 Edward III's Round Table and Dartmouth College's Casque and Gauntlet: Two Returns of King Arthur Jonathan Good, University of Minnesota
In late January 1344 King Edward III of England, according to the chronicler Adam of Murimuth, after a tournament at Windsor,
Murimuth adds that others who were there swore to uphold the project, and reports that Edward ordered "a most noble house" to be built there by a certain date.[3] According to the anonymous Brut chronicler, this Round Table was "to be holde ther at Wyndessore in the Whytson wyke evermore yerely."[4] Legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table were immensely popular in the courts of the later Middle Ages.[5] This was especially true in England, where Arthur had supposedly once reigned. Edward III's grandfather Edward I went so far as to stage a translation of the remains of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury in 1278, and both Edward I and Edward III had staged tournaments with Arthurian themes.[6] It seems, however, that with the solemn declaration of the Round Table in 1344 Edward III had something entirely different in mind, not simply a reference to but an actual "refounding" of the Order of the Round Table established by King Arthur so long ago. In doing so, and on the very spot that the original round table was said to have existed, it appeared that Edward was attempting to give himself the maximum possible prestige as Arthur's "heir" and to shore up support among his peers for his claim, made in 1337, to the crown of France.[7] Edward's Round Table was one of the first attempts to create a monarchical order of chivalry, a peculiarly late-medieval institution inspired by the religious crusading orders. D'arcy Boulton defines them as "more or less formally constituted bodies whose principal class of members was restricted to laymen of noble birth and knightly profession."[8] These orders came to resemble religious confraternities -- each had its chapel, chaplains, patron saints, habit and insignia. Boulton posits that they were indicative of the increasing, centralizing power of monarchy and the concurrently waning power of nobility in the period: the sovereign would offer membership in an order as a reward for service to him, which frequently meant service to his growing state.[9] As mentioned, the Round Table was one of the first attempts to found a monarchical chivalric order, and it failed. Expenses were spared a few months later when funds were diverted to Edward's campaigns in France. Four years later Edward did found an order at Windsor, the Order of the Garter, which was conflated with the Round Table by the chronicler Jean Froissart. But the still-extant Garter properly had nothing to do with the Round Table apart from the location of its headquarters, and the purpose of its founding. The Garter was, indeed, more along the lines of what became the classic monarchical order, enjoying the patronage of St. George; a chapel, not a hall, as its meeting place; and a badge in the form of a Garter on which was written "Honi soit qui mal y pense" or "Shame be to him who thinks ill of it," that is, Edward's claim to the kingdom of France. If the Round Table was a false start the Garter certainly was not: membership in it was, and remains, one of the highest honors an English sovereign can bestow. Why Edward should have abandoned the Round Table project so completely, when he established a society that was so similar in purpose but different in form a mere four years later, remains a mystery. Edward III, like his grandfather, was quite keen on Arthurian themes and on chivalry in general, even going so far as to appear incognito as Sir Lionel at a tournament held in 1334.[10] Scholars point rightly to the financial difficulties suffered by Edward's court in 1344, before heading straight to the foundation of the Order of the Garter in 1348. I, however, would like to propose a reason for the shift in theme from "Arthurian" to "confraternal." There were many strains of Arthurian myth circulating in medieval Europe: one of the earliest in England was Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, composed c. 1138. Geoffrey, undoubtedly drawing on the traditions of his native Wales, devotes a substantial amount of his text to the heretofore obscure figure of Arthur. Geoffrey's Arthur stands proudly in a long line of kings of "Britain," primarily as a warrior who defended the island against the invading Saxons and who also conquered much of France. The Historia Regum Britanniae spawned its own "chronicle" tradition, including notably Wace, but at their most popular, especially in France, matters Arthurian came to take a different form, focusing on the individual adventures of the knights of the "round table" (a device meant to imply a society of equals, and one that does not appear in Geoffrey of Monmouth). This "romance" tradition recounted, among many other things, the illicit love of Sir Lancelot and Arthur's queen, Guinevere; the ill-starred "courtly" love of Sir Tristan for Yseult; the quest for the Holy Grail, achieved by the chaste Sir Galahad; or the eventual destruction of the fellowship of the round table by the treacherous Sir Mordred. Although King Arthur is a respected figure in the popular romance tradition, in such representative works as those of Chrétien de Troyes he simply does not do much except preside over his court once he has founded it.[11] Juliet Vale has outlined how this version of the Arthurian legend was the dominant one i n the European courts of Edward III's reign; and Edward and his queen Phillipa of Hainault themselves possessed several Arthurian romance books.[12] One could imagine how a romantic Arthurian legend could serve as a good backdrop for a chivalric tournament. It is more difficult, however, to imagine it serving as the founding myth for a "more or less permanent" society of knights under the king's command, and one formed for a specific "business" task. A passive, cuckolded king who was only the first among equals, and illustrious, individualist equals at that, is surely not the rôle that Edward wished for himself or his peers when he had such an important matter to attend to as the conquest of France. Moreover, the story of the round table is in its own way a tragedy, since it is eventually undone by its characters' flaws. To have a bitter end in mind rather than an optimistic one for any serious endeavor is simply not good management. The theme offered by the Order of the Garter, however, suffers none of these problems. There was no "story" to follow, only the constant, heavenly patronage of St. George, himself forever killing a dragon. As well, Vale has proposed that the Garter -- limited to twenty-four knights, twelve of whom would sit on either side of the collegiate chapel at Windsor -- was formed with two "finely-balanced tournament teams" in mind.[13] If this is true we can say that Edward's management skills have improved: there is, after all, no "I" in "team," but Edward still has two of them, to play one off against the other if he needs to. It would appear that Edward learned from the French he defeated at Crécy in 1346 by the distinctively unchivalric means of archers: chivalry might have been fine at tournaments, but it did not necessarily work in battle. Arthurian myth retained its appeal for other groups, however. In 1887, after several months of discussion, a group of seniors at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire announced that they had founded a society to be known as Casque and Gauntlet. Inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, C&G was to be a society of senior undergraduates directly modeled on the knights of the round table as described in Tennyson and Sir Thomas Malory's Mort D'arthur. The society was to represent "truth, fidelity, and loyalty to each other, to the college, and the best that was in each of us; a challenge to all that was evil in the world."[14] The members took the names of different knights of the round table, and successors were to be chosen on the basis of their "excellence in their particular field during the three college years," but always "character, loyalty, and goodfellowship came first in... selection."[15] Reminiscing about the early days of the society some fifty years later, one of the successors found that it had been "a great idea to conceive and to plan the application to college life of the ideals of Arthurian chivalry and the fellowship of the Table Round, 'whereat no Baron might sit above his fellows.'" No one in the society
Unfortunately, "these men were not understood, and there were not wanting those to misrepresent them." It was said that they were "held together for selfish ends in class matters";[16] indeed, "two full-fledged senior societies now faced each other, and when class elections came it required cool heads and wisdom."[17] At this point the founding of C&G must be put into context. American college culture had undergone immense changes during the nineteenth century.[18] Not only had the common classical curriculum given way to an elective one,[19] young men increasingly went to college for the sake of its socializing experience.[20] Larger classes, lack of a common curriculum, and success defined by the acquisition of collegiality with friends and of competitiveness with others provided ideal conditions for the spread of student fraternities. Student groups, especially literary societies, had always existed at American colleges, and the first Greek-letter fraternities as such were founded in the 1830s, but in the decades following the Civil War more parent fraternity organizations and fraternity chapters were established than ever before. Unlike literary or debating societies, a fraternity existed for no other ostensible purpose than to promote friendship among its members. Senior societies, where they existed, were different but had the same rationale. They could, indeed, serve a useful function where fraternities had proliferated to the point where the prestige of being a member of one had deteriorated; they aspired to choose only the most likable, the most idealistic, the most sporting, or the wealthiest undergraduates at the college. The senior societies at Yale, where new members were "tapped" into "Skull and Bones" or "Scroll and Key" near the end of their junior year by the membership preceding them, served as models.[21] Senior societies did not found chapters at other colleges, nor did they always achieve the social prominence they set out to, but their existence was certainly in keeping with the times. Fraternalism, indeed, extended far beyond college. The popular anti-freemasonry of the 1820s and -30s was long past and, never more popular, the Masons themselves served as the inspiration for a host of imitative societies, such as the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Independent Order of Foresters, or the Improved Order of Red Men. While some societies were formed explicitly for mutual aid or protection or to promote some cause, most were formed simply for fellowship. The fraternal lodge became a fixture in all but the smallest of towns, and in 1896, out of a total adult male population of nineteen million, five and a half million were members of fraternal organizations.[22] Casque and Gauntlet was founded as a group in an age of groups. But why the Arthurian theme? For that answer, might look to another nineteenth-century phenomenon: medievalism. Alice Chandler, in Dream of Order, found that although medievalism was "varying and sometimes contradictory," its "single, central desire" was for an "ordered yet organically vital universe"[23] in the face of the industrial revolution and its attendant woes. Fraternalism itself could be placed largely within the framework of nineteenth-century medievalism, as it was an attempt to create microsocieties based on ties of loyalty and friendship, even if these societies were as much a part of a bourgeois money economy as they were a respite from it. Thus many orders came to call their members "knights,"[24] and a perusal through Arthur Preuss' Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies turns up, among others, The American Order of Druids, the Knights of the Mystic Chain, the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, or the Order of Regenerated Franks. Some orders took names that sounded like those of medieval confraternities, such as the Order of the Golden Cross, the Order of the Golden Rod, the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, or the Sons of St. George. Thus, we can see how Casque and Gauntlet was formed in the nexus between fraternalism, medievalism, and a changing university, while its Arthurian theme was much more appealing to a society of male undergraduates than to a monarch with visions of conquest. To be illustrious individuals, formally equal to each other but collectively superior to outsiders, would have been very appealing indeed. The roundness of the round table -- and the members of C&G had one made when they bought a house in 1894 -- not only places everyone formally on an equal footing, it turns members' backs to the world at large. Thus the cynical, or perceptive, observation that the members were holding themselves together "for selfish ends in class matters." The figure of the Holy Grail, too, would also have been appealing to senior undergraduates at an east coast college. The eventual attainment of a lofty goal after much effort surely parallels the hope that late-nineteenth century youth would have for success in life and in "business," a sentiment summed up by a line from a song from the period, "we will make our lives successful, we will keep our hands from shame/ For the sake of dear old Dartmouth, and the honor of her name." This was a time, of course, when a college degree meant more than it does today. It is true that Edward could have used the Holy Grail to represent the crown of France, but the members of King Arthur's court searched for the Grail individually and for their own edification. It was not booty to be brought back for the king, as Edward hoped France would be. In this way too the figure of King Arthur was not a problem for Casque and Gauntlet, as no one was under his command -- here he could afford to be only the first among equals. And the eventual distruction of the round table by Sir Mordred, an ending that Edward wanted to avoid, is also appropriate to C&G in a bittersweet way. A frequent theme in the early songs of the senior society was "we have yet a little while" before impending graduation would disperse the members for good. Although Sir Mordred was not specifically invoked, the knowledge that good things must come to an end is a strong parallel between Arthurian myth and its use in Casque and Gauntlet. Although the society continues to exist on the Dartmouth campus, its Arthurian myth has not remained as appealing. Two points are at issue. The Christianity of the legend, particularly of the Holy Grail, has become rather embarrassing and the society repeatedly emphasizes to new members that it is not to be taken literally. And with co-education the society has had to choose between being a forum for student leaders and an all-male social club -- at one point you could have both, but not anymore. Fortunately it chose to remain a forum for leaders and admit women, but as far as the theme is concerned the women members themselves have had to choose between identity and equality. In this case they chose equality at the expense of identity: female members take knights' names, the rationale being that there are not enough female figures in Arthurian legend to go around, and they are either not active enough for late-twentieth-century taste or repulsively evil. Although Casque and Gauntlet shows no signs of wanting to reconstitute itself with a new theme, as Edward did with his Order of the Round Table, we may have to wait for some time before we see the legend used seriously as a model for a social group.
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This paper has changed somewhat since its proposal was submitted. It was
originally intended to look at nineteenth-century Arthurian groups but apart
from Casque and Gauntlet, a senior society founded in 1887 at Prof. Wood's own
Dartmouth College, most such groups are either well-documented, in which case
they are already well-studied, or little beyond their name survives.