The legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table has been passed down from century to century over nearly a millennium. Even the most casual of readers has heard the tales of Excalibur and of Sir Lancelot, which were famously included in Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s retelling of the entire King Arthur legend in one volume. And yet, a great mystery has been passed down through the centuries alongside the adventures of these knights: who was Sir Thomas Malory? Popular scholarship points to the author of Le Morte d’Arthur being a prisoner and a scoundrel. But Dr. Cecilia Linton, retired professor of English Language and Literature at Christendom, has uncovered the truth.
For Linton, her fascination with Le Morte d’Arthur, and its author, has been woven into most of her life. She first discovered the work while in graduate school at the Catholic University of America, quickly getting hooked on the work in its original Middle English form. This interest stuck with her through 2006, when she joined the faculty of Christendom College, and was introduced to a fellow lover of medieval literature: Dr. Robert C. Rice.
“I said I was going to read what I could find out about who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, and [Rice] pointed me towards P.J.C. Field’s 1993 book, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory,” recounts Linton from her home in Manassas, Virginia. “I read that book and found no evidence at all that his candidate, a Sir Thomas Malory from Warwickshire, wrote the book. He has been more or less accepted as the author ever since 1993 when Field wrote that book. Almost everybody assumes that he’s the author. But when I read that book, I thought, there’s just no evidence here. So, I started researching.”
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For Field, the true author of Le Morte was a Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel — a man imprisoned as a thief, bandit, kidnapper, attempted murderer, and rapist. But, for Linton, these qualities just did not add up with the chivalry on display in the tales of King Arthur and his knights. Her research eventually led her to a Sir Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers — a candidate often dismissed by scholars, including Field, because he was disinherited by his family, and thus could never have been a knight. But Linton, through her exhaustive research, developed a theory that would ultimately solve this mystery.
“When I read Field’s book, something else popped into my mind. I don’t know how, unless it was the Holy Spirit, but I realized that this man who wrote the book, and said he was a knight, must have been a knight of Christ, a Knight Hospitaller,” explains Linton. “He was not a regular secular knight. That was the only thing that explained everything, including the fact that he was disinherited because, of course, his parents would give whatever they were planning to leave him directly to the order when he went into monastery.”
From that moment on, it became Linton’s own Arthurian quest to test that her theory was correct. Her research first took her to her old stomping grounds in Washington, D.C., where she spent hours digging into books at the Library of Congress. She discovered that Sir Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers’ family was heavily involved in the Knights Hospitaller, providing a key piece of evidence toward her theory. From there, she began researching book after book, between the Library of Congress and her own local library in Manassas, gaining more and more evidence in favor of her theory.
Her journey to solve the mystery behind Le Morte d’Arthur finally, at long last, took her to its place of origin: England. She visited there with her husband, traveling from Oxford, to Cambridge, to Bamburgh Castle, and elsewhere. She visited the very home of Sir Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers, along with the monastery where Linton believes he wrote the Le Morte. In the end, she was convinced: This man was the true author of one of the most famous books in history.
“We went to the house that had been the monastery where I contend Sir Thomas Malory wrote the book,” recounts Linton. “It was no longer a monastery and had not been for a long time. But the guide to that house showed us that this used to be the home of monks, again proving a key point. Everywhere I went, my theory was proven correct. Here was the man that nobody had been looking at, except for one person, William Matthews, in the 1960s. Matthews decided that he had to be the author for many reasons, but he couldn’t argue that he truly was the author because he had not found any evidence that he was a knight. Well, the reason nobody found any evidence that he was a knight was because he was a religious knight. He didn’t have any family, and it was very hard to track him down. But I did it. I found the real Sir Thomas Malory. And this is the truth. This is the real person who wrote this book.”
An artist’s rendering of the Knights of the Round Table experiencing a vision of the Holy Grail.
Seven years of research reached its culmination during those days in England, on the very ground on which Sir Thomas Malory once stood. From there, Linton split her time between Virginia and her native home of Savannah, Georgia, putting pen to paper and bringing her magnum opus into being.
She ultimately found a home for her achievement at the place it truly came into being: Christendom. After presenting the manuscript to College President Dr. Timothy O’Donnell and gaining his enthusiastic seal of approval, Linton’s book was selected for publishing by Christendom College Press. The book’s long journey was finally completed this year, with the book published under the title: The Knight Who Gave Us King Arthur.
“I want to express my gratitude to Christendom College for producing this book, and in particular to Dr. O’Donnell for saying yes to my book and to Niall O’Donnell, who worked so hard on making the book possible,” says Linton. “It really was a thrill, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Linton’s book, available at press.christendom.edu.
Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur has been in existence for nearly 700 years, influencing history, literature, and popular culture ever since. For centuries, it has been debated who truly wrote one of the most important books in the history of the English language. Linton, at long last, has ended the debate, closing the book on one of literature’s great mysteries with a major scholarly achievement.
The project took years of work. When asked why she undertook such a momentous task, the answer for Linton is simple: truth.
“It’s important to know the truth. What I have done is not going to change Le Morte d’Arthur itself. It is what it is. But on who wrote it, it’s important to tell the truth,” concludes Linton. “You know the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It’s a wonderful production, and it has had more influence than any other medieval work in English, by far. Everybody knows these stories. Even people who don’t know how to read have heard these stories. It’s just a highly influential book, not only in that way in the culture, but its influence in our literature as well. I hope, through my book, that the real author will get the credit that he has deserved for over 500 years. Why? Because that’s just telling the truth, and that’s what we want when we are reading history. Even if it’s a history of a single life, we just want it to be real.”
Written by Zach Smith, Director of Communications.
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