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Harry

Knight who confronts the treacherous Sir Breuse and calls him a coward and felon, attested in 1 source.

8 citations1 sources1 traditions

Sir Harry appears in a single chapter of Le Morte d'Arthur as a knight who confronts the treacherous Sir Breuse. The encounter, set in Book X, Chapter LIII, shows Harry as a figure of conventional chivalric honor set against Breuse's villainy. When Harry sees Breuse acting "so villainously he cried: Traitor knight, leave off for shame" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII).

The episode develops through a brief but complete combat sequence. Harry encounters Breuse and challenges him, and "Sir Harry dressed his horse" for the joust (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII). They meet "so strongly that both the horses and knights fell to the earth" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII). Harry at first lets Breuse go: "Then Sir Harry let him go" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII). But when Breuse attacks again while Harry is only half-mounted, Breuse "smote him down, horse and man, to the earth, and had near slain Sir Harry, the good knight" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII).

Harry's assessment of Breuse is unambiguous. Asked "what knight is he," Harry replies that he is "a false knight... and a coward and a felonious knight" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Ch. LIII). The narrator calls Harry "the good knight," a designation that functions as moral contrast to Breuse's treachery.