Malory : The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler

by Hardyment, Christina

• ISBN13: 9780060935290
• ISBN10: 0060935294
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Virtually all modern versions of the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are derived from a single book: Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1469), one of the world's most renowned literary works. Yet the author, a fifteenth-century knight, has remained an enigma for centuries. Existing historical records imply that Malory was a criminal-accused of rape, ambush, rustling, and attacks on abbeys-and was imprisoned for most of his life. Using evidence from new historical research and deductions from the only known manuscript copy of Malory's celebrated work, Christina Hardyment brilliantly resolves the contradictions about an extraordinary man and a life marked equally by great achievement and devastating disgrace. Malory is the fascinating chronicle of a loyal soldier enmeshed in the tangled politics of the Wars of the Roses. It is the story of a connoisseur of literature and exemplary writer who created a masterpiece meant to inspire princes and knights to high endeavors and noble acts.

Excerpts

Malory
The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler

Chapter One

The Baptism Bell

And as fast as her time came she was delivered of a fair child, and . . . wit ye well that child was well kept and well nourished.

Malory, 'The Tale of King Arthur'

The oldest bell in the fine ring of eight mounted in the tower of the church of Monks Kirby Priory, in Warwickshire, was cast in 1390, in Worcester. It is a tangible link with the parish's most famous resident. For at the turn of the fourteenth century it would have been rung to summon relatives, friends and neighbours to the baptism of Thomas, the baby son of the Malorys of Newbold Revel. After the bellringer had finished the peal, let us imagine him turning lookout—climbing to the top of the great red sandstone church's tall tower. From there he had a panoramic view over the very heart of England. Knowing who was about was essential. These were dangerous times. Rumour had it that if Richard II had not already been murdered in his Pontefract Castle prison, he soon would be. But his cousin the usurping Duke of Lancaster, though crowned Henry IV in October 1399, did not yet feel secure on the throne. Hard-faced, hard-riding bands of armed men were scouring the shires for 'traitors'.

To the north the lookout could see High Cross, the pinnacled shrine that marked the meeting of the country's two most travelled highways, Watling Street and the Fosse Way. Visible to the east were the spires, wind-tossed banners, gilded weather-vanes and twelve turreted gates of Coventry, the fourth largest city in England and famed for its 'Coventry Blue' cloth. Warwickshire was a fertile county, its fields a 'green mantle so embroidered with flowers we may behold as another Eden'. The rich pastureland between the city and Monks Kirby was white with the flocks of Coombe Abbey, once famed for its piety, now sadly lax in its observances, except where profits could be made. Closer at hand were the parish's own manors and churches, each surrounded by a thatched hamlet, orchards and vegetable gardens.

Immediately to the south of Monks Kirby Priory, now a muchreduced monastic house, were the villages of Pailton, Stretton-under-Fosse and Easenhall. Settled like a mother hen in the low-lying centre of the triangle they formed was the moated manor house of Newbold Revel, its long fac¸ade reflected in the shining levels of three great fishponds. All belonged to the Malorys, the most important family in the parish. They held other manors just over the county's boundaries with Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. Thomas's father, John Malory of Newbold Revel, was well-liked; there are very few legal records showing him at odds with his tenants and neighbours, nor did he have any quarrels with the overlords of his various estates.

Although we don't know the exact date of Thomas Malory's birth, we can be sure that it was no more than a few days before his christening. The baptism of infants was never too soon at a time when immortal souls could be stolen by evil spirits for the want of a splash of holy water. The immediate atmosphere of the world into which he was born was murky, warm and richly colourful: the curtained cave of a four-poster bed in a candlelit room lined with Flemish tapestries and heated by a roaring wood fire, scented with branches of rosemary and bay. Dame Philippa Malory's female relatives, servants and friends crowded the room and cheered her on with advice, anecdotes and prayers. A nurse heated up milk scented with rose petals for the baby's first bath, and stood by as the midwife helped the sweating, crouching mother through the 'grimly throes' of birth without anaesthesia.

After being blessed, washed with a mixture of oil and salt, and swaddled tightly in protective bands, Thomas was tucked into bed with his mother, who held him to her breast and, we may imagine, 'nourished him with her own pap'. It was then believed that moral the baptism bell virtue—or vice—was transmitted in breast milk, so a conscientious mother, whatever her station in life, would try to suckle her own babies—especially if it was a boy, potentially an heir. News that the baby had been safely born had already been sent downstairs to the rest of the family. Outside in the courtyard an arrow was shot into the air to symbolise the boy's release from womb into world, and a short service of thanksgiving to the Blessed Virgin Mary, patroness of all births, was held in the Malorys' private chapel. Then harbingers, the family's liveried messengers, rode off 'at a wallop' to summon godparents, relatives and well-wishers to the christening.

'It is our kind to haunt arms and noble deeds'

The future historian of King Arthur came of appropriately chivalric stock. The Malorys were proud of being 'gentlemen that bear olde arms'. They had been Normans before they were Englishmen and Vikings before they were Normans. The Viking raider Rollo the Ganger became the first Duke of Normandy only a century before his descendant William shipped across the Channel to defeat Harald at the Battle of Hastings and added England to his estates. Variants on the distinctly Norse name Anketil were often given to members of the Malory family; it was anglicised to Anthony in the late fifteenth century. Besides having the ominous sense of 'maleure´', ill-augured or ill-fated, the nameMalory itself could have derived from 'maillerie', a kind of mill used for beating hemp for use in the textile trade, which gave its name to such French towns as La Mailleraye-sur-Seine and La Malhoure in Brittany. Perhaps it originated as a nickname. In the Winchester manuscript, the name is spelt as both Maleorre´ and Malleorre´; it could be that Sir Thomas personally preferred this strikingly Frenchified version of his name.

There are eleventh-century records of Malorys at Tessancourt, in the Vexin, on the Seine between Normandy and Paris. . . .

Malory
The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler. Copyright © by Christina Hardyment. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Malory: The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler by Christina Hardyment
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