And then Sir Launcelot armed him at all points, and mounted upon his horse, and gat a great spear in his hand, and rode out at the gate. And both the hosts were assembled, of them without and of them within, and stood in array full manly. And both parties were charged to hold them still, to see and behold the battle of these two noble knights. And then they laid their spears in their rests, and they came together as thunder, and Sir Gawaine brake his spear upon Sir Launcelot in a hundred pieces unto his hand; and Sir Launcelot smote him with a greater might, that Sir Gawaine’s horse’s feet raised, and so the horse and he fell to the earth.
(Chapter XXII, Book XX, Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, 1485)
Here, as so often in this late-medieval romance, two lines of armoured horse confront one another; and here too, as so often, matters are suspended to permit an iconic combat of champions.
Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471), who composed (or compiled) this most famous account of the Arthurian legends, was born in the year of Agincourt and died in the year of Barnet. His ‘Knights of the Round Table’ are larger-than-life caricatures based on the English feudal aristocracy of the Wars of the Roses. They are the ‘computer game’ action heroes of their time.
Pestilence and population shifts