Here I examine a question inspired by a conversation with Professor Field: to what extent, if any, does the presentation of combat in the Morte reflect fifteenth-century historical practice?

As we all know, the identification of the Sir Thomas Malory who wrote Le Morte Darthur with Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire, was for a time disputed. Professor Field's own work has been instrumental in establishing that the evidence as we have it points firmly to the authorship of Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, knight, thief, prison-breaker and – allegedly – rapist and attempted murderer. This Sir Thomas Malory was born between 1414 and 1418 and died in March 1471. When he died, Malory was buried in Greyfriars Church, Newgate. His tombstone, made of marble, attests to his being valens miles, a phrase implying some ‘distinction in arms’. Such an expensive tombstone and such an approbative epitaph seriously undermine the recent claim that Malory died (in likely penury) in Newgate gaol and was buried in Greyfriars as a gentleman prisoner. Professor Field has also argued that Malory fought at the Battle of Towton, and that his presentation of looters on the battlefield after Arthur's last battle – looters who, unique to Malory's version, kill the wounded before robbing them – is a reflection of Towton and of Malory's experiences there. Malory also fought in the Yorkist siege of Bamburgh and the other northern Lancastrian castles in 1462, probably fought in France in the 1440s, and lived through theWars of the Roses and the last twenty-five years of the Hundred Years War.