The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (75 page)

It was in the midst of this upheaval that Malory was released and pardoned. During the false calm of the autumn of 1460 he may have felt there was a chance to resume his old life, but with the
battle of Wakefield everything changed. Driven by her success, Margaret of Anjou marched towards London and was met by the Yorkist forces under the Earl of Warwick at St. Albans on 17 February
1461. Outnumbered once again, the Yorkists were forced to retreat and Henry VI was reunited with his wife.

We do not know if Malory was present at that battle. One
would expect him to be on the Yorkist side, as it was the Yorkists who had pardoned him, and the Earl of Warwick
was technically his liege lord. However, despite fighting against one’s king being against all codes of chivalry and loyalty, the nature of the fighting in the Wars of the Roses caused many
to consider that chivalry died in those days.

Malory almost certainly fought at the next battle, the bloodiest of the war – in fact, the bloodiest ever fought on British soil: Towton. The Lancastrians had retreated to their
strongholds in the north rather than regain their grip on London. Edward, Earl of March, declared himself king on 4 March 1461, raised a new army and marched in pursuit. There were several
conflicts en route but the main battle was fought just south of Tadcaster in Yorkshire on 29 March, in a snowstorm. It might have been a victory for the Lancastrians had not the forces of the Duke
of Norfolk arrived in support of York and driven the Lancastrians back. It has been estimated that some 28,000 people, over half the combatants, died that day, most in that final retreat. Malory
may have recalled that battle when, in describing Camlann, he wrote:

Towton was the decisive victory, although there would be plenty of minor battles and skirmishes. It is known that Malory was in the army that headed north in October 1462 to capture the
Lancastrian castles of Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh. When Malory came to write the final chapters in
Morte Darthur
, and lay Lancelot to rest, he said that, “some say Joyous Garde
was Alnwick and others Bamburgh.” These imposing castles clearly made a lasting impression on Malory. It was also on this campaign that he met Anthony Wydville (Woodville), later Earl
Rivers.

Wydville, then only in his early twenties, was the brother of Edward IV’s future queen, Elizabeth. He was on a rapid ascent to power, having been made Lord Scales that year, and succeeded
his father as Earl Rivers in 1469. He was fascinated with the Arthurian world and acquired most of the major Arthurian
romances for his library. He was a renowned champion at
tournaments and was initiated into the Order of the Garter in 1466. He may well have imagined himself as a Lancelot. So far as we can tell he and Malory became close companions. It was probably
through Wydville that Malory acquired his Arthurian interest and he may have had access to Wydville’s library before entering prison for the final time. We know that Wydville later had a
manuscript of Malory’s
Morte Darthur
and that he was the major patron of Caxton, so it was quite probable that Wydville provided Caxton with a copy years later before coming to his own
sticky end when he fell foul of Richard III.

We may see Wydville as Malory’s direct inspiration but the 1460s became a decade of Arthurianism, possibly encouraged by the soldier-turned-historian John Hardyng. His verse-chronicle of
Britain, first issued in 1457 for Henry VI, made an analogy between the Waste Land and Britain under a series of weak kings, a point he emphasised in the revised edition completed for Edward IV in
1464. Henry VI had been a devoutly religious man and his mental affliction was seen by some as a parallel to the maimed Fisher King. Edward, Warwick and others had no problems in seeing themselves
as Grail Knights seeking to heal the Waste Land. Indeed, it worked in Edward’s favour to be regarded as the new Arthur. Clerks were put to work to stimulate that view. John Hughes, in
Arthurian Myths and Alchemy
, draws attention to two Latin calendars compiled around 1461 and 1465, which look back over British history in the form of a series of prophecies. One of these,
“A Prophecy of Merlin Concerning Henry VI”, seems to have been deliberately contrived to show that Edward’s rise to kingship was foreordained.

Edward IV encouraged Arthurian tournaments and spectacles. Much was made of the Round Table at Winchester as the hub of the Arthurian court, from which Edward and his knights set out to achieve
their glorious deeds. Even before Edward had declared himself king, and some years before his marriage to Elizabeth Wydville, he had an illegitimate son whom he called Arthur Plantagenet. This
Arthur, who became Viscount Lisle, outlived them all, surviving the next two reigns and even outliving Henry VII’s first-born son Arthur, who died in 1502. Arthur Plantagenet died aged eighty
in 1542.

With Edward turning his court into a new Camelot it was perhaps inevitable that someone would look again at the Arthurian romances, but I doubt anyone would have expected
it to be Malory. Wydville was himself highly literate and eminently capable of the task, though he was perhaps too busy with state affairs. There was the chronicler William Worcester, or the Latin
scholar Benedict Burgh, perhaps even Caxton himself.

Yet the circumstances under which Malory wrote the
Morte Darthur
were unusual. Sometime around 1468 he must have relapsed into his old ways because he was once again in prison, only it
seems this time he had changed sides and become a Lancastrian sympathiser. Field conjectures that Malory had become involved in the Cornelius Plot, involving smuggling letters to Lancastrian
agitators. It cannot have been so difficult a confinement since he was clearly kept provided with paper and ink and the source material he was adapting. In all probability his patron was Wydville,
but Malory is silent on that score. Malory completed the work while still in prison, having been overlooked in two pardons. He finished
Morte Darthur
, he tells us, in the ninth year of
Edward’s reign, which places it between March 1469 and March 1470. Field estimates the work must have taken him two years, and although we do not know when he was imprisoned, it cannot have
been much before June 1468 if he was genuinely involved in the Cornelius Plot. However, it has since been established that he was in Newgate Prison in Easter 1468, and may have been for some months
earlier. In all probability, however, he may not have completed the work until the early part of 1470. He was eventually released in October 1470, when the Lancastrians surged back to power
following a reversal of allegiance by Warwick. Alas, Malory did not live long to enjoy his freedom as he died on 14 March 1471, and was buried at the church of Greyfriars in Newgate.

If Malory undertook the work as a commission from Wydville, then we would need to consider Wydville’s motives rather than Malory’s, and considering the Arthurian splendour of
Edward’s court, it was more a matter of when rather than why. Malory, no doubt wrapped up in the same enthusiasm, clearly enjoyed the work – no one could complete something on that
scale and with such passion without becoming totally immersed in it. Yet if
Malory had reverted to the Lancastrian cause, could he have had a motive different from
Wydville’s? Might he have seen Henry VI as Arthur and Edward IV as Mordred? Why else would he have written rather cynically in the last book of
Mort Darthur
:

2. Caxton

William Caxton was born in Kent, probably in Tenterden, in around 1422. He was apprenticed to the London mercer Robert Large, who served as Lord Mayor in 1439–40, so early
in his life Caxton was making influential contacts. He went to Bruges in Flanders in 1441, and served as governor of the association for English merchants in the Low Countries from 1462 to 1471.
One of those significant small events that change history happened in October 1468 when, as head of a trade mission, Caxton visited Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who only three months earlier had
married Margaret, sister of Edward IV. Also on that mission he would have met Anthony Wydville. Just over two years later Caxton became attached to the household of the Duke of Burgundy as a
commercial advisor.

In 1469 Caxton had attempted to translate into English the popular French book,
Recuyell of the Histories of Troie
by Raoul Lefevre, which recounted many of the legends of ancient Greece.
Caxton’s French was poor, but, encouraged by Margaret of Burgundy, he persevered and finished it in 1471, presenting the duchess with the first copy. The task of producing further copies to
meet the demand was onerous and, recalling a printing press he had seen in Cologne, Caxton acquired one and experimented. In 1475 he published his translation as the first book printed in English.
The following year, under the patronage of Edward IV, Caxton returned to England and set up a printing office within Westminster Abbey. The first book he printed on
English
soil was the second part of Lefevre’s
Histories of Troie
, which he entitled
Jason
. Soon after, he published Wydville’s own
Diets and Sayings of the
Philosophers
.

Caxton would never have met Malory, but the common link was Wydville. We don’t know when Caxton received Wydville’s copy of
Morte Darthur
, but it must have been before Edward
IV died in April 1483, because Caxton tells us it was Edward who encouraged him to print it. Wydville doubtless lent him his own copy shortly before Edward’s death, but Wydville’s fate
was also soon sealed. After Edward’s death, he incurred the suspicions of Edward’s brother, the future Richard III, who had Wydville executed in June 1483. It is possible that after
Wydville’s death Caxton acquired another variant copy of Malory’s work.

For centuries the only known version of Malory’s
Morte Darthur
was that published by Caxton, but in 1934 another version was found at Winchester College. It was deduced that neither
of these versions was Malory’s original, but had been slightly adapted by copyists in the decade since his death. The Winchester manuscript is, however, believed to be closer to
Malory’s original than Caxton’s, as the printer took some liberties in rearranging some of the text and in removing some of Malory’s references to himself. The Winchester version
was eventually published by the Clarendon Press in 1967 as
The Works of Sir Thomas Malory
, edited by Eugène Vinaver. This showed that Malory had written the work as a series of
self-contained books, rather than as the unified whole presented by Caxton.

By the time Caxton was readying the book to print, England was once again in upheaval. Edward IV had died somewhat mysteriously (he was still only 40) on 9 April 1483 and within ten weeks his
brother Richard had assumed the throne as Richard III, after deposing Edward’s young son Edward V, one of the two doomed Princes in the Tower. Richard’s reign lasted just two years
before he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth on 22 August 1485.

It was during those same two years that Caxton worked on adapting and printing the
Morte Darthur
. He completed it on 31 July 1485. On that very same day Henry Tudor set sail from Harfleur
to claim the English throne, landing at Milford Haven a few days later. Richard III would have been too preoccupied to
see a copy of
Morte Darthur
and, even if he had,
may not have noticed a subtle change that Caxton made in Book 5, in which Arthur sails to do battle with the Emperor Lucius of Rome. While on his ship Arthur has a dream of a battle between a
dragon and a bear, in which Arthur – the dragon – is shown to be victorious. Caxton changed “bear” to “boar”. The white boar was Richard III’s heraldic
device, whilst Henry Tudor was represented by the Welsh dragon. Here Caxton, once a staunch Yorkist, betrayed his changed allegiance to the Tudors. Once again, the Arthurian stories meant something
new to each generation. Doubtless as Caxton brought the book to press he saw Richard III as Mordred, who had stolen the kingdom from Edward/Arthur and imprisoned the queen. Richard, on the other
hand, would have seen himself as the new Arthur, who had saved the kingdom from the final depraved years of his brother and was now conducting a crusade to improve the country’s morals. This
was probably why Caxton’s preface includes a lengthy paragraph exhorting everyone to “Do after the good and leave the evil.” Henry Tudor, in turn, perhaps saw himself as Uther
Pendragon, ridding the kingdom of the enemy and establishing a new order. Just thirteen months after Bosworth, Henry’s wife Elizabeth (daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydville) produced
an heir to the throne, Arthur, Prince of Wales, the new hope for England.

3. Morte Darthur

The title
Le Morte Darthur
, lacking any punctuation as is usual for that period, was assigned to the work by Caxton. Malory’s title was
The Whole Book of King
Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table.
Although less accurate, Caxton’s title is more memorable, but apparently he selected it by mistake, thinking that the title Malory gave
to his final book was the title for the whole.

What Malory achieved, and what makes his work more memorable than most of its predecessors, is the unravelling of the intricate, interlacing work of the earlier romances, in which several
stories run parallel to each other and the reader is taken in and out of them, reworking each as a separate continuous
narrative. As a result, there is a greater concentration
on the individual episodes, which helps to develop the characters. To produce this, Malory had to do a fair amount of rewriting, and in the process was able to bring his own thoughts and
perspective to the whole cycle. Although he frequently deleted elements of the original, he added little, preferring more subtle changes that would make the story resonate with the period of Edward
IV. However, the result is not just a collection of stories because, as Malory warmed to his theme, he constructed the sequence so that characters develop from book to book.