Who, then, can live secure of himself or his own under
... a law that offers assistance to anyone hostile to him?
Sir John Fortescue, De laudibus legum Anglie
One of the problems that continues to occupy Malory scholars is the difficulty of relating his Morte Darthur to the fifteenth century, a period of civil war. One way of realizing the historicity of Malory's text is to compare it to the French Mort le roi Artu (or Mort Artu, c. 1225), the concluding section of the Prose Lancelot, Malory's most important source. Most comparisons of the two texts have concentrated on stylistic and philological matters and are important for understanding the Morte Darthur. These studies, however, tend to overlook or dismiss as unimportant a distinctive feature of Malory's text, that is, what Derek Brewer has called its mixture of inconsistencies.Note 1 This essay focuses on two important departures Malory makes from his French source-- deviations which constitute internal contradictions in his text--to show the Morte Darthur's intersection with the legal and political dimensions of the crime of high treason in fifteenth-century England. The two departures are: Malory's ambiguous representation of Lancelot and Guinevere's treason, their adultery, when proof of the deed is being sought; and his creation of a law that sentences Guinevere to death.Note 2
Unlike the French Mort Artu, which presents Lancelot
and Guinevere's act of adultery in unequivocal terms, Malory tells
his audience (1165)
whether they were abed or at other maner of disportis, me
lyste nat thereof make no mencion, for love that tyme was not as
love ys nowadayes.Note 3
This peculiarity of the Morte Darthur has been explained in terms of a fifteenth-century morality that regarded chivalric romances as ``guide›s| to conduct,'' so that condoning ``adultery was no longer acceptable.''Note 4 By having the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere take place offstage, Malory complies with this moral dimension of chivalric romance. Yet if Malory in this instance chooses to be ambiguous for the sake of a moral version of chivalry, then we must ask why he describes so explicitly in earlier sections of his text the adulterous relationships of Tristram and Isode, Tristram and the wife of Segwarydes, and Lancelot and Guinevere themselves (in the Knight of the Cart story). With such precedents as these, Malory's ambiguous treatment of adultery in this latter episode seems an oddity. Moreover, depictions of vices other than adultery are plentiful in this text. Indeed, they are so numerous that Caxton, in his preface to the Morte Darthur, warns readers to ``doo after the good and leve the evyl'' (cxlvi). We are left to wonder why, if this instance of adultery must be relegated to the wings for the sake of morality, earlier incidents of adultery and other forms of vice, such as murder, do not take place offstage as well.
Caxton's admonition to readers of the Morte Darthur ``can only be explained,'' Elizabeth Kirk has observed, ``on the assumption that Malory's text troubled Caxton in a way no comparable text had done.''Note 5 Even now, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the Morte Darthur still troubles us. In fact, a number of Malory's critics have echoed Caxton's exhortation, following their own advice by ignoring Malory's textual inconsistencies. The Morte Darthur, it is said, is not ``an intellectual book: we are called upon to feel ... not to analyse or reason.'' Nor should we be too curious about Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery, since Malory expects his readers to have a ``cool attitude'' towards physical love. Likewise, we are told that Malory is concerned with the ``public recognition of one's action'' not guilt or innocence, not ``the inner life.''Note 6 One can get the sense, from these remarks, that to ask about Malory's inconsistent representations of adultery is bad manners or, worse, a violation of the text's privacy. Curiously enough, by instructing readers what to do and not to do with Malory's text, such comments as these enunciate their own form of chivalry. Rather like chivalric knights, readers are to protect the Morte Darthur from its inconsistencies by behaving or reading in a certain way. We are encouraged to adopt a respectable distance from the textual puzzles, what we could call the ``inner life'' or private spaces, of the Morte Darthur.
Yet the dissonance of the Morte Darthur signals a narrative complexity that challenges and enriches our interpretive efforts and provides a way for us to gain a fuller understanding of this Arthurian tale.Note 7 Malory's perplexing, ambiguous treatment of adultery when Agravain attempts to gather proof of the deed is inconsistent not only with his earlier depictions of adultery, but it is also at odds with the law on treason he creates for the sentencing of Guinevere-a law that requires for its application physical proof of the act of treason. This particular inconsistency functions to pose a legal dilemma: a law which specifies the types of proof necessary to establish the guilt of an alleged traitor is applied despite the fact that no such proof has been obtained. With this problem of evidence and legal reprisal, we can place Malory's version of the ``exotic never-never land of Arthurian Britain''Note 8 in the chaos of the Wars of the Roses and more specifically in that era's discourse on treason.
One prominent feature of fifteenth-century legal discourse on high treason derives from a 1352 statute. In an effort to check the interpretive latitude of the Crown in the matter of high treason, Parliament sought to identify, in this law, the specific acts that consituted this crime.Note 9 Within the statute's ``definitive'' list of treasonous acts, however, Parliament included the act of imagining the death of the king. Thus the prosecution of treason did not have to be based on an overt act, one that left traces of physical evidence.Note 10 Through its provision for an imagined act of treason, the statute transgressed the very boundaries it had been designed to impose and posed problems regarding the type of evidence needed to establish this crime. Not until the accession of Henry IV were the potentialities of imagining the king's death fully explored: Henry and his jurists found that words spoken against the king established treason by imagination. Once its interpretive possibilities had been tapped, imagining the death of the king figured frequently in the prosecution of treason throughout the fifteenth century.Note 11
As can be expected, the comings and goings of various kings during the Wars of the Roses created an atmosphere in which accusations of treason flourished, and the 1352 law assisted in that efflorescence. By equating a putative act of imagination to a physical act of treason and requiring no physical evidence to establish this crime, the statute encouraged what amounts to the spontaneous generation of treason. Rather than injecting an element of stability into the chaos of civil war, the law contributed to it. During this period, Sir John Fortescue was arguing in De laudibus legum Anglie that English law had brought peace and prosperity to the realm.Note 12 This claim is contradicted not only by the civil war but by a vociferous strain of popular sentiment that regarded law as eminently susceptible to private ambition.Note 13
Malory's representation of law and legal process in the matter
of Lancelot and Guinevere's treason brings into play these
discordant perceptions of law in the fifteenth century. The law on
treason found in the Morte Darthur reads as an objective
statement that is binding on everyone, ``whatsomever they were, of
what astate or degre','' caught in the circumstances it sets forth
(1174). But like the 1352 law on treason in some of its fifteenth-
century uses, it is applied when no conclusive proof of an overt
act of treason exists. We will see that in the absence of such
proof, the Morte Darthur accentuates the constitutive role
of interpretation in what appears to be a simple application of law
to the facts of the case. My analysis focuses on three issues:
(1) Malory's law on treason and the lack of evidence;
(2) Imaginative treason and imaginative accusations: evidence of
words and reports of ill-fame; and
(3) Gawain's alternate interpretations of the ``facts'': Malory's
challenge to legal process.
In its peculiar representation of legal process, Malory's
Morte Darthur, I argue, interrogates and challenges judicial
and legislative interpretive practices that transform a lack of
evidence or questionable evidence into unequivocal proof of crime
and criminal guilt.Note 14
***
When Guinevere is brought to trial for her adultery with
Lancelot in the Mort Artu, Arthur asks his barons what must
be done with her according to ``droit jugement.'' In turn, the
barons seek the advice of Agravain and his brothers who submit that
``par droit qu'ele en devoit morir a honte, car trop avoit
fet grant desloiaute', quant ele en leu del roi qui tant estoit
preudom avoit lessie' gesir un autre chevalier.''Note 15
``according to justice the Queen should die a shameful death
since she acted with such great disloyalty when she allowed another
knight to sleep with her in the place of such a worthy man as the
king.''
Arthur's wanting to know what justice would be in this case and the baron's consulting others on the matter suggest that in the world of the Mort Artu, there is no particular law to be followed. Arthur has told his barons that the Queen will suffer death no matter what they say and this confirms the absence of any justice beyond the king's word.Note 16
Rather than having to figure out what should be done in
Guinevere's case, Arthur in the Morte Darthur consults the
appropriate law (1174):
And the law was such in thos dayes that whatsomever they
were, of what astate or degre', if they were founded gylty of
treson
there shuld be none other remedy but deth, and othir the menour
other the takynge wyth the dede shulde be causer of their hasty
jougement.
Of course, by ``hasty jougement'' Malory could simply mean a prompt trial. But the types of proof Malory cites indicate a particular type of promptness. Both capture in the act and mainour were associated with an abridgement of judicial process known as summary judgment or summary justice. This association, along with the Crown's endeavors in the fifteenth century to bypass jury indictment and jury trial as a means to increase the likelihood of conviction suggests that Malory's ``hasty jougement'' signals summary judgment.Note 17 Guinevere is not tried by a jury nor given an opportunity to defend herself; rather the law is simply stated, the evidence cited for the crime of treason, and sentence pronounced-judicial process in this case takes the form of summary or ``hasty jougement.''
As to the types of proof, ``taken with the dede'' is readily understood: a person was captured in the act of crime, and, as the phrase implies, the deed was witnessed. Under such circumstances, a criminal deed was established; no other proof was necessary. The criminal captured in the act could be subjected to an abbreviated form of legal process and ``summarily dispatched.''Note 18 To ensure conviction, the thing for an accuser to establish, then, was that capture in the act of crime had occurred. But there was more than one way to accomplish this. Through various types of capture, an accuser could establish that an equivalent of capture in the act had occurred. In fact, as we will see, capture in the act could be constructed even though the act of crime had not been witnessed.
Both Malory's Morte Darthur and the French Mort
Artu recognize the force which establishing Lancelot's treason
by the method of capture in the act would have. Having heard
Agravain's and Mordred's accusation against Lancelot, Arthur in the
Mort Artu orders them to
``fetes tant que vous les preigniez prouvez ... mes fetes
ce que ge vos di, qu'il soient pris ensemble ... or m'enseingniez
comment on le porra seurprendre en ceste afere que vos m'avez
descouvert.''Note 19
``Make it so that you take them in the act.... But do
this as I tell you, they are to be taken together.... Now
explain to me how, without fail, he (Lancelot) will be taken in
this deed that you have made known to me.''
Likewise, Malory's Arthur wants the proof of capture in the
act, telling Agravain (1163) that if
``hit be sothe as ye say, I wolde that he were takyn with
the dede.''
Since the deed must be witnessed, Agravain in both works takes with him to the Queen's chamber a company of knights who will be able to say that they have witnessed the deed. But, in each version, because of the noise the knights make, Lancelot and Guinevere are alerted to their danger, and none of the would--be capturers witnesses the deed.Note 20
Malory's text takes this problem of evidence a step further by
withholding even from the reader any proof of Lancelot and
Guinevere's guilt or innocence (1165):
For, as the Freynshhe booke seyth, the quene and sir
Launcelot were togydirs. And whether they were abed other at other
maner of disportis, me lyste nat thereof make no mencion, for love
that tyme was nat as love ys nowadayes.
Although Malory pretends that such ambiguity exists in the ``Freynshhe book,'' it does not. The Morte Artu tells us that Lancelot ``se deschaua et despoilla et se coucha avec la reine,''Note 21 ``took off his shoes, undressed, and went to bed with the Queen.''
Malory's strategy of ambiguity, coupled with Agravain's failure to take the lovers in the deed, contrasts strikingly with his rendering of an earlier, successful capture in the act, the capture of Tristram by Isode's cousin Andret (430-32). In fact, the attempt to capture Lancelot in the act is a point-by-point inversion of the Tristram episode. Where Malory makes the adultery of Tristram and Isode explicit both to the capturers and the reader, he withholds such evidence from Agravain, his companions, and the reader in the latter attempt. Tristram is taken naked in the Queen's bed, while there is not even a hint that Lancelot takes his clothes off in Guinevere's chamber, a detail explicit in the Mort Artu. And where the capture of Tristram proceeds cautiously and quietly, a fanfare of noise accompanies the attempt to take Lancelot in the deed, enhancing Lancelot's opportunity to escape. The contrast between these two scenes underscores an absence of evidence in Guinevere and Lancelot's case--in Malory, the episode is never more than a case of suspected wrongdoing. Neither Agravain nor the reader succeed in legal ``takynge in the dede.''
Although the attempt to capture in the act fails in the case
of Lancelot and Guinevere, Malory's law provides for one other form
of proof which could also sanction summary judgment: the menour.
The OEDNote 22 speculates that
mainour, in its original sense, probably meant ``the act or fact of
(a crime)'' and defines ``with (later in) the mainour'' as ``in
the act of doing something unlawful; `in flagrante delicto'''--for
example, as Andret takes the naked Tristram in bed with Isode.
However, this definition is the second entry under mainour. The
first entry defines mainour as
›t|he stolen thing which is found in a thief's possession
when he is arrested: chiefly in the phrase taken, found with the
mainour.
In English law, this definition seems to be earlier than that given in the OED's second entry. Capture with the mainour, a translation of the French capta cum manuopera, derives from an Old English concept, aet haebbendre handa gefangen, the hand-having thief who is caught with the stolen goods in his possession. By extension, mainour applied to other forms of circumstantial evidence, for example, a person's holding a bloody knife.Note 23
Mainour, then, means two things: the physical evidence of crime and the act of crime itself. Capture with mainour could in fact function as a construction of capture in the act; as such, mainour could have the same probative weight of capture in the deed, that is, it could warrant summary judicial process and execution. The fact that witnessing the physical evidence of crime was as incriminating as witnessing the crime in process seems to have originated in the difficulty of catching people in acts of wrongdoing, since most malefactors would take precautions to ensure against such an event. The consequent interpretive supplement of mainour extended the event of capture in the act beyond the actual occurrence of the crime. Of course, although capture with the mainour is thus equated with capture in the act,Note 24 conflated into a single event, they represent two distinct acts which can only occur at separate moments in time. Capture in the deed requires that the act itself be witnessed--be seen and heard; while this does require the witness's interpretation, capture with the mainour is more clearly an interpretive act, requiring that objects be read as or be substituted for an act of crime.Note 25
In the context of Malory's ``either ... or'' construction--``othir the menour other the takynge wyth the dede shulde be causer of ... hasty jougement''--mainour is not precisely the same thing as capture in the act. Still, the two terms are synonymous in the sense that either one could justify summary judgment.Note 26 Malory's having mainour precede capture in the act in his statement of law perhaps suggests a paramount role for it in establishing a criminal deed. Instances of such a substitution of mainour for ``takyn wyth the dede'' can be found in the Morte Darthur long before Malory offers his statement of law. I will consider two examples.
Tristram, wounded in battle, is not deterred from entering the
bed of Sir Segwarydes's wife (394):
So they souped lyghtly and wente to bedde with grete joy and
pleasaunce. And so in hys ragynge he toke no kepe of his greve
wounde ... and Sir Trystrames bledde bothe overshete and the
neyther-sheete, and the pylowes and the hede-shete.
Warned of the husband's approach, Tristram escapes. But Segwarydes sees the bloodstained sheets, the signs of adultery, and threatens to kill his wife unless she gives him the name of her lover. She complies, and Segwarydes pursues Tristram and attempts to kill him.
Malory's ``Knight of the Cart'' presents a very similar
situation. While Guinevere is at Melegaunt's castle, Lancelot
climbs into her chamber through a window and in doing so injures
his hand. Then Lancelot (1131-32)
went to bedde with the quene and toke no force of hys hurte honde, but toke hys pleasuance.... And whan he saw hys tyme that he myght tary no lenger, he toke hys leve....
And therewithall ›Melegaunt| opened the curtayn for to beholde
her. And than was he ware where she lay, and all the hede-sheete,
pylow, and overshyte was all bebled of the blood of sir Launcelot
and of his hurt honde.
Like Segwarydes, Melegaunt takes the bloodstained sheets as the sign of adultery and accuses Guinevere of treason. In these two accounts, Malory devises scenes in which the crime of adultery is established by the signs of crime, by mainour, rather than by capture in the act.
If we place these two passages alongside Andret's capture of Tristram in bed with Isode and Agravain's attempt to capture Lancelot and Guinevere in the deed, we see Malory manipulating the relation between a deed and its signs. He supplies both direct and indirect evidence of adultery in the cases that precede Agravain's scheme. But in the representation of the trap to take the Queen and Lancelot together, Malory produces no tell-tale signs--no naked lovers, no bloodstained sheets--to establish their treason. Yet Guinevere is sentenced to die by a law that calls for the proof of either capture in the act or mainour.
In light of the difficulties of actually taking someone in the
act of crime, mainour offered an important means to construct
capture in the act and thus to establish a crime; but, with its
dependence on interpretation, the form of mainour was susceptible
to change, depending on the circumstances of a case. In fifteenth-
-
century cases of treason, the concept of mainour can be seen at
times to take on the pliable form of words spoken against the king.
This transformation helps us to understand Malory's peculiar
representation of a legal process which is carried out despite a
lack of proof that an act of treason has taken place.
***
As mentioned earlier, the 1352 statute on treason
stipulated that it was treason
quant home fait compasser ou ymaginer le mort nostre
Seigneur le Roi.
when one compasses or imagines the death of our lord the
King.
Imagining the death of the king, of course, could not be
established by capture in the deed: a thought of treason could not
be seen or heard nor did it leave a trail of evidence as long as it
remained in the imagination. In 1441, Sir Richard Neuton, C.J.C.P,
was asked if a man could be put to death for a thing which he had
never done, and he replied,
Ouy, que on sera mort, trait et pend›u| et disclos pur chos
qu'il ne jamais, en fait, ny consentat ny aidat. Come si on ou sa
femme imagine le mort le Roy et ne ad fait plus, pur ce imaginacion
il sera mort come devant.Note 27
Yes, because a person will die, be drawn and hanged and
known for a thing which he never in fact agreed to or aided in.
This is the same as when a man or his wife imagine the death of the
King and do nothing more; by this act of imagination he will die as
already said.
Proving an act of imaginative treason was problematic to say the least, but earlier in the century Henry IV and his jurists discovered one way to establish this type of treason: words spoken against the king were construed as evidence of the thought of treason. Thus words came to function as mainour, as a sign of treason.
Although Henry IV was the first to deploy the 1352 statute in
this way, subsequent fifteenth-century monarchs followed suit, as
Neuton's opinion indicates. Additionally, chronicles of the period
record this type of construction. The Brut or The
Chronicles of England reports that in 1444 a woman accosted the
king after Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, had been
convicted of treason. Speaking on behalf of the Duchess:
the woman ... spake to hym ›the king| boldly, and reviled
hym ungoodly and unwisely for Dame Alianore Cobham.... And with
these wordes the Kyng wexe wroth, and toke it to hert; and she was
arested and brought into prison by the lawe, and so broght ...
afore the Justices of the Kynges Benche. And there she was
repreved for hir ungoodly langage, and folehardynesse to speake so
to hir liege lorde, the Kyng.
For her words, the justices ruled that she be placed in a
cart and paraded through London ``with a paupire about hir hede of
hir proude and lewed langage,'' and, according to the chronicler,
she subsequently was pressed to death:
``Thus she ended in this world, for hir proude langage to
hir Kyng and souverayn lord.''Note
28
In a similar case of the same year, Thomas Kerver, a
gentleman of Reading,
untruely and ungoodly, and ayenst feith and lawe, depraued
the Kyng; wherefore he was take and brought before the Kynges
Consayle ›which| Juged hym to deth as a traytour.Note 29
In general, the deposition of a king generated the most conducive environment for treason by word. Anyone who said anything favorable about the deposed king flirted with treason. In fact, this type of remark sparked the first use, under the 1352 statute, of words to establish the act of imagining the king's death.Note 30
Malory's Guinevere and Lancelot do not in fact utter hostile words against King Arthur; they have left no such track of mainour to indict themselves. What indicts them is something more subtle: the fact of being accused. Judgment rests neither on a proven, witnessed deed of treason, nor on words proceding ``ex suo proprio capite'' (from his/her own head),Note 31 as in the fifteenth-century cases of treason by word. The mainour of this imaginative form of treason is the accusation itself-words proceding from the accuser's head, filled with thoughts of treason, treason committed by the accused.Note 32 By choosing not to follow his sources and render in explicit terms Guinevere and Lancelot's treason, Malory creates the conditions for an imagined act of treason which, in this case, takes the form of Agravain's accusation against Lancelot, an accusation that relies on words, specifically the noise of ill-fame, rather than on physical evidence.
In the Morte Darthur (1165-67) as soon as Lancelot and the Queen are together
there cam sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred wyth twelve knyghtes ...
and they seyde with grete cryyng and scaryng voyce,
``Thou traytoure, sir Launcelot, now ar thou takyn!''
And thus they cryed with a lowde voyce, that all the courte myght
here it.... But ever sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred
cryed....
``Traytour knyght! Come forth oute of the quenys chamber!''
The redundant ``cryyng'' of Agravain and his companions underscores and punctuates a fundamental element in Malory's rendition of the attempted capture: the noise that, almost by itself alone, constitutes his representation of the attempt to take Lancelot in the deed. It is this noise of accusation that alerts Lancelot and Guinevere to their danger: ```Alas!' seyde quene Gwenyver, `now are we myscheved bothe!''' (1165). The corresponding passage in the French Mort Artu renders a different sort of fracas. The noise, heard by Lancelot and Guinevere, is that of the knights who try to break down the locked door and who, in fact, never address Lancelot at all.Note 33
Malory's representation, in contrast with the Mort Artu, ascribes to Agravain and company an intent to publicize both the crime of treason and the name of the traitor. To create such a scene, Malory turns away from his literary sources to draw upon and integrate into his text a particular custom for apprehending malefactors: raising the hue and cry, a custom common to both England and France and one that could also set in motion summary justice. To be raised when a person came upon a scene of crime, the hue and cry or clamor brought others to witness either the deed itself or its signs. If the perpetrators were not captured in the act, they were pursued by hue and cry, and if caught they were liable to summary justice.Note 34 The hue and cry served to bridge the temporal difference between capture in the act and mainour by making present, for a specified time, the criminal act beyond its actual occurrence.Note 35 Thus pursuit by hue and cry provided a way to equate capture in the mainour with capture in the act -- the signs of crime were no longer signs but the event of crime itself.
Even though the hue and cry represents an old custom in
French as well as English law, it is not raised by Agravain and his
fellow knights in the Mort Artu. One explanation for this
absence is the fact that no scene of crime is witnessed.Note 36 The French text tells us that
when the knights find the door to the Queen's chamber locked,
si n'i ot celui qui n'en fust touz esbahiz; lors sorent il
bien qu'il avoient failli a ce qu'il vouloient fere.Note 37
they were confused because of this and they knew well that
they had failed to do what they wished to do.
This depiction adheres to custom: that hue and cry be raised after evidence of wrongdoing has been seen. The only evidence against Guinevere and Lancelot is his presence in her chamber, as is the case in the Morte Darthur. But Agravain and his fellow knights in Malory's text do not admit defeat when faced with a locked door.
Although Malory's Agravain claims to Arthur that he and others know of Lancelot's treason, he mitigates his assertion by conceding that proof is yet to be obtained. But in seeking that proof, these knights, rather than sneaking noiselessly down a hallway, approach the chamber with ``grete and scaryng voyce,'' a circumstance that does not favor capture in the deed. By having the men raise the noise before the crime is detected, Malory complicates his application of hue and cry, and such a strategy, I propose, derives from the overlap of hue and cry with concepts such as notoriety and infamy.Note 38
Raising a hue and cry or clamor at the scene of crime and sustaining it during pursuit of a suspect publicized the crime. As an object of hue and cry, a suspect, caught with the signs of crime in his possession, was regarded as a common or notorious malefactor and subject to summary judgment. The noise or clamor of ill-fame could also be regarded as evidence of wrongdoing and a means to abridge judicial process. In 1341, for example, a commission of inquiry reported that the king had learned of the misconduct of Chief Justice Willoughby ``by the common fame and clamour of our people.'' At the opening of his trial, Willoughby complained that the king had not been informed either ``by indictment, or by the suit of a party.'' He was told that the king was ``informed by the clamour of the people.''Note 39 Thus we can see the interrelation of a number of different strategies which were devised to remedy injuries in a speedy manner: capture in the act, mainour, hue and cry, and notoriety offered proof that a crime had been committed and could instigate a summary judicial process. Agravain's hue and cry against Lancelot both operates as a clamor and reports Lancelot's common fame as a traitor.
Since Malory claims not to know whether Lancelot and
Guinevere are in bed or at ``othir maner of disportis'' and the
door to the Queen's chamber is locked, Agravain's raising a hue and
cry against Lancelot's name does not proceed from an overt act of
treason nor from any physical evidence beyond Lancelot's presence
in the Queen's room. Malory reinforces this inversion of hue and
cry, raising the clamor without a corresponding scene of crime, by
having Arthur presuppose that noise is a first step in the attempt
to catch Lancelot in the act (1163):
``but if he be takyn with the dede he woll fyght with hym
that bryngith up the noyse.''
It seems to be taken for granted, then, that the clamor of ill-repute will precede the anticipated event of capture in the act.
In fact, Agravain has already tentatively taken such a step
even before he outlines his scheme to take Lancelot in the deed.
Speaking to all his brothers (1161), Agravain
seyde thus opynly and nat in no counceyle, that manye
knyghtis myght here: ``I mervale that we all be nat ashamed bothe
to se and to know how sir Launcelot lyeth dayly and nyghtly by the
quene. And all we know well that hit ys so.''
Thus even at this early stage, Agravain integrates common knowledge or common report into his accusation. In fact, common knowledge or report is the basis of his charge. Agravain stirs up so much contention between himself and those who will not speak ill of Lancelot that Arthur, coming into the room, ``asked them what noyse they made'' (1163). And it is at this point that Agravain tells Arthur that Lancelot is a traitor.
Throughout the Morte Darthur, Malory's use of the term ``noyse'' is slippery to say the least. It can be used for various purposes, such as to spread news or a rumor, to make a complaint or accusation, or to serve as proof of wrongdoing. Early in the text, for example, when Lancelot refuses the advances of a woman, she tells him that ``hit is noysed that ›he| love›s| quene Gwenyvere.'' Lancelot replies that he cannot stop people from speaking of him however ``hit pleasyth them'' (270). Rumor or noise can also be turned to personal advantage and enters into Andret's scheme to get Tristram's lands. Although Tristram is alive, Andret ``made a lady that was hys paramour to sey and to noyse hit'' that she was with Tristram when he died and ``buryed hym by a well.'' Tristram's last wish, she claims, was that his lands be given to Andret (499). In another context, when Tristram rides into Joyous Garde, he hears ``in that towne grete noyse and cry'' over the death of a knight who, the people report, was wrongfully slain (690). Tristram, not having witnessed the deed, nevertheless takes up the people's cause and engages the alleged offender in battle.
Malory also uses ``noyse'' as a term for fame or reputation.
At one point he tells us (785) that, after Tristram had won many
battles,
all the noyse and brewte fell to sir Trystram, and the name
ceased of sir Launcelot. And therefore sir Launcelottis bretherne
and hys knyysmen wolde have slayne sir Trystram bycause of hys
fame.
Fame or reputation, what is reported about a person, also
enters into legal judgments. To settle a land dispute between two
brothers, Arthur takes into consideration their reputations.
Because one is ``called an orgulus knyght and full of vylony'' and
the other is ``named a good knyght and full of prouesse,'' Arthur
awards the land to the ``good knyght'' (147). The use of noise or
fame as a form of legal evidence appears with more frequency after
Agravain has raised a hue and cry of ill-fame against Lancelot;
Malory keeps the accusation of treason alive, after Agravain's
death, by having others proclaim the charge again and again. At
Joyous Garde, for example, after Lancelot has rescued the Queen,
Arthur is the first to call Lancelot a traitor; then Gawain (1190)
made many men to blow uppon sir Launcelot, and so all at
onys they called hym ``false recrayed knyght.''
Begun by Agravain, the noise of ill-fame continues to plague Lancelot, forcing him into a defensive position throughout the rest of the book.Note 40
Thus noise in Malory's text comes to stand for common
knowledge, rumor, complaint, fame, or a form of legal evidence.
These shifting aspects parallel a legal definition of rumor and
noise given by Chief Justice John Fortescue during the impeachment
proceedings against the Duke of Suffolk in 1450. When the Commons
asked the King's Bench for guidance on the matter of noise and
infamy, Fortescue
declared for all his Felawes and seid that in thiese
generall termes, Rumoir, and noyse of sclaundre and Infamie may
many thinges be understand; that is to for to sey, mesprisions or
trespasses ... or elles Felonie or Tresons.Note 41
The point to note here is that the veracity of rumor and noise of ill-fame is not touched upon. What matters is that the noise exists and exists as a form of evidence for various acts of wrongdoing. Agravain has made sure that the noise against Lancelot's name exists and that it signifies treason.
Although begun by Agravain, noise emerges in Malory's text as
a thing in itself, detached from any specific, identifiable voice,
and capable of reproducing itself, like the personified ``tydyng''
Chaucer describes in the House of Fame:
Thus north and south
Wente every tydyng fro mouth to mouth,
And that encresing ever moo,
As fyr ys wont to quyke and goo
From a sparke spronge amys,
Til al a citee brent up ys.Note 42
Chaucer's ``tydyng,'' the report, grows ever greater until
it finds a point of exit from the house of fame and flies forth for
the occasion. Malory renders a similar scene through Agravain's
hue and cry against Lancelot. With ``grete and scaryng voyce,''
Agravain and his cohorts shout that Lancelot is a ``traytoure'' so
that ``all the courte myght hyre hit'' (1165). Their strategy
provokes Lancelot himself to contribute to the general noise, until
the search for evidence evolves into a cacophonous shouting match
between Lancelot and the knights on the other side of the door
(1166-67):
``Traytour knyght, com oute of the quenys chambir ... thou
shalt nat ascape.''
``A, Jesu mercy!'' seyd sir Launcelot, ``thys shamefull cry and
noyse I may nat suffir.... Now, fayre lordys ... leve youre
noyse and youre russhynge....''
``Traytour knyght! Come forthe oute of the the quenys chambir!''
Malory's representation of the noise of ill-repute and Fortescue's opinion on slander assign a prominent role to reputation in fifteenth-century legal process. Fortescue's opinion was given during the impeachment proceedings against Suffolk, a favorite of Henry VI, and the transformation that noise undergoes in his case is well worth noting. In 1450, Suffolk addressed Parliament in an effort to clear his name from the ``rumour and noyse of sclaundre and Infamie'' and to learn who his accusers were so that he could answer them directly. In addition, Suffolk sought permission to petition the king on his own behalf. The Rolls of Parliament record that he
besought the Kynges Highness ... to admitte to his supplication
and desire, that he myght be atte his declaration of the grete
infamie and defamation that is seid uppon hym, by many of the
people of this land, that he shuld be other than a true man to the
King and his Reaume; if any man wold sey hit in generall or in
speciall, howe, wherof and wherin, that he myght make his answere,
in declaryng of hym self as he is.
Granted his petition, the Duke wrote to the King:
I suppose welle that it commen to youre eeres, to my grete
hevyness and sorowe, God knoweth, the odious and horrible language
that renneth through your lande, almost in every Commons mouth,
sowning to my highest charge and moost hevyest disclaundre ...
which noise and language is to me the heaviest charge and birthen,
that I coude in any wise receyve or bere.Note 43
The Duke of Suffolk identifies the noise of slander as an
unbearable offense, as does Lancelot in his exchange with Agravain
(1166):
``A, Jesu mercy!'' seyde sir Launcelot, ``thys shamefull cry
and noyse I may nat suffir, for better were death at onys than thus
to endure thys payne.''
After Fortescue had given his opinion on noise, the
King's Bench advised the Commons that since ``there was no speciall
mater of sclaundre and Infamie putte upon hym,'' Suffolk should not
be imprisoned. Within a very short time, however, the general
noise against Suffolk modulated to particularity:
from every partie of Englond there is come among hem ›the
Commons| a greate rumour and fame, howe that this Roialme of
England be sold to the Kynges Adversarie of Fraunce.Note 44
Like Chaucer's tiding, the noise against Suffolk is shaped for the occasion. This specific charge or rumor is accompanied by many other detailed allegations. Supple enough to undergo the transformation from general to specific, ``rumour and fame'' in both forms originated in a general clamor disassociated from any one identifiable voice, and in this instance, the noise of ill- fame led to Suffolk's exile.
While the example of Suffolk serves to illustrate what could be done to a favorite of the king who had incurred the wrath of the Commons and certain magnates (most notably the Yorkists), the Crown had its own particular method of aligning notoriety and ill-fame with treason: attainting traitors by act of Parliament.Note 45 Attainder had long been a punishment for treason, but the procedure had tended to be an informal one. The proscription of the Yorkists in 1459, however, generated a formula for future acts. Enacted by Parliament, but under the close supervision of the king, attainder in the latter half of the fifteenth century was not the consequence of a trial in which an accused had been found guilty of treason. In point of fact, fifteenth-century attainder operated only in the absence of judicial processNote 46 and can be seen as a legislative form of summary judgment, synthesizing accusation, conviction, and punishment into one parliamentary act.
Used primarily to legalize the forfeiture of a traitor's land to the king, attainders secured such a penalty by reputing or advertising the guilt of people who had not had the opportunity to speak in their own defense. By including a provision that declared the blood of traitors to be corrupt, attainder built upon and expanded the notion of infamy. By corruption of blood, the heirs of a traitor were also attainted and dishonored and consequently were unable to inherit their patrimonial legacy.Note 47 Thus a person's dishonor could extend well into the future, beyond his lifetime. In effect, the traitor's memory was damned, unless the Crown saw fit to reverse the attainder.
To take a powerful example, the Duke of York was not present
at the Parliament that declared that
his fals and traiterous ymaginations ›and| conspiracies
›were| openly knowen to the ›King's| liege peopleNote 48
--a declaration that made the treason and its perpetrator a
matter of notoriety and common report. The attainder also
stipulated that York forfeit his lands, that his heirs be
disinherited, and that he
be reputed, taken, declared, adjugged, demed and atteynted
of high Treson.Note 49
Such stipulations disclose the synthesis of accusation, conviction,
and punishment that attainder achieved. The attainder of York and
his supporters was then publicized:
by the kynges commissione in euery cyte, burghe, and toune
›they were| cryed opynly and proclamed as for rebelles and
traytoures.Note 50
Akin to hue and cry, the publication of attainder, however,
was not issued as a way to apprehend suspects so that judicial
process, summary or not, could begin. This form of clamor bypassed
judicial process altogether by simply declaring the treason of
those named. The Yorkists, for their part, blamed their
estrangement from the king on the noise that they claimed was
stirred up against them by their enemies at court. In a letter to
the king, they decry the way they have been
proclamed and defamed in ... name unrythefully,
unlawfully.Note 51
In light of the supple, legal force of noise, rumor, and
slander in the fifteenth century, exemplified by the attainder of
York and the impeachment of Suffolk, Lancelot's intense desire to
quell the noise Agravain makes against his name is understandable.
At one point during his exchange with the knights, Lancelot
attempts to silence them by proposing a bargain (1168):
``Sires, leve youre noyse.... And therefore, and ye do
be my counceyle, go ye all from thys chambir dore and make you no
suche cryyng and such maner of sclaundir as ye do. For I promyse
you be my knyghthode, and ye woll departe and make no more noyse,
I shall as to-morne appyere afore you all and before the kynge,
and
than lat hit be sene whych of you all, other ellis ye all, that
woll depreve me of treson.''
Unfortunately for Lancelot, his accusers are not to be
deterred. They continue in the same vein (1168):
``Fye uppon the, traytour,'' seyde sir Aggravayne and sir
Mordred, ``for we woll have the magre' thyne hede and sle the, and
we lyste!''
Fearless facing any physical battle, Lancelot does show an
anxiety over this type of publicity. He is quite willing to hazard
physical violence rather than endure a verbal assault on his
reputation. Allowed to continue, the noise of slander can become
an invisible and invincible accuser who cannot be faced on a
battlefield or in a court of law.Note
52 As Guinevere succinctly states, ``the lesse noyse the
more ys my worshyp'' (1128). Likewise, given the ramifications of
an act of attainder which could dishonor one's reputation for
generations to come, Lancelot's concern over the consequences of
being banished for treason makes sense (1202-3):
for ever I feare aftir my dayes that men shall croncyle
uppon me that I was fleamed oute of thys londe.
The image of a clamoring Agravain and his fellow knights
armed to the teeth, ready either to arrest Lancelot or kill him,
suitably illustrates the actual act of violence the text assigns
them: raising the hue and cry of ill-fame against Lancelot. He is
not taken in the deed, and other than his presence in the Queen's
chamber no sign of an actual deed is seen by his would-be
capturers. But against the hue and cry, the noise of slander,
Lancelot is rendered uncharacteristically vulnerable. Without
offering evidence that would prove either the innocence or guilt of
Lancelot, Malory consigns Agravain's accusation, the clamor of ill-
-
fame, to the imaginative realm. Even so, that accusation which
produces and publishes Lancelot's treason brings about his
banishment.
***
In his representation of Lancelot and Guinevere's
treason, Malory places before us the evidence of noise, the truth
or falsity of which cannot be determined. And Guinevere is
sentenced to death. But Malory does not allow such a judgment to
go unchallenged. As Fortescue's statement on slander allows that
rumor and noise can mean many things, Gawain's speech to Arthur on
behalf of Guinevere argues that the evidence against the Queen can
mean many things. One may take Lancelot's presence in Guinevere's
chamber as mainour, as evidence of treason, but, as Gawain points
out to Arthur (1174-75), such proof is less than conclusive:
``My lorde Arthure, I wolde counceyle you nat to be over
hasty, but that ye wolde put hit in respite, thys jougement of my
lady the quene, for many causis. One ys thys, thoughe hyt were so
that sir Launcelot were founde in the quenys chambir, yet hit myght
be so that he cam thydir for none evyll. For ye know, my lorde
... that my lady the quene hath oftyntymes ben gretely beholdyn
unto sir Launcelot, more than to ony othir knyght; for oftyntymes
he hath saved her lyff.... And peradventure she sente for hym
for goodnes and for none evyll, to rewarde hym for his good
dedys.... And peradventure my lady the quene sente for hym to
that entent, that sir Launcelot sholde a com prevaly to her, wenyng
that hyt had be beste in eschewyng and dredyng of slaundir; for
oftyntymys we do many thynges that we wene for the beste be, and
yet peradventure hit turnyth to the warste.''
From this passage we can see that Malory through Gawain offers alternate interpretations of Lancelot's presence in the Queen's chamber. Punctuated by the word peradventure, Gawain's speech announces its speculative, interpretive basis of the ``many causis'' it cites. Thus in Gawain's counsel to Arthur, Malory challenges what appears to be an impartial application of law in the Queen's case by foregrounding the very thing that the applied law of treason obscures or denies: the possibility of alternate readings, alternate interpretations of the evidence.
Moreover, Gawain's ``many causis'' are incorporated into a
narrative that argues for a certain point of view. Arthur is
cautioned ``nat to be over hasty,'' not to ignore either Lancelot's
honorable or human experience, the unforeseen, untoward
consequences that ``oftyntyms'' beset the best of intentions. The
argumentative form of Gawain's speech accentuates the lack of
argumentation in the application of law in the Queen's case. For
rather than reasoning (as the Mort Artu does) that Guinevere
is guilty because she has slept with someone other than her lord,
the Morte Darthur suppresses altogether any connection
between the Queen's judgment and the act of adultery:
Malory's Queen is sentenced (1174) to die
bycause sir Mordred was ascaped sore wounded, and the dethe
of thirtene knyghtes of the Rounde Table.
Malory's application of law does not explain how Mordred's wounds or the dead knights signify treason by way of adultery. It offers no reasons, no ``many causis,'' to construe this evidence in such a way. If Agravain's original charge of treason, adultery, is no longer in effect, what act of treason sends Guinevere to the stake?
It is not at all certain that Mordred's wounds and the death of Arthur's knights can in fact substantiate an act of treason, since at this point Malory turns away from legal terminology to offer a non-legal description of preceding events; for ``wounds'' and ``death'' do not denote crimes. Although legal language was certainly not standardized in the fifteenth century, we can distinguish between terms that construe the legal significance of events, those that do not, and those that are used in both legal and common parlance.Note 53 For example, Malory through Agravain and Arthur does not hesitate to transform the non-legal description of Lancelot's ``ly›ing| daly and nyghtly by the quene'' (1161), recasting it as legal fact: Lancelot is ``traytoure to ›the king's| person'' (1163). With his facility for deploying legal terms, Malory could have easily represented Mordred's wounds and the deaths of Arthur's knights as signs of a criminal deed by inserting a phrase such as ``by forecast of treson,'' or changing ``dethe'' to ``murdir.''Note 54 Had he done so, we could see some basis for construing the events as proof of treason. But ``wounds'' and ``death'' are not reinterpreted in legal terms.
In light of Malory's use of legal terminology and the questions he raises, through Gawain's commentary, about the facts of Lancelot and Guinevere's case, the switch from legal to non- legal discourse is an inconsistency but one that has important ramifications, complicating an apparently straightforward application of law. The facts of the case are represented as self- - evident, as if no explanation, no interpretation, were needed. But this ``just-the-facts'' presentation obscures the interpretive activity that equates wounds and death with the Queen's adultery, even as the gap between treason and proof of the deed discloses the absence of sufficient evidence to establish the Queen's guilt. She may just as well have been accused and sentenced to death for imagining treason.
The discrepancy between Malory's stated law and his
representation of the facts of the Queen's case places the burden
of interpretation on the King. It is he who equates the ``previs''
of Mordred's wounds and the death of thirteen knights with an act
of adultery committed by the Queen. Although Arthur has instructed
Agravain to obtain the proof of treason by taking the two lovers in
the deed, he now ignores that stipulation. The King's capacity to
interpret inconclusive evidence as unequivocal proof of the Queen's
guilt overrides any constraint the law places upon him--just as the
1352 statute's equation of imagining the king's death to an act of
treason transgresses its restricted list of treasonous acts. Shown
by Gawain that a presumption of the innocence of the Queen and
Lancelot is as compelling as assuming their guilt, the King
responds (1175):
``I will nat that way worke ... for she shall have the
law. And if I may gete sir Launcelot, wyte you well he shall have
as shamefull a dethe.''
Thus, with an absolute power like God's, Arthur as king commands the freedom and authority to alter the correspondence between law and the facts of a case or the correspondence between words and things: Mordred's wounds and the death of thirteen knights signify an act of adultery. At this point in Malory's text, the law is the King's creation.Note 55
The incongruity of Malory's deployment of legal and non-legal terminology in Guinevere's case also sheds light on some of the interpretive moves made by fifteenth-century justices in cases of imagining the king's death. Judgments that cite words as the signs of this type of treason also include projections of what could have happened as the result of such words. For example, in Thomas Kerver's case, the justices reasoned that his words could have incited rebellion and other crimes and could have led the king's people to withdraw their love from him.Note 56 Also, the justices sometimes added that by taking such unkind words to heart, the king could have become ill and died of grief.Note 57 The chronicler of The Brut may have been aware of this interpretation since he reports that ``the king wexe wroth, and toke it to hert'' when he heard the words of the Duchess of Gloucester's defender.Note 58
Although it was possible to convict a person for an
imaginative act of treason on the basis of words, such
interpretations offer an internal resistance to this line of
reasoning. The case of the woman who spoke on behalf of the
Duchess of Gloucester patently illustrates this resistance.
Writing the woman's words on a piece of paper and hanging them on
her transforms them into a visible, tangible object: words become
physical evidence. Similarly, projecting rebellion or the king's
sickness and death as a possible effect of words spoken against the
king once again brings in, through the back door, overt acts and
physical evidence. Such a compensatory strategy highlights the
insufficiency of existing evidence, that is, words, by disclosing
a need for corroborating physical evidence which an overt physical
act of treason would have rendered. Thus at some level the
jurists' interpretations of imagining the king's death register the
inadequacy of words alone to serve as manifest evidence. Moreover,
such decisions acknowledge the interpretive acrobatics required to
establish an act of imaginary treason. A remark made by Roger
Bolingbroke, who was sentenced to die for predicting the death of
Henry VI, succinctly captures the problem of evidence in such cases
of treason. A practitioner of magic, Bolingbroke
confessid that he was nevir gilty of eny treson ayens the
kyngis persone; but he presumed to fer in his konnyng.Note 59
Likewise, the gap between legal and non-legal discourse in
Malory's application of law exposes and challenges the implicit
contradictions in judgments that convicted people for imagining the
death of the king.
***
Perhaps it is worth saying, here, that I do not see in Malory's text a recommendation for doing away with law and legal process. What his text ponders is the obfuscation of the the constitutive role of interpretive activity not only in statements of law, such as his own, but also in the application of law to the facts of a case. Since the law holds such power over human beings, the Morte Darthur shows a need for legal process to acknowledge the multiple interpretations that evidence or the facts of a case generate and to acknowledge as well the reasons for choosing one interpretation over another. In Gawain's words to Arthur, Malory advises a king or judge ``nat to be over hasty'' in transforming ambiguous evidence or even a lack of evidence into unequivocal proof of guilt that, in turn, sanctions judgments of imprisonment, banishment, or death. Malory, in effect, calls into question the basis of interpretive activity, and thus challenges those of us who take up the Morte Darthur ``nat to be over hasty'' in deciding not only about the innocence or guilt of Lancelot and Guinevere but also about what really matters in this Arthurian romance and what can be dismissed as insignificant inconsistencies.
What I have set out to show in this essay is that the obvious inconsistency of sentencing Guinevere to death when no proof of an act of treason is forthcoming in Malory's text holds significant implications for both the Morte Darthur and the world Malory inhabited. Moreover, that inconsistency shelters others: Agravain's raising a hue and cry before a criminal deed or evidence of the deed has been witnessed; the equation of capture in the act with mainour, a move that makes it possible to take someone in the deed even though the deed has been completed; and the switch from legal to non-legal discourse in the application of Malory's law on treason.
Malory's textual discontinuities in fact contest a legal
practice that convicted and punished persons on the basis of
questionable evidence. By resorting to ambiguity, by claiming not
to know what the ``Freynshhe booke'' means when it says the ``quene
and sir Launcelot were togydirs,'' Malory creates a voice for
himself that is neutral and objective, a voice that matches or
mimics the neutrality and objectivity of his statement of law; he
reports only the facts given in his French source. But he
misrepresents those facts, and, from another angle, his very
refusal to say what the ``Freynshhe booke'' means highlights the
necessity and possibilities of interpretation. Malory devises two
alternate and conflicting opinions regarding the guilt of Lancelot
and Guinevere: that of Agravain and Arthur and that of Gawain. We
do not know which is true. We have to say, as Arthur does when he
tells Gawain of Gareth's death, that we ``wote nat how hit was
... but as hit ys sayde ...'' (1185). By refusing to supply the
reader with direct or indirect evidence, Malory postpones judgment
of guilt or innocence. Such a tactic stands in direct opposition
to the rush to judgment carried out by the legal process he creates
in his text and to the historical practice of summary or hasty
judgment instigated and sanctioned not on the basis of physical
evidence but on the evidence of words or reports of common fame.
These inconsistencies highlight the Morte Darthur's own
interpretive activity as it refashions Arthurian legend. The case
of Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory both actualizes and challenges
the role of evidence and interpretation in establishing acts of
treason and proving criminal guilt in the fifteenth century.
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