flourished c. 1470 English writer whose identity remains uncertain but whose name is famous as that of the author of 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 “…showed first 75 words of 247 total…

…showed last 75 words of 247 total…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.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography** BritaNNICA