Thomas Malory
The third contender is the little-known Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers in Yorkshire. This claim was put forward in "The Ill-Framed Knight: A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory" by William Matthews, a British professor who taught at UCLA (and also transcribed the diary of Samuel Pepys). Matthews's claim was met with little enthusiasm, despite evidence that the author spoke a regional dialect that matches the language of "Le Morte d'Arthur". This Malory is not known to have been knighted.