Doubting Thomas

The quest to identify the correct Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte ‘D’Arthur, reads almost as a paradigm of the puzzle in identifying that mythical monarch, himself. William Caxton, credited with introducing the craft of printing to Great Britian, made Le Morte, the saga of the notional Arthur, one of his longer-lasting projects, still being reprinted today. In his foreword to the 1485 edition of the epic poem, Caxton identifies Thomas Malory of Papworth St Agnes as the author. He cites this Malory, as having been imprisoned in the Tower of London, for his Lancastrian sympathies during the Wars of the Roses. Apparently, Malory wrote the epic about Arthur’s struggle to become and remain king as a parallel narrative to the York/Lancastrian dispute. However, scholars have since cast doubt on this assumed identity. Contemporary with Malory of Papworth was Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire who had also spent bouts in prison. The dispute has arisen because Caxton, in his text, describes his Malory as “a knight”. But no evidence exists of Malory of Papworth ever having been a knight. That honour falls to Malory of Newbold Revel. But the dates don’t add up, our man of Newbold Revel having been born in 1390 and too old to have been an active criminal in the later fifteenth century. To complicate the matter, enter Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers in Yorkshire, a case put forward by scholar Cecelia Lampp Linton. To add to the confusion, another contender has popped up in recent times, a Thomas of Maleor, in Wales. Really, it is getting like one of those post-modern movies or play where doubles, and doubles of doubles, keep appearing to create metaphors, or something like that. To date, the only contender for solving the conundrum is Merlin the Magician – and where is he when we need him?