Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/445

Malory  

MALORY, THOMAS (fl. 1470), author of ‘Le Morte Arthur’ was, according to Bale, a Welshman. Bale, quoting Leland's ‘Syllabus et Interpretatio Antiquarum Dictionum,’ 1542, mentions a place called ‘Mailoria, on the boundaries of Wales, near the River Dee.’ The spot has not been identified. The theory of Malory's Welsh origin is doubtless due to his choice of subject. At least four families of the name were long connected with the English Midlands, but none of the pedigrees seem to include the writer. In the fifteenth century William Malore or Malory of Hutton Conyers acquired, by marriage with the daughter of Sir Richard Tempest, the estate of Studley Royal, near Ripon, and a member of the family is buried in Ripon Cathedral, but none of this family bore the name of Thomas. The manor of Kirkby Mallory, Leicestershire, belonged for at least two centuries to another family of the name. It was sold in 1377 by Sir Ankitell Malory. Sir Ankitell's son, Sir Thomas, was a large landowner in Leicestershire and Warwickshire, but is of too early a date to be identified with the writer; he left an only child, Elizabeth, wife of Sir Robert Ever, and she died in 1482 (, Leicestershire, iv. 761;, Leicestershire). A third family was of Walton-on-the-Wolds, and its chief, John Malory (d. 1490), had a son John who was slain at Terouenne in 1512; while another John Malory, of a fourth—a Northamptonshire—family, held the manor of Lichborow until he was attainted of high treason in 1518, but on his death in 1522 the property was restored to a son, Thomas, who, dying in 1552, is of too late a date to be connected with the writer (, Northamptonshire, i. 76, 234). Bale says that the author was occupied with affairs of state, but there is no definite information respecting him outside his book.

In the preface to his edition of ‘Le Morte Arthur,’ Caxton writes that he ‘emprised to imprint a book of the noble histories of the said King Arthur and of certain of his knights after a copy unto me delivered, which copy Sir Thomas Malory did take out of certain book of French, and reduced it into English.’ Malory concludes his text with the words: ‘all gentlemen and gentlewomen that read this book of Arthur and his knights from the beginning to the ending, pray for me while I am on live that God send me good deliverance, and when I am dead I pray you all pray for my soul; for this book was ended the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth by Sir Thomas Mallore, knight, as Jesu help him for his great might, as he is the servant of Jesus both day and night.’ Malory's translation was therefore finished between 4 March 1469 and 4 March 1470. In the colophon Caxton again mentions Sir Thomas as the reducer of the work into English, but adds that it was by himself ‘divided into xxi books chapitred, and enprinted and finished in the Abbey Westminster, the last day of July the year of our Lord .’ Malory's description of himself as ‘the servant of Jesu both day and night’ has been assumed to imply that he was a priest, but his description of himself as ‘knight’ confutes the suggestion. Pious ejaculation at the conclusion of their labours is characteristic of mediæval authors.

Malory's work ‘is a most pleasant jumble and summary of the legends about Arthur.’ The legends which he ‘reduced’ mainly come from French romances, and fifty-six times in the course of his work he informs his reader that the ‘Frensshe booke’ is his authority. But he at the same time occasionally adapted English poems on the same theme, and was capable, not only of abridging and altering his authorities, but of making original interpolations. He was not critical in the choice of his originals, and at times accepted the least attractive of extant versions of the legends. But although derived from sources of varying literary interest, the whole work is singularly homogeneous in style and sentiment.

The sources of his twenty-one books have been identified thus: Books I–IV. are based partly on the ‘Romance of Merlin’ in French verse by Robert de Borron, and partly on a prose French rendering of Borron, with continuations. Book V. is from ‘La Morte Arthure,’ an English metrical romance in the Thornton MS. in Lincoln Cathedral library (printed by Early English Text Soc. in 1865 and 1871). Book VI. is from the French ‘Romance of Lancelot.’ The sources of book VII., ‘The Adventures of Gareth,’ have not been traced. Books VIII., IX., and X. follow the French prose ‘Romance of Tristan’ assigned to the fictitious [q. v.], but chapters xxi. to xxviii. of book x. (the ‘Adventures of Alysanader le Orphelyn’ and the ‘Great Tournament of Surluse’) come from the French ‘Prophecies of Merlin’ (see, iii. 295–333).

Books XI. and XII., like books XIII. to XVII. (‘The Quest of the Holy Grail’), are