MALORY, SIR THOMAS

flourished c. 1470 English writer whose identity remains uncertain but whose name is famous as that of the author of /a>Le Morte Darthur (q.v.), the first prose account in English of the rise and fall of King Arthur and the fellowship of the Round Table. Even in the 16th century Malory's identity was unknown, although there was a tradition that he was a Welshman. In the colophon to Le Morte Darthur the author, calling himself Syr Thomas Maleore knyght, says that he finished the work in the ninth year of the reign of Edward IV (i.e., March 4, 1469March 3, 1470) and adds a prayer for good delyueraunce from prison. The only known knight at this time with a name like Maleore was Thomas Malory of Newbold Revell in the parish of Monks Kirby, Warwickshire. This Malory, like the author, was imprisoned, but it was on various occasions during the period from 1450 to 1460, rather than about 1470. A Thomas Malorie (or Malarie), knight was excluded from four general pardons granted by Edward IV to the Lancastrians in 1468 and 1470. This person is tentatively accepted as the author. According to Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), this Sir Thomas Malory served in the train of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, at the siege of Calais (presumably 1436, but possibly 1414); was knight of the shire in 1445; and died on March 14, 1471. He was buried in the Chapel of St. Francis at Grey Friars, near Newgate. (He had been imprisoned in Newgate in 1460.)