None can defeat him, although Bhalbhuaidh (Gawain, though some translate it as Galahad) holds his own. The Knight of the Lantern disappears in a Druid mist
but Gawain is determined to follow him and does so with the help of an earless dog who is really the King of India transformed. Their adventures take them right across the world, encountering
wonder after wonder, until the Knight of the Lantern is caught and the curse lifted from the King of India.

The author provides some impressive statistics about Arthur’s knights, referring to the twelve knights of the Round Table, twelve knights of the Council, twelve knights of activity,
two-hundred-and-two score knights of the Round Table and seven thousand knights of the royal household: 11,076 knights in total. Arthur’s court is called the Red Hall.

CEILIDHE IOSGAIDE LEITHE
(The Visit of the Grey-Hammed Lady) and
EACHTRA AN AMADAIN MOR

(The Story of the Great Fool), both anon. (Irish, pre-1450) In the first a knight pursues a doe for three days but just as he is about to kill it the doe reveals herself as a
beautiful woman. At Arthur’s court she tells the other ladies that she has a tuft of grey hair behind her knee and when challenged by the court to show it she demands that all the ladies be
examined. When they raise their skirts all the ladies except the visitor are punished for their immodesty by finding tufts of grey hair, and the knights have to
undergo
various Otherworld adventures as a penance for their scepticism. The second is a retelling of the Perceval story blended with
Gawain and the Green Knight
but without the Grail theme.

EACHTRA MHACAOIMH AN IOLAIR
(The Adventures of the Boy Carried Off by an Eagle), Brían Ó Corcráin (Irish,
c
1460s)

Although often associated with “The Adventure of the Crop-Eared Dog”, this story has an identifiable author who claims, in his preface, to have been inspired by an
earlier French story. A small baby is stolen by an eagle and dropped at Arthur’s feet. He is raised at Arthur’s court and undertakes many adventures to find his true heritage.

19

MALORY – CAMELOT IN A PRISON CELL

If there’s only one Arthurian romance that we know, it is the
Morte Darthur
of Thomas Malory. Why should that be? And why did Malory write it, since by his day the
heyday of the Arthurian romance was over and nothing of much significance, besides
Gawain and the Green Knight
, had appeared for over two hundred years? In this chapter I want to see what
Malory did and why, and to do that we need to find out who Malory was.

1. Malory

For centuries there has been uncertainty as to who Thomas Malory was. That’s because there were at least nine people of that name alive at the time Malory claimed to have
finished
Morte Darthur
, and although most of them can be ruled out for one reason or another there are two or three that might just have been the real Malory. But thanks to the extensive and
quite remarkable detective work of P.J.C. Field, presented in
The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory
, there is now no argument that the author of the best known of all Arthurian works was
Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, a manor in Warwickshire.

Field has deduced that Malory was born in about 1416, give or take a year. His father John Malory had been a sheriff of Warwickshire, a Member of Parliament and a Justice of the Peace, so Malory
was born into a family of repute. Thomas Malory succeeded his father as a landowner, but clearly had
further plans. By 1441 he had acquired a knighthood, and in 1445 became a
Member of Parliament for Warwickshire.

In 1443 Malory seems to have had an altercation with a certain Thomas Smythe of Northampton. Charges brought against Malory were dropped, but in light of later developments we can already see
that Malory was not a man to be trifled with. We may even see here the first indications of a bully or, perhaps, of an ambitious man unlikely to brook opposition. Whatever the nature of this
assault, it was as nothing compared to what happened during a remarkable spree of violence in 1450–51.

Malory was apparently involved in an attempt to murder Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, on 4 January 1450. It was over a year before Malory was arrested, and in that time he was accused of
raping the same woman on two separate occasions, of extorting money by threat, of stealing cattle and of raiding the Duke of Buckingham’s lodge, killing his deer and causing considerable
damage. Even after he was arrested, he escaped and twice after that raided nearby Combe Abbey, stealing money. Most of these activities were carried out with a gang of accomplices, up to at least a
hundred on the Abbey raid. None of these seems like the activities of a politically astute individual, but we have no idea as to either Malory’s motives or the contextual circumstances of the
crimes. We do not even know for sure whether he committed them all, or whether some may have been malicious charges. It nevertheless suggests that Malory was good at making enemies.

Malory was eventually arrested and cast into prison in London in January 1452, where he remained for the best part of eight years, though he was never brought to trial. He was bailed several
times, and on one of those occasions went horse-stealing in East Anglia. He was also charged with various debts. With the passing years, a storm was gathering in England – the rivalry between
the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. Henry VI, who had been a brilliant youth and of whom so much had been expected, had sunk into mental decline. In March 1454 Richard of York was made Protector of
the Realm, a role he did not want to relinquish when the king recovered his wits the following February. Richard was dismissed and his arch-enemy, the Duke of Somerset, whom Richard had imprisoned,
was released. Conflict broke out in May
1455 with the first Battle of St Albans, in which Somerset was killed. There was a period of reconciliation, and when Henry’s
mental illness returned that November, Richard of York was again protector.

However, Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen and a formidable character in her own right, despised York and promoted her own favourite, the new Duke of Somerset, Henry Beaufort.
Hostilities broke out at the Battle of Blore Heath in Shropshire, in September 1459, starting what became known as the Wars of the Roses. Although the fighting was instigated by the Lancastrians
under Margaret of Anjou, the victors at Blore were the Yorkists, but the roles were reversed three weeks later at Ludford Bridge near Ludlow when, confronted by a Lancastrian force led by the king
himself, many Yorkists defected. Richard, Duke of York, beat a hasty retreat to Ireland, whilst his second in command, Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, slipped away to Calais.

There was a resurgence the following June when the Yorkists, led by the Earl of Salisbury and his son the Earl of Warwick (both called Richard Neville, the latter best known as “the
Kingmaker”), along with Edward, Earl of March (son of Richard of York, and the future Edward IV), met the Lancastrians at Northampton on 10 July 1460, in what proved to be a significant
Yorkist victory. The king acceded to Richard of York’s demands and Richard was made heir to the throne. That could have meant an end to it all had not Margaret of Anjou been so determined.
She raised a major army in the north with the support of the new Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, and overwhelmed the Yorkist army at Wakefield on 30 December 1460.
At that battle Richard of York and the Earl of Salisbury were killed.