Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor (Studies in Medieval Romance)

Guy of Warwick Icon and Ancestor

Guy of Warwick is England’s other Arthur. Elevated to the status of national hero, his legend occupied a central place in the nation’s cultural heritage from the Middle Ages to the modern period. Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor spans the Guy tradition from its beginnings in Anglo-Norman and Middle English romance right through to the plays and prints of the early modern period and Spenser’s Faerie Queene, including the visual tradition in manuscript illustration and material culture as well as the intersection of the legend with local and national history. This volume addresses important questions regarding the continuities and remaking of romance material, and the relation between life and literature. Topics discussed are sensitive to current critical concerns and include translation, reception, magnate ambition, East-West relations, the construction of ‘Englishness’ and national identity, and the literary value of ‘popular’ romance. Alison Wiggins  is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Glasgow. Rosalind Field  is Reader in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Studies in Medieval Romance ISSN 1479–9308

Series Editors Corinne Saunders Roger Dalrymple This series aims to provide a forum for critical studies of the medieval romance, a genre which plays a crucial role in literary history, clearly reveals medieval secular concerns, and raises complex questions regarding social structures, human relationships, and the psyche. Its scope extends from the early middle ages into the Renaissance period, and although its main focus is on English literature, comparative studies are welcomed. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to one of the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration. Dr Corinne Saunders, Department of English, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3AY Boydell & Brewer Limited, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF

Volumes already published I: The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance, Carol F. Heffernan, 2003 II: Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, edited by Corinne Saunders, 2005 III: The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, Robert Allen Rouse, 2005

Guy of Warwick Icon and Ancestor

Edited by Alison Wiggins Rosalind Field

D. S. BREWER

©  Contributors 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2007 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN  978–1–84384–125–8

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14604, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publicationDisclaimer: is printed on acid-free paper Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images Printed please refer to theBritain printedbyversion of this book. in Great Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents Illustrations

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Contributors

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Abbreviations

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Editorial Introduction: Namoore of this! How to read Guy of Warwick and why

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1. Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe Judith Weiss

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2. Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context Marianne Ailes

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3. Guy of Warwick as a Translation Ivana Djordjevic

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4. From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance Rosalind Field

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5. The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick Alison Wiggins

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6. The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition A. S. G. Edwards

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7. An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero Robert Allen Rouse

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8. The Visual History of Guy of Warwick David Griffith

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9. ‘In her owne persone semly and bewteus’: Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick Martha W. Driver

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10. Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration 154 Siân Echard

11. Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages Andrew King

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12. Guy as Early Modern English Hero Helen Cooper

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Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative

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Index

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Illustrations Between pages 106 and 107 Plate 1 Guy’s assault on the Sultan in the Smithfield Decretals (London, British Library, Royal MS 10. E. IV, fol. 85v). ©  The British Library. All rights reserved. Plate 2 The Guy of Warwick mazer, maple wood bowl with silver and silvergilt mounts; c. 1340 (St Nicholas’s Hospital, Harbledown, near Canterbury, on loan to the Museum of Canterbury). By permission of the Museum of Canterbury. Plate 3 Wenceslaus Hollar’s engraving of the sculpted figure of Guy of Warwick from the chapel of Mary Magdalene within the Guy’s Cliffe foundation in Warwick, in William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (first edition, 1656), p.184. By Permission of Special Collections, University Library, University of Birmingham. Plate 4 Depictions of Guy in the Middle English Rous Roll flanked by Felice receiving the half ring and by Reinbroun (London, British Library, Additional MS 48976, figures 20, 21, 22, 23; 1483–85). ©  The British Library. All rights reserved. Plate 5 Felice receives the half ring in the Latin Rous Roll (London, College of Arms, MS Warwick Roll, figure 20; 1477–85). By permission of the College of Arms. Plate 6 Reinbroun’s wife in the Latin Rous Roll (London, College of Arms, MS Warwick Roll, figure 23a; 1477–85). By permission of the College of Arms. Plate 7 Guy and Felice with Reinbroun (Descents of the Houses of Warwick and Essex, New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 956, fol. 1v; sixteenth century). By permission. Plate 8 Tied to the mast, The Beauchamp Pageants (L) (London, British Library, Cotton Julius MS E. IV, Article 6). ©  The British Library. All rights reserved. Plate 9 Descendants of Anne Neville, Countess of Warwick, The Beauchamp Pageants (LV) (London, British Library, Cotton Julius MS E. IV, Article 6). ©  The British Library. All rights reserved. vii

Plate 10 Guy fights Colbrond, in William Copland’s Guy of Warwick (1565), page 258. By permission of Houghton Library, Harvard University. Plate 11 Sleeping figure, in William Copland’s Guy of Warwick (1565), page 19; and Phyllis dreaming, in Samuel Rowlands’s Famous Historie (1609); 1625 copy, C.2.verso. Both by permission of Houghton Library, Harvard University. Plate 12 Ascopart carries Josian, Bevis, and Arondel, from Richard Pynson’s Bevis of Hampton (1503). Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce B. Subt.234, fol. 40. By permission. Plate 13 The Christmas Day battle and the boar fight, from Richard Pynson’s Bevis of Hampton (1503). Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce B. Subt.234, fols 10 and 13. By permission. Plate 14 Guy aids a lion against a dragon, in Samuel Rowlands’s Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwicke (1609); 1625 copy, H.2 recto. By permission of Houghton Library, Harvard University. Plate 15 Guy kills the Dun Cow and the boar, in The history of the famous exploits of Guy Earl of Warwick (1680), London, British Library 12450.f.8, pages 10 and 14. © British Library. All rights reserved.

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Contributors Marianne Ailes is College Lecturer in French at Wadham College Oxford and Honorary Research Fellow at Reading University. Her recent publications include The Song of Roland: On Absolutes and Relative Values (2002) and an edition and translation of Ambroise’s The History of the Holy War (with Malcolm Barber; 2003). Helen Cooper is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. Her many publications include The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (2004). Ivana Djordjevic is an Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University, Montreal. She has published on Anglo-Norman and Middle English romance and on the poetics of rewriting, especially translation. Martha W. Driver is Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Pace University in New York. Her recent books are The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England (2004) and The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy (with Sid Ray; 2004). Siân Echard is Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. Her recent published research includes A Companion to Gower (2004) and The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts (with Stephen Partridge; 2004). A. S. G. Edwards is Professor of Textual Studies at the Centre for Textual Scholarship, De Montford University. His recent publications include A New Index of Middle English Verse (with Julia Boffey; 2005) and A Companion to Middle English Prose (2004). Rosalind Field is Reader in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her recent publications include Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (with Jennifer Fellows, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss; 1996) and Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance (1999). David Griffith is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include romance, vernacularity and literacy, visual culture, and the life and reputation of John Rous of Warwick. His current ix

projects include a book on the use of vernacular inscriptions in later medieval England for the Brepols series Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe. Andrew King is College Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance English at University College Cork. He is the author of The Faerie Queene and Middle English Romance: The Matter of Just Memory (2000). Robert Allen Rouse is Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (2005). Judith Weiss is an Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. Her interests lie mainly in the field of Anglo-Norman romance and historiography and she prepared a parallel text and translation of Wace’s Roman de Brut in 1999. At present she is translating Boeve de Hamtoune and Gui de Warewic for The French of England Translation Series. Alison Wiggins is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Glasgow. She is editor of the stanzaic Guy of Warwick (2004) and co-editor of the Auchinleck Manuscript (2003). Her current projects include a book on Middle English romance manuscripts and a study of marginalia in Renaissance printed copies of Chaucer.



Abbreviations AN ANTS BL CFMA CUL EETS fol. fols Gui,   ed. by Ewert Guy,   ed. by Zupitza Legend ME MS MSS NIMEV NLW n.s. ODNB PMLA Riverside SATF STC

Anglo Norman Anglo-Norman Text Society London, British Library Classiques Françaises du Moyen Age Cambridge, University Library Early English Text Society os – original series es – extra series folio folios Gui de Warewic: Roman du XIIIe Siècle, ed. by Alfred Ewert, CFMA, 74–75, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 1932–33) The Romance of Guy of Warwick: The Second or 15th-century Version, edited from the paper ms. Ff. 2. 38. in the University Library, Cambridge, ed. by Julius Zupitza, EETS es 25, 26 (London: Trübner, 1875–76); and The Romance of Guy of Warwick : The First or 14thcentury version, edited from the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and from MS. 107 in Caius College, Cambridge, ed. by Julius Zupitza, EETS es 42, 49, 59 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1883, 1887, 1891) Velma Bourgeois Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, Garland Studies in Medieval Literature, 14 (New York and London: Garland, 1996) Middle English manuscript manuscripts New Index of Middle English Verse, Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2005) Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales new series Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Publications of the Modern Language Association The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) Société des anciens textes français A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, ed. by A. W. Pollard and G. R. xi

Wing

Redgrave, et al., 2nd edn, 3 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91) Donald Wing, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641– 1700, 2nd edn, revised by T. J. Crist, J. J. Morison, C. W. Nelson, and M. Seccombe, 3 vols (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982–94) Manuscript sigla*

Gui de Warwic Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 50 Cambridge, University Library, Additional MS 2751 Cologny-Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, MS 67 (olim Marske Hall, Yorkshire, D’Arcy Hutton MS) Cologny-Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, MS 168 (olim Cheltenham, Phillipps MS 8345) London, British Library, Additional MS 38662 London, British Library, Harley MS 3775 London, British Library, Royal MS 8. F. IX London, College of Arms, Arundel MS 27 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 591 (olim Cholmondeley MS) Nottingham University Library, Oakham Parish Library MS Bx 1756 S 4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D 913 Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 491 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 1669 Ripon Cathedral MS XVII.F.33 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Cod. Aug. MS 87, 4 York Minster MS 16.1.7

C J M F E H R A B N O X P L G Y

Guy of Warwick Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales Binding Fragments 572; NLW/BL and London, British Library, Additional MS 14408 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 107/176 Caius Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38 (olim More MS 690) CUL Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1 Auchinleck London, British Library, Sloane MS 1044 (item 248) Sloane *

Sigla for AN Gui manuscripts follow Ewert where he has them; for those not included by Ewert we have allocated a siglum. For the ME Guy manuscripts we have used shortened names rather than Zupitza’s sigla in order to avoid confusion with the manuscripts of Gui.

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In memory of JPW 1920–2005

Editorial Introduction Namoore of this! How to read Guy of Warwick and why Guy of Warwick is England’s other Arthur, his legend England’s most successful medieval romance and so this book considers the Guy tradition as the quintessential popular romance of England, and one that demonstrates the reception of romance working in and beyond medieval culture to a unique degree. The medieval, as a space for fantasy, imagination, or nostalgia, is everywhere – reflected in images and poetry and, in our own time, in film, novels, heritage, music, on the internet, in advertising, and in street names. It is our belief that scholarship has a particular responsibility to take seriously the investigation of sources, purposes, effects, and exploitation. The Guy tradition is peculiar for its expansiveness, complexity, and for the diversity of its materials, which span different languages, media, chronological periods, and social categorizations. In order to deal with such range and variety of the materials many of the contributors to this volume, although they largely belong to English departments, draw on techniques from other disciplines – from history, art history, French, linguistics, or manuscript studies. Only by allocating aspects of the tradition to scholars with these kinds of specialist interests and areas of knowledge and expertise has it been possible to maintain the sharp scholarly focus throughout. Such explorations developing different responses to shared questions are important aspects of the interdisciplinary nature of this volume. But there is more to it than this: the interdisciplinary conception and ambition behind this book has enriched and added value to the whole project. The original idea for the volume came during a post-LOMERS dinner one wet February evening in 2004. The dimly lit basement of Pizza Paradiso on Store Street has become something of a hotspot for London medievalists, bleary eyed from a day in the library or the lecture theatre and eager to meet, engage in discussion, exchange ideas, and entertain visiting speakers. True to the spirit of this LOMERS rendezvous, we set out to foster more conversations about Guy of Warwick, to bring more ideas to the table. Many of these subsequent conversations took place virtually as proposals and draft chapters were circulated and cruxes discussed by email across time zones and continents. As editors we have been matchmakers and mediators: sending out invitations; recommending one contributor to read 

LOMERS is the ‘London Old and Middle English Research Seminar’; we are grateful to the current co-ordinator Ruth Kennedy for fostering such a welcoming and stimulating point of contact for medievalists.

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another’s work; passing around cross-references; scrutinizing contradictions; circulating approved names, dates, and places. Our pleasure and reward has come from watching how the various chapters bond and blend, meet and compete, intersect and speak to one another. It is a process that reflects and mimics the unstable, uneven, and responsive nature of the Guy tradition and which, in itself, it seems, can teach us a great deal about how to develop research on romance. The Guy tradition, with its meandering complex of connections and responses, often competing, overlapping, and contradictory in character, is ideally suited to a book by multiple contributors who refer and allude to one another in non-linear ways. The final volume, we believe, with its detailed and complementary explorations of themes, terms, topics, and concepts, is greater than the sum of its parts. The achievements of the volume lie within this process of comparison and differentiation between different versions of the Guy material in the same language, between versions in different languages or in different media, and between Guy and associated works. It is through these kinds of contextualizations and cross references that the chapters together illustrate the Guy tradition to be a rich and multi-faceted window onto the culture of medieval England. Coming from different angles, many of these chapters also reveal inadequacies in the material available to scholars or assumptions that have remained unquestioned for too long. In particular, Alfred Ewart’s 1932 edition of Gui de Warewic is scrutinized: Ivana Djordjevic notes a number of weaknesses in Ewart’s edition and observes how it has become ossified as ‘the’ Anglo-Norman text, while Marianne Ailes updates Ewart’s discussion of manuscripts in the light of subsequent discoveries and opinions. Alison Wiggins provides an updated account of the Middle English texts and manuscripts that incorporates recent re-datings and considers the issue of intentionality, while Martha Driver’s close reading of the CUL manuscript corrects Julius ­Zupitza’s gratuitous and confusing interference in the text. All this indicates that a clear and well-informed study of the manuscript situation in both languages, such as this collection begins to provide, leads to a reconsideration of received opinions, not only of Guy but of the development of romance in England more generally. These substantive findings are closely linked to, and are an important part of, the broader reassessments of the Guy tradition that run throughout the volume. Our purpose from the outset has been to orchestrate a volume that would offer detailed reflections upon (and where necessary reassessments of) four crucial issues: the ‘popularity’ of the tradition; Guy’s ‘Englishness’; the ancestral-baronial interest in the story; and the passage of the medieval legend into the Renaissance. These four themes are each examined from different perspectives in the volume. Below, in the remainder of this introduction, we explain why we feel they are so crucial and how they are addressed and reassessed in the various chapters. The first major theme concerns the term ‘popular’ in relation to Guy of Warwick. Guy of Warwick is regularly and repeatedly classified as a ‘popular’ xvi



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figure, one of the brightest stars of ‘popular romance’. But the classification ‘popular romance’, as a number of recent studies have pointed out, is doubleedged. It does not simply refer to a particular style and mode of language, or to the extent of a text’s circulation, but carries with it the pejorative sense of being low status, artless, undemanding, and unsophisticated. These connotations have long been reflected in the assessments by Guy of Warwick’s commentators, who tend to see the romance as a haphazard mélange, ‘a farrago of familiar motifs’. The author, so they say, was no more than a ‘raider of the stockpot’, one who ‘compiled’ traditional motifs without a sense of true creativity; ‘a hack […] forced […] to add whatever motifs pleased his fancy to a basic frame’. This volume goes some way towards redressing the balance. It is our contention that, contrary to these long-held views, Guy of Warwick and its original Gui de Warewic deserve and reward close and serious readings. While we applaud the recent calls for re-assessments of romance, it is noticeable that these rarely step up to the mark in terms of actually addressing the literary value of Guy, so this volume provides a number of detailed appreciations. In particular, Robert Rouse focuses on the cultural and literary significance of Guy’s polysemous and multivalent heroic identity; an important factor, he argues, in the endurance and inclusiveness of Guy’s appeal. Rosalind Field, while keeping an eye on features of the narrative that are not entirely successful in literary terms, describes the romance as a true classic of the popular style. She points out that the genius of the anonymous author of Gui lay in the innovative combination of aspects of ancestral romance, chanson de geste, and religiosity, all packaged together in a flexible and ‘low context’ series of episodes, to produce an enduring and adaptable best-seller. These accounts which examine Gui/Guy’s internal literary construction are complemented by the chapters which investigate actual historical readers and



See Pulp Fictions of Medieval England, ed. by Nicola McDonald (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004); The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. by Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library (Harlow: Longman, 2000).  See Weiss’s chapter in this volume, p. 2.  For example, see Legend, pp. 7–8; M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 167; Laura Hibbard Loomis, Medieval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 133–37; G. M. Bordman, ‘Folklore and the Medieval Romance’, in Folklore in Action: Essays for Discussion in Honor of MacEdward Leach, ed. by H. P. Beck, Publications of the American Folklore Society Bibliographical and Special Series, 14 (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1962), pp. 37–43 (p. 39), Bordman identified 182 motifs in Gui de Warewic; Alfred Ewert, Gui de Warewic: Roman du XIIIe Siècle, II vols, CFMA 74–75 (Paris: E. Champion, 1932–33), p. viii, who notes that nine chansons de geste and romances have been suggested as sources for Gui and this number has been added to elsewhere; A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, ed. by J. B. Severs, 4 vols (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences), I, 29.  However, see the stimulating studies by Ralph Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107–16; Andrea Hopkins, The Sinful Knights: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1987); Geraldine Barnes, Counsel and Strategy in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983).

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audiences. The derogatory sense of ‘popular’ is inevitably linked to the notion that these were romances for ‘low class’ and ‘less literate’ audiences. This relates, in particular, to romances in Middle English – whereby the translation from French into English is equated with a downward shift in terms of audience, with subsequent redactions moving even deeper down this descending cultural trajectory. However, in the particular case of Guy’s romance the situation is far more complex than this traditional morphology would imply. The chapters by Ailes, Djordjevic, and Wiggins emphasize the many affinities and synergies between the Anglo-Norman texts and manuscripts and those in Middle English, while the chapters by Andrew King and Helen Cooper show that there was an enduring tradition of high-level and even, in the case of Spenser, elite readings of the romance. It is only with the advent of print that the romance as we know it became accessible to a ‘mass’ audience, for whom, as Siân Echard shows, its appeal was inflected by particular themes. This recognition of elite and popular audiences co-existing simultaneously over many years is also crucial to the wider cultural status of the legend, beyond the romance. That Guy was famous throughout the land is apparent in the many small hints and references that survive and point to a parallel oral tradition (mentioned by David Griffith) as well as his appearance in the Speculum Guy de Warwick (discussed by A. S. G. Edwards). These aspects of the legend, then, indicate another ‘popular’ dimension of the Guy tradition – that is, popular in the senses of ‘for the people’. But it should be remembered that these developments occurred alongside the powerful elite baronial adoption of the figure of Guy discussed by Edwards, Griffith, and Driver. Altogether, these chapters emphasize that the legend and the romance are neither popular nor elite in any straightforward sense. From his earliest origins, Guy was a figure whose cultural and literary status was open to interpretation and appropriation and who complicates our modern sense of a division between elite and popular modes. The second major theme that has been extensively re-examined in this volume is the concern with Guy’s Englishness. Guy’s status as the premier hero of England and a prominent representative of ‘Englishness’ is explored and shown to be less straightforward than many previous accounts assume. A number of recent studies have considered Guy of Warwick from the perspective of the history of English nationalism and post-colonial studies. Typically these focus on the translation into English and the appearance of Guy of Warwick in the fourteenth-century Auchinleck Manuscript – asserting that this manuscript represents a crucial moment when the text ‘became’ a statement about Englishness and identifying this as an early expression of what would become English nationalism. This volume resists this model and emphasizes, 

For example see, Siobhain Bly Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 13–60; Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Rebecca Wilcox, ‘Romancing the East: Greeks and Saracens in Guy of Warwick’, in McDonald, Pulp Fictions, pp. 217–40.

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instead, that expressions of Englishness are present in the original AngloNorman Gui de Warewic composed in the early thirteenth century. Judith Weiss shows that Gui is addressing an unusual collective English memory, that of the English in Constantinople. Taken together with the author’s evident awareness and knowledge of the wider European scene, this suggests that any attempt to relate Gui as a narrative to its historical and cultural context must look to Europe and the Eastern Empire as well as to memories of pre-Conquest England for the terms in which it constructs its Englishness. Not only does Gui/Guy demonstrate that insular identity and a sense of Englishness or patriotism need not be expressed in the English language; it also provides a ‘pre-colonial’ perspective in which the interaction between the West and the East – Christian or Saracen – is vital to Guy’s role. Guy’s Englishness looks less like the assertion of an obvious position than a series of exploratory forays into a world uncertain of languages, boundaries, allegiances, and adversaries by which to define itself. It speaks to a world in which the certainties of intervening centuries have melted into newly ill-defined boundaries and identities. Guy’s identity is further complicated by his regional associations and several of the chapters here indicate the importance of place. If Guy’s legend presents an early brand of nationalism, it is one that is far more fragmented then modern notions, and which draws on and is indebted to local affiliations. In the Auchinleck Manuscript – now firmly established as a book that expresses Englishness and where Guy of Warwick is a keystone text – the nation is constructed out of texts gathered from different regions, in different dialects and verse forms, and which each tell the stories of regional heroes and local affiliations. England continues to be imagined in regional terms in the many later appropriations of Guy’s legend that are characterized by a powerful sense of locality. Furthermore, the localities in question – Warwick and Winchester – came to adapt and re-model their own landscapes to match the events of the romance. The Warwickshire connection relates directly to the volume’s third major theme: the baronial interest in the story and Guy’s status as both icon and ancestor. The interests of powerful magnate families begin to dominate the fifteenth-century career of Guy and his position as a local hero; he is not to be reclaimed by the general public until Tudor times. The chronicle episode that was the focus of Guy’s enduring fame, the battle with Colbrond, provides the focus also of Lydgate’s ‘Guy of Warwick’ discussed by Edwards. Lydgate is the first named author to be associated with Guy and his work is the clearest confirmation that the literature of Guy – as distinct from the local legend – appealed to the highest in the land. It is here that the influence of the French prose version – Le Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne – enters 

For further discussion of this topic see Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), especially Chapters 4 and 6; and Diane Speed, ‘The Construction of the Nation in Medieval Romance’, in Readings in Medieval English Romance (1994), pp. 135–57.

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the picture, a version rather neglected by scholars working on the insular tradition of verse romance, but an important channel for the persistence of the Guy romance into the fifteenth century amongst French-speakers. If for Lydgate, the monk of Bury, the main focus is Guy the pilgrim, for his patron, Margaret Beauchamp, it is Guy as ancestor. It is the ancestral theme that is illustrated so fully in Griffiths’s chapter. But it is also clear from his earlier examples that Guy, or Gui, had already been established as a national icon. The illustrations in the Taymouth Hours and the Smithfield Decretals inform us of two vital components in the reading of Guy for the fourteenth century – the accepted congruence of the pious and the adventurous, and the ongoing influence of the Anglo-Norman Gui amongst audiences with access to richly illustrated manuscripts. Against such a background ‘ancestor worship made sound political sense’ [Griffith p. 13] and the fortunes of Guy are henceforth bound up with the fortunes and misfortunes of the Neville and Beauchamp Earls of Warwick. Guy’s pious death is developed to provide a range of relics and an architectural presence befitting a saint, as romance provides a history that a magnate family can write themselves into. The mute, or oral, witness of the places and objects described by Griffiths emphasizes that the longevity of Guy’s fame is not a tribute to literature alone: the development of the literary tradition must be considered in the context of the material and vice versa. Ancestral or familial history, real or imagined, does not only pertain to the masculine heirs, and the history of the Beauchamp enthusiasm for Guy offers a glimpse into the interests of a female readership. It is the women of the Beauchamp family who encourage the later development of the legend, such exploitation providing them with a voice and even political leverage. As Martha Driver’s chapter explores the material, both within and without the texts, it is the exemplarity of the women in the Guy circle that emerges, in figures of aristocratic fidelity and moral virtue. The gender politics by which Felice provides Guy with his earldom also provide a powerful iconic figure for the beleaguered Beauchamp women. The final three chapters take on the volume’s fourth major theme and trace the longevity of the legend into the Renaissance and beyond. Guy, the exemplary hero for medieval chivalry and magnate ambition, becomes a figure from past history, an object of antiquarian curiosity. Echard’s chapter introduces Guy’s established association with the figure of Bevis of Hampton. It is a link which, she argues, has been over-simplified, as the two figures provide different satisfactions for their readers. Her discussion of the woodcuts of the two romances in print makes explicit what several of the essays imply, that Guy’s career is very different from that of his fellows in insular literature. For the later period the exploration of Guy’s many roles has been reduced to that of the Saracen-killer and monster-slayer, a sad reduction, even a misreading. If in the early printed editions, and re-tellings such as that of Richard Lloyd and Michael Drayton, Guy has become a superhero with fantastical foes, Andrew King’s chapter shows how the Guy legend could inspire a much xx



Editorial Introduction

more serious and nuanced re-reading. Spenser’s use of Guy of Warwick as the embedded narrative in Book II of the The Faerie Queene assumes and requires a readership that has a knowledge of the medieval Guy. Spenser’s reading of the Middle English romance is of a text concerned to interrogate chivalry and achieve a measure of wisdom in the process. His adoption of it in his tale of Guyon brings the experience of the entirety of the medieval poem to bear from the start on his account of chivalry as a pilgrimage to true reality. Modified for Protestant readers, Spenser’s version, as King demonstrates, presents the simultaneous image of Guy the knight and Guy the pilgrim. If Spenser’s response to Guy shows a philosophical reach and poetic complexity unique in the Guy tradition, it nevertheless shows that Guy of Warwick had the cultural presence to generate such a reading. As Helen Cooper’s chapter demonstrates, however, it was as a popular work that Guy continued to be read directly. Guy’s piety might need re-aligning for a post-Reformation readership, but his status as an English hero, increasingly as the English representative amongst the Nine Worthies, guaranteed his longevity. On stage in the late sixteenth century, in the epic poems of Rowlands and Lane throughout the seventeenth century, and then into a prose rewriting that takes it through the eighteenth century, the ‘sheer narrative power of the legend’ carries Guy to new audiences. As Cooper shows it is largely due to the unsung genius of Rowlands ‘for knowing what readers would enjoy’ [Cooper, p. 199] that Guy’s fame is carried through to the world of the novel and the guidebook. As with the work of the other genius of popular narrative, the anonymous author of Gui, the success and longevity of the legend of Guy of Warwick depends on reaching a wide readership. As Velma Richmond remarks, it only needs the film to clinch Guy’s enduring appeal. To study the Guy legend across its many versions in many media is to be aware of the interests of a wide range of audiences – the mark of popular success. Not only the laity, but evidently clerical and monastic audiences, not only aspirants to knighthood and political power, but their female counterparts, and also no doubt, their children, long before the nineteenth century re-packaged Guy as a juvenile text. There is also a modern audience becoming increasingly well provided for as the TEAMS edition makes the central section of Guy available to every computer and shortly the translation of Gui will open up that poem to a wider audience. And as anyone who has experimented with teaching Guy on a medieval course soon discovers it has lost none of its instant appeal and ability to both entertain and instruct. If the instruction is now less about the good life, and more about the multifaceted culture that produced these texts and artefacts that only provides another worthwhile reason for reading Guy.

xxi

1 Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe JUDITH WEISS

T

he thirteenth-century Jatvartharsaga, about Edward the Confessor, and the Chronicon Universale, which ends in 1219, both record the same story about a late-eleventh-century English emigration to Constantinople. A group of Anglo-Saxon nobles go and fight for the emperor Alexius, who is besieged by the Turks. Some stay as members of his bodyguard, others establish settlements further from the city. The story is based on the historical fact, recorded by several chroniclers, that English people settled in Constantinople from the 1070s onwards, entered imperial service and played a large part in campaigns against the Turks in 1081–84, earning the emperor’s gratitude. The early-thirteenth century Gui de Warewic differs from previous AngloNorman romances (by which it was certainly influenced and with which it was intimately familiar) because it is set against a huge historical and geographical canvas. It concerns itself not only with its hero’s homeland but also with the portrayal of two empires, the Western and the Eastern – the Holy Roman Empire and the one centred on Constantinople. Its immediate predecessors, Boeve de Haumtone and Waldef, perhaps provided the inspiration, by widening their range of action from southern English or East Anglian home-bases to an exotic abroad, but they were not as knowledgeable as Gui’s author about that ‘abroad’. This knowledge includes information that there was an English colony at Constantinople and that it was joined by a mercenary from England who defeated the Sultan of Konya. Gui de Warewic is also unusual in that, for its period, it gives a surprisingly favourable picture of the Eastern emperor as opposed to his Western counterpart. This chapter will address the question of



Christine Fell, ‘The Icelandic Saga of Edward the Confessor: Its Version of the Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium’, Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96; Krijnie N. Ciggaar, ‘L’Emigration anglaise après 1066’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 32 (1974), 301–42; Jonathan Shepard, ‘The English and Byzantium: A Study of their Role in the Byzantine Army in the Later Eleventh Century’, Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92; and Sigfús Blöndal, The Varangians of Byzantium, translated, revised, and rewritten by Benedikt S. Benedikz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).  For example, Waldef uses the Eastern imperial name of Alexius for a Western emperor: Le Roman de Waldef, ed. by A. J. Holden (Cologny-Genève: Foundation Martin Bodmer, 1984), line 18,017.





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what relation the romance might have to historical events, a question which in turn impinges on a possible date for the poem. It has long been recognized that Gui de Warewic is extremely dependent on previous chansons de geste and romances. A. J. Holden’s edition of Waldef, an Anglo-Norman romance dating from the very beginning of the thirteenth century, pointed out such numbers of verbal parallels between it and Gui that the latter’s close reliance on it seems indisputable. It seems also to be indebted to Boeve de Haumtone (originally composed at the end of the twelfth century) and Robert Le Diable (late twelfth century). Velma Bourgeois Richmond, unaware of Holden’s work, and perhaps of Anglo-Norman romance in general, saw in Gui echoes of Chrétien’s romances and, following Ewert, of the Moniage Guillaume and the story of St Alexis. But though Gui may contain a farrago of familiar motifs, it also has a less familiar interest in, and partial knowledge of, Continental Europe and the Near East, the places, indeed, where most of its action occurs. In a recent article, Robert Rouse perceives ‘a general principle’ in romance: ‘ “abroad” is constructed as dangerous, while home is familiar, known, and safe’. While Gui’s picture of a stable England under Athelstan is certainly, I believe, contrasted to its advantage with the Continent, and with the Near East, it is precisely those dangerous ‘abroads’, besieged, threatened by jealousies and rival, warring vassals, which are the most interesting places, and which provide Gui with most of his closest friends. England is threatened twice, by a dragon and then by a Danish invasion, headed by king Anlaf and his huge champion Colebrant. But it is mostly a peaceable place, where good relations exist between king and vassals, and where the hero falls in love, gets married, begets a child, and finally retreats to a hermitage where he dies. 

 







The contents of the manuscripts of Gui suggest that its readers may have regarded it as history. The works originally bound with it in E are partly hagiographic, partly from the chanson de geste tradition; H has numerous short items of a historical and factual kind; R has fragments of a poem on biblical history; the two Bodmer manuscripts (M and F) have Waldef (a version of English ‘history’) and the chanson de geste Otinel, Wace’s Brut, the Prophecies of Merlin, and the Livere d’Angleterre; C has Wace, the Livere de Reis de Brittanie, and a list of British kings. The only fictional exceptions to these ‘historical’ contents are C’s fabliau and M’s Florence de Rome. There is a full discussion of the manuscript context of Gui in the chapter by Marianne Ailes, below, in this volume. Waldef, pp. 29–31. The role of the mestre and his family in Boeve undoubtedly influenced Gui; for the influence of Robert, see Judith Weiss, ‘Insular Beginnings: Anglo-Norman Romance’, in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary, ed. by Corinne Saunders (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 26–44 (p. 38), and ‘Ineffectual Monarchs: Portrayals of Regal and Imperial Power in Ipomedon, Robert le Diable and Octavian’, in Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. by Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), pp. 55–68 (p. 62 and note 10). Legend, pp. 15, 20, 30–35; Gui, ed. by Ewert, I, vii. For an extended discussion of the influence of St Alexis on Gui, see Neil Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100–1300 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 99–106. See Rebecca Wilcox, ‘Romancing the East: Greeks and Saracens in Guy of Warwick’, in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England, ed. by Nicola McDonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 217–40 (p. 218). Robert Rouse, ‘English Identity in Havelok, Horn Childe and Beues of Hamtoun’, in Cultural Encounters, ed. by Saunders, p. 79 (note 39).





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English villains make only a fleeting appearance, and the plot-elements set in England are predictable and fail to engage us. By contrast, ‘abroad’, especially the Western Empire, is the setting for deeply emotional partings, reconciliations, and reunions, both personal and political.10 These are the high points of the poem, these are the most original episodes, these, I would maintain, are where the poet’s heart lies.11 Much of the romance takes place within the Holy Roman Empire, in the Low Countries, Burgundy, Italy, and above all, Germany, in the important imperial cities of Speyer and Worms. The empire’s peace is disrupted by feuding magnates and it is weakly governed, with poor judgement, by emperor Reiner. An important episode, ending in a rhetorically impressive scene, is that where the emperor, having engaged in a protracted and morally unjustifiable attack on an important vassal, has to be put under courteous house-arrest and appealed to by all his main barons to give up the feud (1642–2856). Reiner, prone to be swayed by pressure from bullying vassals, is contrasted unfavourably with his Eastern counterpart, Hernis, who despite his very considerable troubles with the Turks, is a better judge of men and refuses to believe his seneschal’s calumny against the hero.12 The vain and easily misled Holy Roman emperor has a justifiable worry about his image, and actually asks Gui what the Eastern emperor thinks of him (9875–76). Gui duly conveys criticism of Reiner’s abuses of power, and gives him a lesson on his duties: ‘Di mei dunc, pelerin, par ta fei En Costentinoble que dient de mei.’ ‘Sire,’ fait il, ‘ja le saverez, Quant vus saveir le volez. Mult dient de vus grant mal, Que par le conseil d’un seneschal Le cunte Terri desherité avez E altres baruns od lui assez, Dunt vus faites mult grant pecchez; En estranges terres mult estes blamez, Que par le conseil d’un losenger Devez voz baruns desheriter […] De ço vus estuet ore garde prendre Qu’en vostre curt me maintengez, E si vus plaist, armes me trovez; 

Its only detestable character is Duke Modred of Cornwall, whose trouble-making occurs in Gui and Heralt’s absence. The poet may be making the point that Athelstan’s just rule depends on the presence of these powerful barons. 10 Calin observed that the ‘true’ love scenes of the romance are those between Gui and his male friends. See William Calin, ‘Gui de Warewic and the Nature of Late Anglo-Norman Romance’, Fifteenth Century Studies, 17 (1990), 23–32 (p. 25). 11 See Judith Weiss, ‘Insular Beginnings’, pp. 26–44 (p. 38). 12 See Judith Weiss, ‘Emperors and Anti-Christs: Reflections of Empire in Insular Narrative, 1130– 1250’, in The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. by Phillipa Hardman (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 87–102 (p. 101).





Judith Weiss As mesaisez socure devez, Co pent a vus, tresben le savez.’  [9875–86, 9966–70] [‘Then tell me, pilgrim, upon your word, what they say about me in Constantinople’. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘now you shall know, since you wish to know it. Many say bad things about you – that through the advice of a seneschal you have disinherited Count Terri, and many other barons with him, which is a very great wrong. You are blamed severely in foreign lands for being in the habit of disinheriting your barons through the advice of a rogue [...] You should now take care of this [i.e. equipping Gui to champion Terri’s cause], so that you maintain me in your court and find me weapons, if you please. You should help the poor; that befits you, as you know very well.’]13

The contrasting, favourable picture of the Eastern empire and its ruler is highly unusual in the period when Gui is now thought to have been written. Up to 1975, the view of Alfred Ewert, that it was composed between 1232 and 1242, prevailed, but more recent research, by Jeanne Wathelet-Willem and Emma Mason, places it earlier, before 1215 and even before 1205.14 It closely imitates parts of Waldef, dated between 1200 and 1210.15 This is an eventful decade, containing of course England’s loss of Normandy, but, on the international scene, most notable for the Fourth Crusade. Notoriously, this diverted crusading fervour for recapturing the Holy Land to the rich prize of Christian Constantinople, which was overrun and sacked. The alienation of Byzantium from the West had, however, begun earlier, from the First Crusade onwards.16 The twelfth century saw a growing awareness in the West of Byzantine riches, but it was coupled with contempt for Byzantine Greeks, thought to be malicious, treacherous, hypocritical, effeminate, and unwarlike.17 No trace of such an attitude is to be found in our romance. So why is an English poet happy to compare West and East, to the advantage of the latter? I suspect that he knew about one of the greatest rulers of the Byzantine empire. In the second half of the twelfth century there was no shortage of impres13

14

15

16

17

All quotations are from Gui, ed. by Ewert. The translation of this and all subsequent quotations from Gui is my own, and will appear in Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two AngloNorman Romances, trans. and intro. by Judith Weiss, The French of England Translation Series, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Arizona: ACMRS, 2007). Gui, p. vii; Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, Recherches sur La Chanson de Guillaume (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1975), pp. 512–14, and Emma Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors: The Use of Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 25–40. Waldef, p. 18. The scribal hand of the oldest manuscript of Gui, E, can be precisely dated to between 1213 and 1216: see M. Domenica Legge, ‘La date des écrits de Frère Angier’, Romania, 79 (1958), 512–14. Ewert, p. xxvii, thought it must be very close in time of composition to its original, being carefully executed and least in need of correction; Wathelet-Willem, Recherches, p. 40, concurred. See Michael Angold, ‘Knowledge of Byzantine History in the West: The Norman Historians (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries)’, in Anglo-Norman Studies, 25, ed. by John Gillingham (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 19–33 (p. 32). See Michael Angold, The Byzantine Empire 1025–1204 (London: Longman, 1984), pp. 169, 206.





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sive rulers in Europe, such as Frederic Barbarossa, Philip Augustus of France, Henry II, and Roger II of Sicily. But Manuel I Comnenos (reigned 1143–80) was as great and as widely regarded as any of them. Renowned in the West for his chivalry, bravery, and generosity, Manuel conducted war and diplomacy on a grand scale, held a court dazzling in its power and wealth, and received more foreign potentates than any Byzantine emperor before or after him.18 The Latin view, indeed, was that he was too good for his subjects.19 This ruler in turn admired the West, and pursued a policy of encouraging Latins to flock to his court. He was attracted by the emphasis in their knights’ ethos on prowess and loyalty, and he recruited from them a cadre of soldiers to his personal service. Nobles from the Crusader states, such as Antioch and Jerusalem, were also welcome at his court, and indeed Baldwin of Antioch rose to be one of his trusted commanders. He needed them to pursue his campaigns against the Seljuk Sultanate in Konya (Iconium). Normans and English alike were installed in high positions and showered with favours. Such behaviour by the Emperor caused much resentment amongst the Byzantines and there was great anti-Latin feeling. After his death, this expressed itself in attacks on merchant communities in Constantinople.20 It seems as if the poet of Gui has some knowledge of this golden age of the Byzantine empire, with an emperor so open to the West and so encouraging to noble and brave foreign warriors. He has perhaps conflated this knowledge with earlier accounts, such as those by William of Poitiers and Ordericus Vitalis, of the emigration of post-Conquest Englishmen – the confiscation of whose estates would have deprived them of opportunities for advancement – to the court of Alexius I Comnenus, when he was trying to recruit mercenaries to fight the Turks.21 He and his family remained grateful to the English, many of whom were in the Varangian guard, which played an important part on his campaigns in 1081–84. One of those campaigns was against the Norman Robert Guischard, who besieged and captured Durazzo, or Dyrrachium, an important sea-port on the north-western boundary of the Byzantine empire.22 Here it is worth recalling in detail certain aspects of Gui’s Byzantine experiences. He helps Emperor Hernis, who is being besieged by the Sultan of Konya, by defeating the Turks (3007–145, 3427–642). A native Byzantine official is jealous of the favours showered on him, and tries to destroy him through slander and covert attack. Gui refers to local resentment of him 18 19 20

21

22

See Paul Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1–3. Angold, Byzantine Empire, p. 206. For differing views on Manuel Comnenos, see Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I, pp. 3–16. Angold, Byzantine Empire, pp. 162, 180, 189, 203–6, 210; Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I, p. 222; Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), p. xxi. Krijnie Ciggaar, ‘Byzantine Marginalia to the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 9, ed. by R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 43–63; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Normandy and Byzantium in the Eleventh Century’, Byzantion, 55 (1985), 544–59 (p. 554); Shepard, ‘The English’, pp. 53–92. See Shepard, ‘The English’, pp. 70–71.





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when marriage to the Emperor’s daughter is in question (4465–76). There are English citizens settled in Constantinople, who when Gui finally leaves, lament his going; the poet adds that ‘uncore i sunt il desqu’a cest jur / Enz en la tere mult dotez, / Pur leals tenuz e mult amez’ [‘they are still there to this day, much feared in the land, considered trustworthy and much loved’, 4524– 26].23 Finally, when Gui returns to the Near East, he aids a brave Byzantine count, Jonas of Durazzo (8199–878). It looks as if the author of Gui de Warewic knew rather more about the Eastern empire than most romance writers. But such knowledge would not have been too hard to come by: stories of English settlers and English fighters in Byzantine court and lands appeared in Goscelin’s Miracula Sancto Augustino and in the account of an English monk who visited Constantinople in 1090, as well as in Orderic Vitalis and in a paraphrase of Foucher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitano.24 If the poet of Gui shows unexpected support for Byzantium, not felt by his contemporaries but perhaps explained by his knowledge of Manuel Comnenus and of earlier cordial relations between Englishmen and Constantinople, his unfavourable picture of the Holy Roman Emperor and his warring vassals is much less surprising, because it must reflect contemporary views.25 After the early death of emperor Henry VI, Barbarossa’s son, in 1197, imperial power in the West started to decline. Because Henry’s son was a minor, contestants for the imperial throne started fighting it out. The ensuing destructive wars, deplored by Pope Innocent, were only finally ended at the battle of Bouvines in 1214. The rivals were Otto of Brunswick, half English and son of Henry the Lion of Saxony, and Philip of Swabia, brother of Henry VI and guardian of his son, Frederick. Philip was backed by most German princes and (in the end) by the Pope; he was praised by contemporary writers for mildness and generosity. Otto was initially backed by the Pope but was a less attractive character, greedy, ruthless, and opportunistic,26 for which he was finally excommunicated. Their feud brought civil war to the Empire, but just as Philip appeared to be winning, he was assassinated, by another Otto, of Wittelsbach, in 1208. Gui de Warewic depicts the Western Empire as a place where powerful 23

F (end of thirteenth to beginning of fourteenth century) expands on this: the Emperor feels love for the English because they serve him most honourably (two lines added after 4526). 24 Goscelin (who died at the beginning of twelfth century) describes a church built by an English emigrant, Acta Sanctorum Maii vi (Antwerp, 1688), 410; see Fell, ‘Icelandic Saga’, p. 191 and Krijnie N. Ciggaar, ‘Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin Anglais’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 34 (1976), 211–67 (p. 228). Haskins prints the account, written soon after 1089, of Joseph of Canterbury who visited Constantinople and found several Englishmen in the Emperor’s household: Charles H. Haskins, ‘A Canterbury Monk at Constantinople’, English Historical Review, 25 (1910), 293–95. Shepard, ‘The English’, p. 54, and Fell, ‘Icelandic Saga’, p. 191, list the references in Orderic Vitalis’s Historia Ecclesiastica (finished in 1141) to English emigration to Byzantium. The paraphrase of Foucher, written by a pilgrim, Bertulph, before 1109, mentions Angli living in the city: Ciggaar, ‘L’Emigration’, p. 316. 25 See Weiss, ‘Emperors and Antichrists’, pp. 94–97. 26 According to Karl Hampe, Germany under the Salian and Hohenstaufen Emperors, trans. by Ralph Bennett (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowan and Littlefield, 1973; first written 1909), p. 238; no further evidence for this is given.





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magnates and their subordinates are constantly at war with each other over personal slights and rivalries. Many men die as a result. The Emperor has slight control, not only over the actions of the bullying villain, Otun of Pavia, and his nephew, Berard, but over Seguin of Louvain, Loher of Lorraine, and Terri of Worms. He is repeatedly guilty of injustice towards loyal vassals. The first, lengthy, episode of factional fighting is ended by Gui. However, once he departs, trouble keeps breaking out again, and he has to bring peace, order and justice to all sides on two further occasions. As he leaves his friend Terri, he warns him against pride and exhorts him to loyally serve his overlord – necessary, because such loyalty is in short supply in a divided and chaotic Empire, barely held together by the actions of a few honest men: ‘Tut dreit arere vus en irrez, Vostre seignur lealment servez, Gardez que orguil n’en aiez A bosoig ben le socurez, De home desheriter ja ne pensez, Car si a tort nul desheritez, Ben voil que vus le sacez, Del regne Deu desherité serrez.  [10,743–50] [You will return straightaway and loyally serve your lord. Beware of pride; help him well in case of need. Never think to disinherit a man, for if you wrongly disinherit anyone, I want you to know you will be disinherited of God’s kingdom.27]

I would argue that this is how the Western Empire appeared to an earlythirteenth-century writer who had an interest in contemporary European politics as well as some knowledge – possibly through travel, more likely through reading, and talking to those with first-hand experience – of the recent history of the Near East. The complete absence of any reference to the appalling Fourth Crusade, with its sack and pillage of Constantinople, suggests he is writing before, or only shortly after, 1204. Can we make any closer identification of the protagonists? It would be unwise to conjecture too far. There would seem to be no one contemporary figure who could lie behind Gui’s Holy Roman Emperor since no one occupied the imperial throne in the early 1200s. Richmond has plausibly suggested that the villainous Otun of Pavia represents Otto of Brunswick, the less attractive candidate for Holy Roman Emperor.28 In the popular mind this Otto might have been conflated with the murderous Otto of Wittelsbach who conveniently disposed of Otto of Brunswick’s rival, Philip of Swabia, in 120829 – but that, of course, would dispose 27

Susan Crane sees this passage as to do with insular interest in ‘the justice of feudal tenure’ and the resistance of ‘Anglo-Norman landholders to the various abuses of law and custom by the Angevin kings’. See Susan Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Anglo-Norman Romances of English Heroes: “Ancestral Romance”?’, Romance Philology, 35 (1982), 601–08 (p. 607). 28 Legend, p. 8. 29 Hampe, Germany, p. 243 (who calls the assassination ‘an act of private revenge’).





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of my earlier theory that this is a romance pre- or just post-1204. It seems unlikely that Philip of Swabia himself is in any way depicted in the romance as Gui himself, though he did marry a Byzantine princess, Irene, in 1197, reminding us of Gui’s near-marriage to the princess in Constantinople. But he was prejudiced against Byzantium and had a hand in the Fourth Crusade. His assassination might dimly be reflected in Berard’s attempt to assassinate Gui but the resemblance is too general to be useful. As for Gui himself, Richmond, following M. Dominica Legge, has posited the career of William Marshall (c. 1145–1219) as a model; this is certainly a possibility.30 If we move away from the strictly historical to the legendary, however, there is an interesting cluster of stories about the Norsemen and the English in Constantinople – both nations of course contributed to the Emperor’s Varangian Guard. In particular, there are stories about Harold Hardrada, the Norwegian claimant to the English throne, and his time in the city, which are analogous to Gui’s experiences there and also may account for the name of his close companion, Heralt. Harold Hardrada really did spend time in Constantinople (1034–43), in the service of the Emperor Michael IV, probably as a mercenary; according to a Greek source of the end of the eleventh century, he ‘performed great deeds of valour against the enemy’, found it hard to be released from service, but once back home remained firm friends with the Emperor.31 But other exploits attributed to him may be legendary. These include fighting in Africa, helping a lion in its battle with a snake, having a love affair with a lady of rank, supposedly the niece of Empress Zoe, and being put in prison for it, where he killed a dragon, or a lion.32 These are mostly Scandinavian stories, and versions of them occur in the Jatvartharsaga, but William of Malmesbury certainly knew of them too.33 They would have provided a group of tales about goings-on at Constantinople on which the author of Gui could draw, given him the name of a principal character, Heralt, and even suggested his later adventures with an African king. If we return to the two texts with which I began this chapter, we have a story which once again links the English in Constantinople with one of the other figures in Gui de Warewic. The hero is not the son of the ‘count’ of Warwick but 30

M. Domenica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 170; Legend, p. 18. Literary influence from The History of William Marshall is less likely: it is written later (after 1226) than my suggested dating for Gui of, say, between 1200 and 1205. See The History of William Marshall, ed. by A. J. Holden, trans. by S. Gregory, 2 vols (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2002), I, v. 31 Blöndal, The Varangians, p. 548. Both Gui and Heralt refuse the Emperor’s offers of further rewards and insist they want to go home, while ready to return if he needs help, 4448–520. 32 Heimskringla, or The Lives of the Norse Kings by Snorre Sturlason, ed. by Erling Monsen with A. H. Smith (New York: Dover, 1990), p. 508; Blondal, The Varangians, pp. 59–61, 87, 97, 99; Ciggaar, ‘L’Emigration’, p. 337: the text of the Chronicon Universale mentions Hardigt, supposedly an Englishman, but probably Harold Hardrada, who fights a lion. See also Fell, ‘The Icelandic Saga’, p. 187. 33 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. by R. A. B. Mynors, completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998–99), I, Book 3, 261. 2, p. 481; he says Harald ‘debauched a lady of distinguished family’, which sounds rather like Morgadur’s accusation against Gui.





Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad

of his steward, Sequart, the French form of Siward. Siward also appears in the Jatvartharsaga and the Chronicon Universale, written by an English monk: the post-Conquest emigration of the English to Constantinople is headed by three earls and eight barons, who include Sigurd (the Norse form of Siward) Earl of Gloucester.34 Historically, the name Siward of Arden was held by an opponent of William the Conqueror; the son and heir of Thurkil of Warwick, he was also called Barn, or ‘warrior’, and according to the Domesday Book, like his father he held large estates throughout Mercia and several manors in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Berkshire.35 He joined Edwin and Morcar in the 1070s uprising (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s entry for 1071), was imprisoned, and was released on William’s death. He is thus highly unlikely actually to have gone to Constantinople. The accounts in the Chronicon and Jatvartharsaga are moreover over a hundred (and two hundred in the case of the Saga) years later; they are of dubious value as historical sources; but they show the survival of what was perhaps an earlier story about Siward. This story may be dimly reflected in Goscelin’s reference to a highranking Englishman in exile at Constantinople building a church there;36 an ­eighteenth-century history of Norway, drawing on much earlier material, says this person was Siwardus.37 So the name of the hero’s father, Sequart, in our romance may have been indebted to Siward, a figure once of much local consequence in the area where the poem was written.38 Legendary adventures associated with his name have been transferred to his fictional son, Gui, who was to overtake his ‘father’ in popularity and renown. Through its historical interests, specifically, this romance offers in Gui not only, in Helen Cooper’s useful phrase, ‘the chivalric knight who finds chivalry isn’t enough’39 but also a model by which two emperors are aided, instructed, compared, and rebuked. In doing so, he is all the more admirable for not being, like earlier Anglo-Norman romance heroes, out to conquer kingdoms abroad or larger estates at home (though he is offered both). He is content, in the end, to return home, anonymously defend England against invasion, and 34 35

36 37

38

39

In the Saga, the name is Sigurthr, in the Chronicon Stanardus; the former name is ‘more probable’ according to Fell, ‘The Icelandic Saga’, p. 184. Siward’s estates were taken over at the Conquest by Henry de Ferrers of the Beaumont family, Henry becoming the first Earl of Warwick in 1088. Henry’s great-grandson married Margery d’Oilly in the early 1200s; her family descended in the female line from Wigod or Wido (Guido) of Wallingford. See Ewert, Gui, pp. iv–v; Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’; Peter Coss, Lordship, Knighthood and Locality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 189–90. See note 24, p. 6. Ciggaar, ‘L’Emigration’, p. 309. Tormod Torfaeus in 1711 writes a History of Norway from its beginnings to 1387, using a number of Norse medieval sagas, the Codex Flateyensis (a late­fourteenth-century compilation of sagas and stories), and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (c. 1150–1220). From the references to Warwick and Wallingford (especially the latter), it seems likely the poet came from the region, and the oldest manuscript of the romance certainly does: its scribal hand has been identified as that of brother Angier, a monk at St Frideswide in Oxford. See note 15, p. 00. Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) p. 32.





Judith Weiss

retire to the small plot in the forest where he dies. It is very odd, therefore, that England, having received the saintly body of its hero, is forced to relinquish it by a new and inconsistent turn in the story. Gui conveys precise instructions to his wife that he should be buried in the hermitage in the wood near Warwick; his wish not to be moved from there is repeated by his messenger (11,501–04, 11,535–42). Once he dies, attempts are made to move him but are miraculously unavailing, whereupon his wife recalls his wishes and insists they are respected (11,599–602). Upon her death she is buried next to him, as he desired. The poet apparently brings his poem to an end: Ensemble sunt en la compaignie De Nostre Dame, sainte Marie; E issi nus doinst Deu servir Ke en sa glorie puissum venir. Amen.  [11,629–32] [They are together, in the company of our Lady, St Mary, and thus may God grant us so to serve Him that we may come to His glory. Amen.]

Yet the romance goes on to tell us about Terri, who hearing of the deaths of Gui and Felice, comes to England and asks for his friend’s body. Despite the fact that previously a hundred knights could not move it from the hermitage, the body is given to Terri who takes it to Lorraine and houses it in a splendid abbey, where, we are told, it still lies, presumably emitting the same fragrance which it did in Warwickshire. After this, the text recounts the further adventures of Heralt, Gui’s companion, and of Rainbrun, Gui’s son. As Legge observed, ‘the whole of the postscript dealing with Heralt and Rainbrun has an air of hurried compression absent from most of the earlier part of the romance’. It is possible that the last part of the poem was originally no part of it but was added early on to satisfy popular demand.40 Some of the manuscripts of Gui suggest this: in E there is an empty space of about two to three lines after the ‘Amen’ at line 11,632 and then a much larger initial than usual for the ten-line ‘coda’ which reflects upon Gui’s good end. C has ‘Amen’ at 11,632, as do M and F, though no gap until after the coda, when there is a two-line space before Terri’s intervention. R is complete and ends at line 11,632 with two ‘Amen’s and a request that the writer be blessed. A has a coda of twenty-four lines, finishing ‘Ataunt finist lestorre issy’ (‘here the story ends’). G has a break of ten lines after 11,656 (after, that is, the account of the burial of Gui’s body in Lorraine), where there is a large, capitalized AMEN. The break stretches to the bottom of that column; the story of Heralt is started at the top of the next column, in words which suggest a new beginning: ‘Plest

40

Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 167; she too raises the question of whether the last part is a separate romance. Crane has a different view: see Susan Crane, Insular Romance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 65.

10



Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad

vus oyr de harald le noble baron’ (‘do you wish to hear about the noble lord Heralt?’) These manuscripts seem to show scribal awareness that the narrative originally ended with the death of the hero at line 11,632. The coda may have been part of this, or added to help smooth the transition to the adventures of Gui’s son. One can imagine the poet being persuaded, soon after the success of the story of Gui, to write a sequel; unfortunately it is strikingly inconsistent with the statements of the earlier part. Gui’s translatio to Lorraine flies in the face, not only of his dignified reunion in death with his countess, but also of the poem’s whole depiction of England as ultimately the best and safest place to be. It makes no sense, unless it was rather clumsily meant to bolster the romance’s theme of the importance of friendship, at the expense of England and of Gui’s marriage. Heralt and Rainbrun may return to England, but Gui never does: one of the Empires, represented by Terri of Worms, has appropriated him. The poet allowed his English hero to be re-absorbed into the place where he spends most of his time – the dangerous ‘abroad.’ But ironically, if we judge by the after-life of the story, it was the English episodes which stuck in the popular mind.

11

2 Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context MARIANNE AILES

T

he Anglo-Norman poem Gui de Warewic was composed in the early ­thirteenth century, and survives in six fragments and ten mauscripts. While the survival of only a few manuscripts or even fragments does not preclude the text or at least the narrative being well known, survival of a large number of manuscripts does indicate a text of some popularity. The sixteen extant manuscripts and fragments of Gui is a good number for a text of this type. It is, in fact, more than any of the other so-called ‘ancestral romances’. For example, Waldef survives in only one manuscript, as does Fouke le Fitz Waryn, while Haveloc survives in two. Although five manuscripts and fragments exist of Horn none is complete. Boeve has a more complex manuscript tradition as it survives in several forms, three in continental French. The extant manuscripts of Gui can give us some clues about the reception, as well as the popularity of the tale.

Gui de Warewic in single-text manuscripts and fragments The complete text runs to nearly 13,000 lines. Many of the manuscripts, however, are incomplete, with lacunae or missing folios, and six of the extant manuscripts are relatively short fragments:

 

Gui, ed. by Ewert; on the date see Judith Weiss, above in this volume, p. 4. This term was used by M. Dominica Legge in her seminal book, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 139–75 as a means of classifying a group of texts, including Gui, that seem to have as their raison d’être the glorification of a patron’s family. The centrality of family patronage to this group of texts has been, however, largely and convincingly rejected by Susan Crane in her consideration of the development of an insular tradition. While Crane considers that the text was not originally commissioned by the ‘family with title to Warwick’ she points out that the family was not slow to adopt Gui as a legendary ancestor: Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 197.  The manuscripts of all these texts are listed in Ruth J. Dean and Maureen B. M. Boulton, AngloNorman Literature: A Guide to the Texts and Manuscripts (London: ANTS, 1999), pp. 88–92.  The manuscripts are listed in Dean and Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature, pp. 90–91; more detailed descriptions are found in Gui, pp. ix–xv.

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Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context

Cambridge, University Library, Additional MS 2751 (J) This is a fragment of manuscript which had been used as a binding. It is a very short piece of text corresponding to lines 7389–522 of Ewert’s edition. The date is difficult to determine and has been variously placed in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries. It is a manuscript of middle quality with some rubricated capital initials; the first letters of the lines are also touched in red. The orthography of the text is Anglo-Norman. Nottingham University Library, Oakham Parish Library, MS Bx 1756 S 4 (N) This is a single leaf with text corresponding to lines 11,794–941 of the edition. Dating from the last third of the thirteenth century this fragment consists of two strips (190cm x 50cm and 190cm x 55cm) which had been used to ­reinforce the binding of an early printed book of sermons from Oakham Parish Library. It includes one five-line rubricated initial ‘P’. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D 913 fols 86–89 (O) This is a heterogeneous collection of various items brought together in 1861. The fragment of Gui dates from the fourteenth century and had been used as a binding. All that survives are some 900 lines corresponding to lines 8486–9061 and 11,084–421 of the edition. The catalogue of Rawlinson manuscripts in the Bodleian Library dates the fragments to the fourteenth century but this has been emended to thirteenth century in the margin. One leaf bears the inscription: ‘Hoc volumen conceditur ad usum fratrum minorum de observentia Cantuarie Cantuarie’ (‘this volume is for the use of the minor friars [i.e. the Franciscans] Observant of Canterbury’). Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 491, fol. 8r no. 28 (X) Now in a guardbook with other fragments from book bindings, this fragment corresponds to lines 11,230–74, 11,303–21, 11,352–70 and 11,396–412 of the published text. The manuscript appears to date from the end of the thirteenth century.10 The shelfmark of the book from which it was taken, Theol.e.47, is





   10

W. W. Skeat gives the earlier thirteenth-century date, Gui, ed. Ewart, p. xii; J-A. Herbert, ‘An Early Manuscript of Guy of Warwick’, Romania, 35 (1906), 68–81 suggests the fourteenth century; the fragment is briefly described by Herbert; I am grateful to Dr Anne Cobby of the Medieval and Modern Languages Library Cambridge, who looked at this manuscript on my behalf. See Thorlac Turville-Petre, Image and Text: Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Nottingham (Nottingham: The University of Nottingham, 1996), not paginated, MS No.12; this exhibition catalogue includes a photograph as well as a description of the fragment. W. D. Macray, Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleiana, pars V, fasc. IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), cols 141–42. Macray, Catalogi, cols 141–42. I would like to thank Dr Stephen O’Conner of the National Archives for checking my understanding of this and other Latin phrases. I am grateful to Phillipa Hardman of Reading University for confirming the probable dates of this and the Beinecke Library manuscript.

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one no longer used by Corpus Christi College Library but indicates that it formed the binding of a theological text.11

York Minster, MS 16.1.7 (Y) These four folios, comprising two bifolia, had been used as fly-leaves to a Latin Psalter and contain lines corresponding to lines 895–1478 and 2675– 3414 of the published edition. They date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.12 The manuscript has been written in three columns with spaces left for two-line initials that were never written. One of the leaves has been transcribed by T. A. Jenkins.13 Ripon Cathedral, MS XVII.F.33 (L) Two further fragments from a binding were the subject of a brief note by W. Rothwell in French Studies in 1958. These fragments were used as a binding for a fifteenth-century text, Omnibonus Leonicenus In Lucanum Commentum (Venice, 1475).14 These fragments correspond to lines 3391–409, 3426–43, 3496–513, 4404–24, and 4511–29. The manuscript is in two columns with rubricated initials. Ripon Cathedral manuscripts are deposited in Leeds University Library. It is perhaps not surprising that so many fragments survive as mere binding or fly-leaves for later texts as it was common practice to ‘recycle’ manuscripts no longer required. These fragments are certainly indicative of Gui passing out of fashion, in part, no doubt, as it was replaced by English verse and French prose texts. There are also two important single-text manuscripts:

Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Aug. 87.4 (G) This manuscript dates from the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth and is executed in an Anglo-Norman hand.15 Several folios are missing, six between folio 1 and folio 2, and two more at the end of the

11

12 13 14 15

N. R. Ker, Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, Third Series, 4 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2004; originally published 1954), p. xv, confirms only that this binding came from an early printed book rather than a manuscript. I am grateful to the librarian, Joanna Snelling, and archivist, Julian Reid, of Corpus Christi College for the efforts they have made to find out about this manuscript and the book in which it was found. N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries III: Lampeter-Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 713. T. A. Jenkins, ‘A New Fragment of the Old French Gui de Warewic’, Modern Philology, 7 (1909– 10), 593–96; a photograph of the fragment is given facing p. 594. W. Rothwell, ‘New Fragments of a Gui de Warewic Manuscript’, French Studies, 13 (1958), 52. Gui, ed. by Ewert, I, p. xii; the manuscript is described briefly by Otto von Heinemann in Die Augusteschen Handschriften, vol. 4, available online at . It was the subject of a linguistic study by G. A. Herbing, Ueber die Hs des Guy von Warwick auf der hzl Bibl. Zu Wolfenbuttel (Wismar: [n. pub.], 1848), referred to in Gui, p. xii.

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Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context

text. The first initial is in red and blue; the rest of the text has alternating red and blue initials.

New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 591 (B) This manuscript dates from the early fourteenth century.16 The catalogue tells us that the story of Gui is followed by that of his son. In the catalogue this is given the title of Le Roman de Herolt d’Ardenne as if it were a separate text, but the story of Reynbrun, raised by Heraud of Arden, is actually part of the romance of Gui; it is presented as one text in the manuscript. The manuscript is executed in two columns of 36 lines each with red initials flourished in blue or green and blue initials flourished in red; there is no particular pattern to the colours of the initials. The decoration is extensive, even lavish, but not carefully executed. On fol. 31v the decoration from a capital letter ‘Q’ interferes with the text. There are also a few smudges of colour (e.g. fols 37v, 63r). The initial letter of each line, set apart from the text as is common in manuscripts of this period, is pricked out in red, as are a few capitals within the text, notably the capital ‘G’ in ‘Gui’. There are a few paragraph markers in red or blue. Some ascenders on the top line of text and descenders on the bottom line are exaggerated. The manuscript is carefully ruled but written in a slightly untidy hand. There are two rather crude marginal drawings: in the margin of fol. 38vb a head, with a pointed hat and long nose, in profile and under the text of fol. 49rb a couched animal, possibly a dog, though the head slightly resembles a human. The pages of the manuscript have not been cut straight, but at some point the edges of the pages have been gilded. This is all consistent with the lavish but carelessly executed decoration. The manuscript was in the hands of the Cholmondeley family and has the arms of the family (two helmets and a garb, no tincture) on the fly-leaf and the crest on the modern binding. Gui de Warewic in compilations Despite its considerable length Gui is found in compilations with other texts. The following manuscripts have all at some point contained other texts as well as Gui, though only some survive as compilations:

London, College of Arms, Arundel MS 27 (A) This early-fourteenth-century manuscript scarcely counts as a compilation.17 The text of Gui finishes on the recto of fol. 130 and is followed by two fragments of unidentified Middle English poetry on the verso. They have been 16

There is a brief description of this manuscript in Beinecke Library’s online catalogue at ; I am grateful to Dr Ivana Djordjevic for sending me a more detailed description and photographs of the manuscript in advance of my visit to the library. 17 I would like to thank the chapter of the College of Arms and the archivist, Mr Robert Yorke, for allowing me access to this manuscript. See William Henry Black, Catalogue of Arundel MSS in the College of Arms (London: [n. pub.], 1829), pp. 38–39.

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written in a different, but possibly contemporary hand. Ewart suggests this may have been the work of the clergyman whose name is written on the flyleaf as ‘Joh’ns de Haukeham Rector eccl’ie de Flet’; he was presumably an early owner.18 The Middle English fragments do not appear to have anything to do with Gui. It seems likely that the writer just used the available space at the back of his manuscript. The text opens with a large initial P in blue with red flourishes. Later initials in red have flourishes in blue decreasing from fol. 49r to a few simple red lines. There are rubrics marking sections of the poem on fol. 17r (‘issi commence la batayle entre g. et les lumbards al pas de playns’, ‘Here begins the battle between Gui and the Lombards at the pass of the plains’) and fol. 37r (‘Issi est fet lestors entre le duc Seguin et le emperor Reyner’, ‘here comes the combat between the Duke Seguin and the Emperor Reyner’).

London, British Library, Harley MS 3775 (H) This codex contains a substantial section of Gui, some 2900 lines corresponding to lines 1–3012 of the edition.19 The codex contains a wide range of texts as follows: fols 1r–14r Vie de Thomas Becket (life of St Thomas Becket) fols 14r–14v Chanson de croisade with music ‘S’onques nus hom por dure departie’, followed by a fourteenth-century pious poem in French and two lines by Gauthier de Bibbysworth20 fols 15r–26v Gui de Warewic fols 27r–33rb Two texts in Latin concerning the rule of the canons fols 34r–70v Latin chronicle following the kings of England to 1266 fols 71r–73v Tabula brevis chronologica secundum Bedam (‘A brief chronology according to Bede’) fols 74r–77r A life of Robert of Knaresborough fols 78r–99v A list of officials (‘vicecomitatem’) of London from the time of Richard I to that of Henry VI with a short chronicle fols 100r–01r Nominem illorum qui fraternitatem S. Albani susceperunt (‘The names of those who took on the fraternity of St Albans’) fol. 101v Blank fols 102r–20r Chronicon ab 1421 ad 1430, known as the Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint Alban sous le regne d’Henri VI (‘The Chronicle of St Albans Abbey in the time of Henry VI’) fols 120v–39v Various documents relating to St Albans Abbey

18 19

Gui, p. xi. Catalogue of Harleian MSS in the British Museum (London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1808–12), p. 60, and H. L. P. Ward, Catalogue of Romances, 3 vols (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1883–1910), I, 471–84; the manuscript is also briefly described in Benoît de Saint Maure, La Vie de Saint Thomas Becket, ed. by B. Schlyter (Copenhagen: Lund, 1941), pp. 17–18. 20 Les chansons de croisade, ed. by Joseph Bédier and Pierre Aubry (Paris: Champion, 1909), pp. 121–31; this text is omitted from the list given in the Catalogue.

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fols 140r–49v The story of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in French verse, bound in wrong order21 fols 150r–78r  Latin verse by Geoffrey of Vinsauf

This is, however, far from a heterogeneous collection. Many of the documents relate specifically to St Albans Abbey; others are such as one might expect to find in a religious house. It appears that this codex was compiled for use in the Abbey. The text of Gui breaks off in the middle of an episode, Gui’s first battle against the Saracens, and the catch words ‘par mi le cors’ (‘through the body’) at the bottom of the last folio suggests that the manuscript should have included more of the text. However, a number of other texts follow. The texts are not in the same hand or even from the same period so have been bound together at a date later than the execution of the manuscript; it may be at this point that the text of Gui was mutilated. Although the texts have been brought together at a later date, the taste presiding over this compilation seems to be that of someone interested in both piety and insular identity. The text of Gui has been executed in an Anglo-Norman hand of around 1300. Initials are in red and blue, but the rubrication was never completed – the first folios and fol. 26v have coloured intitials and fols 17v–26r have gaps left with a guide letter written at the side.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 1669 (P) Although now bound with Gauthier de Metz’ Image du Monde this was formerly bound with a copy of Boeve de Haumtone, under the shelf mark 7553.22 Executed in an Anglo-Norman hand, the manuscript dates from around 1300. The text is set out in two columns of 48 lines each, beginning with a decorated initial in red and blue; the next two initials are blue but thereafter follow the standard practice of alternating red and blue initials. The first letter of each line is, as is normal at this time, set apart and is marked out in red. There are numerous amusing doodles in the margin. On fol. 8v, in the left margin, is a comment in red in a contemporary hand, cut off when the page was trimmed: ‘sei fu G. / ue de sa / playe’ (‘… was Guy / [healed?] of his / wound’). In the left margin of fol. 9r in a different, possibly later, hand is a note in ink which has faded to brown: ‘isi en cunte G / brae en þat / ine’ (‘here Count Guy …’). The first twenty-eight lines have been published by P. Meyer.23 There are twelve folios in most gatherings, ending with one

21

According to a handwritten note in the manuscript, dated 1911, P. Meyer established that these folios are in the wrong order: see P. Meyer, ‘Fragment d’un poème biblique’, Romania, 36 (1907), 184–202; for a description of the manuscript see pp. 184–85. 22 Gui, p. xiv; Catalogue des manuscripts français de la Bibliothèque nationale, p. 284, available on-line at . 23 P. Meyer, ‘Notice sur un recueil manuscrit de poésies françaises apartenant a M. D’Arcy Hutton de Marske Hall (Yorkshire)’, Bulletin de la Société des Anciens Textes Français, 8 (1882), 43–72 (p. 62).

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g­ athering of eight and one of three (the last bifolium being trimmed after the third folio). There are at least two gatherings missing.

London, British Library, Royal MS 8. F. IX (R) This codex contains another heterogeneous collection of texts and, like British Library Harley MS 3775, an incomplete copy of Gui:24 fols 2–96 Glosses on Hebrew proper names fols 97–104 Sermons in Latin fols 105–59 Gui de Warewic

The first 1450 lines or so of the text are missing, suggesting that it has been bound in with these other texts at a later date. The first item, glosses on Hebrew names, at one point belonged to St Werburg’s Abbey in Chester and bears the inscription ‘ex monasterio Cestrie’ (‘from the monastery at Chester’) on the second folio, but there is no evidence of the provenance of the sermons or Gui. The fly-leaves of the codex have been taken from texts which are broadly religious in character. They contain some lines in verse on the fall of Jerusalem and ten hexameters of the destruction of the Temple from the twelfth century, various hymns and fragments, as well as a copy or draft of two letters to Thomas de Jorz, one from the prior provincial of the Dominicans and one relating to the election of a prior provincial of the English Dominicans. This would suggest that the manuscripts thus bound together may have belonged to a religious house. This is an early-fourteenth-century manuscript with a double column layout and alternating blue and red initials. The manuscript decoration has not been finished and spaces for the decorated initials are found in fols 105–38. The following manuscripts seem to have been put together as planned compilations.

London, British Library, Additonal MS 38662 (E) Formerly part of the Edwardes manuscript, this was purchased by the British Museum at Sotheby’s in 1913.25 Although this is a single-text manuscript now it seems to have formerly been part of a larger codex containing a number of texts.26 This compilation probably included: 3  Gui de Warewic (12,762 lines) 4  Chanson de Willame (now British Library, Additional MS 38663) 5  Histoire de Charlemagne 24

Ward, Catalogue of Romances, I, 485–87; Sir George F. Warner, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collection, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, 267; Gui, p. xiv. 25 Christie’s Sale Catalogue: Catalogue of the Choice and valuable library of Sir Henry Hope Edwardes, Bart., deceased, 1901, lot. 565, referred to in Gui, p. xi. See also Herbert, ‘An Early Manuscript’, pp. 68–81. 26 Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum 1911–1915 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1925), pp. 189–90, online at .

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6  Life of St Margaret in French (now British Library, Additional MS 38664) 7  Translation into French of Adgars’ miracles of the Virgin 8  Life of St Catherine in French

The different elements were numbered in pencil before the codex was split up. The two texts which would have preceded Gui have not been identified. It has been suggested that the Adgar was not originally in the same codex as the other texts but was bound in sometime before the middle of the fifteenth century.27 Though this would mean that the compilation is not contemporary with the copying of the manuscript, it is still quite early and the taste that is reflected in this compilation is a consistent one. The hand is the same as the hand of the Chanson de Willame/Guillaume so it would appear that they at least belonged together from the beginning. Gui itself relates heroic adventures in a pious tone and is in good company with the heroic tales of Guillaume and of Charlemagne as well as the more pious tales which conclude the collection. The manuscript can be dated to the second quarter of the thirteenth century. It is written in two columns of forty lines with alternating red initials flourished in green and blue initials flourished in red.

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 50 (C) A range of dates has been proposed for this manuscript. Herbert dates it to the latter half of the thirteenth century, a date accepted by the editor, but Ruth J. Dean and Maureen B. M. Boulton are rather less precise and suggest it could be thirteenth or fourteenth century.28 This at first seems a rather random, even unlikely, grouping of texts: fols 1–7 Summary in Latin of the kings of England since Brutus fols 7–89 Wace, Brut fols 91–94 Roman de un chivaler e de sa dame et de un clerk fols 94–102 Amis et Amile fol. 102 L’Estorie de iiii sorurs29 fols 103–81 Gui de Warewic

The manuscript can be dated to the second half of the thirteenth century and it presents as a characteristic manuscript of middle quality of that period with alternating red and blue capital initials and a more ornate initial at the beginning of the text. It is known to have been in the Library of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, with at least three other copies of Gui.30 27 28

Herbert, ‘An Early Manuscript’, p. 72, has a photograph of the manuscript. Herbert, ‘An Early Manuscript’, p. 69; he has a photograph of this manuscript on p. 73 and gives a transcription of the last 20 lines on p. 63; Boulton and Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 91. 29 Meyer makes a brief reference to this manuscript of the iiii sorurs in his discussion of another manuscript of this text held in Cambridge University Library: P. Meyer, ‘Manuscrits français de Cambridge’, Romania, 15 (1886), 236–57 (p. 253). 30 M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters (Edinburgh: University Press, 1950), p. 114; see below, p. 25.

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Cologny-Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, MS 67 (M) Formerly in the Marske Hall Library of d’Arcy Hutton this manuscript was bought by Martin Bodmer in 1950.31 The fly-leaf at the end of the manuscript, taken from an account book, suggests that it was in Yorkshire in the fourteenth century. There are further indications of ownership.32 On the fly-leaves are three coats of arms which Francoise Vielliard, who describes the manuscripts in a catalogue for the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, was unable to identify.33 The first two coats of arms are found together: A – quarterly: 1 & 4 argent, a fess engrailed sable, charged with three quatrefoils silver and a label of three points gules; 2 & 3 sinople (vert) a cross argent charged with five mullets gules. B – quarterly: 1 & 4 argent, a fess engrailed sable, charged with three quatrefoils argent and a label of three points gules; 2 & 3 checky argent and sable with a border gules.

These two coats of arms have the name ‘Caterik’ written above. Members of the Keterich, Catrick, or Cateryke family used variations on Argent a fess engrailed sable three or four trefoils argent or or.34 The checky coat in quarters 2 & 3 of the second coat of arms is found, unnamed, in the sixteenth-century Creswick roll of arms.35 The third coat can be blazoned as follows: C – sinople (vert) a lion argent with a thread/thin band gules, on a bend and the motto ‘arma domini Simonis de che[?] Milites’.

A coat described as vert, a lion argent is also found in Creswick’s Roll.36 There are also two signatures. On fol. 52v the name ‘Robert Playe’, in a ­fourteenthcentury hand, and on fol. 32 in a sixteenth-century hand, the names ‘Francis Brimpaune, Mathewe Collinwoode’. The manuscript dates from the second half of the thirteenth century and was executed in a single, Anglo-Norman, hand. This codex brings together a number of historical or pseudo-historical texts: fols 1–44 Gui de Warewic fols 5–49 Wace’s Brut – the last 1200 lines only 31

32

33 34

35

36

It is inscribed inside the binding ‘J. Hutton, Marske Hall, High Sheriff of Yorkshire’; see Françoise Vielliard, Manuscrits français du moyen âge (Cologny-Geneva: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975), pp. 23–31 (p. 24). There is a very full description of this manuscript with a history of its ownership in modern times in the catalogue compiled by Vielliard, Manuscrits français; see also Florence de Rome, ed. by A. Wallensköld, 2 vols, SATF, 55 (Paris: Picart, 1907, 1909), I, 2. Vielliard, Manuscrits français, pp. 24–25. J. W. Papworth, Ordinary of British Armorials (London: Tabard Publications, 1961; originally published 1874), p. 790. John Keterich was Bishop of St David’s 1414–15, of Lichfield and Coventry 1415–19 and appointed to be Bishop of Exeter in 1419 but died before he was able to take up the appointment. Creswick’s Roll, British Library Additional MS 62541: see The Dictionary of British Arms, ed. by T. Woodcock, Janet Grant, and Ian Graham, 2 vols (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1996), II, 195. Woodcock, Grant, and Graham, The Dictionary of British Arms, p. 139.

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Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context

fols 49–52 Prophecies of Merlin fols 53–81 Florence de Rome fols 81–83 Chronicle of the Kings of England with genealogical tables in Latin

The text is in two columns with some flourishes on the initials in blue and red.

Cologny-Geneva Bib. Bodmeriana 168, formerly Phillipps MS 8345 (F)37 The three texts in this codex, all in the same hand, were written by an AngloNorman copyist at the end of the thirteenth century: fols 1–133 Waldef fols 134–209 Gui de Warewic fols 210–21 Otinel

The lay-out is that of a middle quality manuscript of the period, with alternating red and blue initials and the text set out in two columns of forty-two lines each. Inscriptions in the manuscript allow the owners to be identified from the fourteenth century, when it was in the collection of the Grey family, to its acquisition by Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1836.38

The manuscripts and the reception of the text There are certain features shared by all these manuscripts. Most notable is the fact that, unlike Boeve de Haumtone, which survives in three separate continental versions, Gui was copied only in England; all the manuscripts are executed in an Anglo-Norman hand. However, while the appeal of the verse text seems to have been limited to the insular context in which it was composed, the legend passed into wider knowledge through Europe by means of the later prose text.39 The grouping of Gui with other texts also suggests an insular focus. This is not surprising at a time when there was an increasing sense of an insular identity and culture separate from that of continental France. The two manuscripts now in the Bodmer Foundation collection (F and M) are especially interesting in terms of a developing sense of insular identity and cultural independence. 37 38 39

The manuscript is described in some detail by Vielliard, Manuscrits français, pp. 93–99. Vielliard, Manuscrits français, pp. 94–95. Gui, p. ix; both Georges Doutrepont, Les Mises en prose des épopées (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1939), pp. 292–95, and P. Meyer, ‘Notice sur le manuscrit M’, Bulletin de la Société d’anciens textes français, 8 (1882), p. 45, take the existence of the mise en prose as evidence of the popularity of the legend; see also William Calin, The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), p. 81. Unlike the manuscripts of the verse texts the prose survives in two ‘livres princiers’: Doutrepont, Les Mises en prose, pp. 92–93. There are two manuscripts of a prose version and a reference to what may be a third manuscript of the same text or possibly a manuscript of a different prose redaction, in the library of Philip the Good.

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F, grouping Waldef, Gui, and Otinel, has three texts that are broadly historical in the sense that, though fictional texts, they are presented as history and set in a historical context. The apparently heterogeneous collection M shows a taste again for historical or pseudo-historical writing; all the texts except Florence de Rome are also insular in their focus. Florence de Rome is a pious thirteenthcentury text in chanson de geste form. William of Malmesbury’s Prophecies of Merlin are interpolated into several Brut manuscripts. In two manuscripts (C and M) Gui is found with Wace’s Brut. Again both these manuscripts are concerned with the telling of history and particularly with the telling of the history of England. Françoise Le Saux, in her recent analysis of manuscripts of the Brut notes that the ‘Anglo-Norman manuscripts tend to copy the poem alongside material of specifically English (and sometimes local) interest’.40 This she contrasts with the continental manuscripts, which tend to present Wace within an Arthurian context. In C, alongside this association of Gui with Wace’s Brut and with a Chronicle of the Kings of England, we find the brief Latin history and list of kings of England, which serve as an introduction to the Brut, putting the more detailed account given by Wace into its context. In a similar way Gui apparently focuses on one period of English history. The remaining three texts do not, however, seem to belong with them. Ami et Amile is a semi-hagiographic tale surviving in both chanson de geste and romance forms which exalts the virtues of friendship. What it shares with Gui is a strong element of piety.41 Crane points out that both Ami et Amile and Gui illustrate how insular poets adapt models of saintly life to new purposes.42 L’Estorie de .iiii. sorurs is also a pious tale.43 More surprising is the presence alongside these tales of national pride and piety of a fabliau which, like many fabliaux, deals with the story of an adulterous woman and how she deceives her husband.44 However, this particular version of the story presents a woman of some piety and is far from the vulgarity of many fabliaux. It opens with an assertion of the exemplary character of the protagonists: Un chivaler jadis estoit Ke femme e enfanz avoit. De sun cors esteit tres pruz A tuz estoit corteis e druz; Sa femme estoit [mult] bone dame; 40 41

Françoise Le Saux, A Companion to Wace (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), p. 86. Crane, Insular Romance, pp. 109–10 explores the link between Gui and the life of St Alexis; see also Field below, p. 49. 42 Crane, Insular Romance, p. 104. 43 M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), I, 102–03; P. Meyer, ‘Manuscrits français’, pp. 352–53; Ker mentions the guard book in his study of Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings, in which fragments from the book are numbered 15, 142, 1762, and 1820. 44 An edition of the text is provided by P. Meyer, ‘Le chevalier, la dame et le clerc: fabliau anglonormand’, Romania, 1 (1872), 69–87.

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Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context De vilainie n’out unkes blame Seint esglise mult amoit …  [1–7] [There was formerly a knight / who had a wife and children. / He was very noble / and courtly to all; / his wife was a very good woman. / No one ever accused her of vulgarity. / She loved Holy Church …]

Meyer, its editor, describes the text of the fabliau, ‘tout est fin, de bon ton, et distingue’ (‘all is refined, in good taste, and distinguished’).45 The wife only gives in to the priest to prevent him dying of a broken heart. The pious ending thus does not come as a surprise:46 E kant morut la bone dame A Deu rendi sus sa alme. [And when the good lady died / she gave her soul to God.]

It is in some ways, like Gui, a tale of secular piety and the compromises living in the world entails. In terms of our modern genre classifications this seems, nonetheless, a heterogeneous grouping, with fabliaux, romance, chanson de geste, and chronicle together. However, the chronicle of Brut combines what we would see as fact and fiction, and the fictional semi-hagiographical chanson de geste, Ami et Amile, and the romance Gui de Warewic are presented as semi-historical accounts, neither history nor chronicle as we understand them, but something akin to historical drama; the world as it may have been rather than as it was. The overriding concern in this grouping seems to be with content rather than formal characteristics. The owner or patron behind the compilation shows a taste for a good narrative with an element of piety and historicity. One of the major issues surrounding Gui de Warewic has been its genre classification. In form a romance, though with some peculiarities in its versification,47 it has been described as a ‘roman épique’, a ‘verse romance’, an ‘ancestral romance’, and even ‘an ancestral-baronial romance’.48 As has been noted above this concept of ‘ancestral romance’ is queried by Crane.49 It is not even easy to define which texts one might consider to be ‘ancestral romances’. Legge included the continental Guillaume d’Angleterre and Fergus alongside the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, Boeve de Haumtone, and Waldef. Crane writes about texts which have English heroes as their subject, and includes The Romance of Horn, and the Lai d’Haveloc, as well 45 46 47

Meyer, ‘Le chevalier, la dame et le clerc’, p. 70. Meyer, ‘Le chevalier, la dame et le clerc’, p. 70. Gui, pp. xxv–xxvi; J. C. Payen, ‘Romanesque et réalité: Gui de Warwic’, Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, 4 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1978), pp. 478–79; Legge, AngloNorman Literature, p. 170. 48 Payen, ‘Romanesque et réalité’, p. 478; The Concise Oxford Dictionary of French Literature, ed. by Joyce M. H. Reid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 274; Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 138; Calin, French Tradition, p. xi. 49 Crane, Insular Romance, see above note 2.

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as Boeve de Haumtone, Gui de Warewic, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and Waldef.50 William Calin in his study of the literature of medieval England combines the lists of Crane and Legge.51 Dean and Boulton, in their catalogue of AngloNorman texts and manuscripts, avoid the term ‘ancestral romance’, yet still group together the texts studied by Crane.52 It is clear that these insular texts have a number of characteristics in common. Not only do they have at their centre insular heroes, but they also share some elements of their narrative pattern, one Crane describes as ‘a pattern of dispossession and reinstalment, the hero regaining through his admixture of courage and legal knowledge a rightful inheritance wrongly seized from him’.53 This pattern is not unique to the insular texts, but in the continental chanson de geste we would expect the regaining of a rightful inheritance to be by physical reconquest.54 Gui contains a particular, and apparently popular, mixture of adventures, romance, and piety. The core texts that could be called ‘ancestral romances’ are also written in different forms. However, although form can be a major generic marker in medieval literature, particularly medieval English literature, in Old French it only marks out clearly the chanson de geste; all other narrative genres are normally written in rhyming couplets. Thus the poem of Boeve de Haumtone and the Roman de Horn, written in the laisses of the chanson de geste, are distinguished from the other texts;55 the other ‘ancestral romances’ are written in rhyming couplets and as such they do not, as a group, stand out from other Old French romances. Only two of our manuscripts have ever grouped together any of these ‘ancestral romances’. F is the only extant manuscript that continues to do so and is, in fact, the only extant manuscript of Waldef. The poet who composed Gui seems to have known Waldef and makes use of it in his poem, this intertextuality suggesting a sense of the texts belonging together.56 That Gui and Boeve were once bound together in P (under the shelf mark 7553) is perhaps encouraging for those who see these texts as belonging together. However, while it is convenient to able to group the texts of insular origin about insular heroes, such occasional grouping in manuscripts does not suggest that they should be seen as a ‘genre’ distinct from other texts with an insular focus. The few indications of ownership of our manuscripts are remarkably consistent. All of the manuscripts and fragments are middle range in their 50 51 52 53 54

Crane, Insular Romance, pp. 16–18. Calin, French Tradition, p. 80. Dean and Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature, pp. 88–92. Crane, Insular Romance, p. 18. J-L. Picherit, ‘L’évolution de quelques thèmes épiques, la dépossession, l’exhérédation et la reconquête du fief’, Olifant, 11 (1986), 115–28. 55 The Romance of Horn, ed. by Mildred K. Pope, Anglo-Norman Texts, 9–10 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955); Die anglonormannische Boeve de Haumtone, ed. by Albert Stimming, Bibliotheca Normannia, 7 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1899); M. J. Ailes, ‘Anglo-Norman Developments of the chanson de geste’, a paper presented to the British branch of the Société Rencesvals, Royal Holloway College, London, April 2006. 56 See discussion by Field, below, p. 49.

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Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context

quality, with rubricated and/or flourished large initials but no illuminations. Such manuscripts would grace the homes of the gentry and the lower aristocracy and they could also be found in the extensive collections of wealthy families, such as the Greys, owners of F, the armigerous Keterich family who once owned M, or the Cholmondeley family who owned B. Gui is a pious text, but in a way that might be described as ‘secular piety’ a knight ‘working out his salvation’ in the world, using his skills to serve God. Yet it seems probable that many manuscripts at some point passed through religious houses and institutions or were owned by the clergy. As well as the extant manuscripts which have connections with religious houses there is evidence of other manuscripts being held by religious houses. While it is, as we have noted, difficult to establish a link between the family of the Earls of Warwick and the composition of the text, the family did ‘adopt’ Gui early on.57 It is, therefore, likely that the ‘volum del Romaunce de Gwy’ (‘a volume containing the romance of Gui’) donated to the Abbey of Bordesley by Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was in fact a copy of our poem. While many of the volumes given to the Abbey were religious or pious the list of donated books also includes a number of chansons de geste and other secular texts.58A copy of the text is listed in the Library of the Benedictine Abbey at Ramsey, one copy at the Cistercian Abbey of Byland, and at least four (including C) at St Augustine’s Canterbury.59 The clearest mark of ownership linking a manuscript with Canterbury is the inscription in the fragment O, fols 86–89: ‘Hoc volumen conceditur ad usum fratrum minorum de observentia Cantuarie’. While the shelfmark of the book from which the Corpus Christi Oxford fragment was taken, Theol.e.47, indicates that it formed the binding of a theological text this is not conclusive about ownership. It is possible that the manuscript once passed through the ownership of a religious house or clergyman, but this cannot be certain; many book-binders in university towns would have had bound theological books using as fly-leaves whatever parchment was available to them. The same could be said of the fragments N and Y. Their use as binding in religious books suggests a link with religious institutions but no more than that. The texts with which Gui appears in H suggest a very strong link with the St Albans Abbey to the extent that it appears that this codex was compiled for use in the Abbey. The same pattern is evident in R. All of this suggests that the piety in Gui may have been an important element in its popularity, making it, at the very least, a respectable form of entertainment for religious as well as secular use. It seems clear that Gui was a popular text, known outside England in some 57 58

See above, note 2. Madelaine Blaess, ‘L’Abbaye de Bordesley et les livres de Guy de Beauchamp’, Romania, 78 (1975), 511–18. 59 English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. by R. Sharpe and others, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4 (London: The British Library in Association with the British Academy, 1996), p. 402; I am grateful to Professor Sharpe for drawing my attention to this; on the manuscripts at Canterbury see Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters, p. 114, above, note 30; on Byland Abbey see Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters, p. 114.

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form, but with its greatest popularity in the insular context. Apparently read because of its piety as much as its national focus, it has been fortunate to survive in so many manuscripts which testify to its continued popularity until the verse text was superseded by the prose and by the translations into English.

26

3 Guy of Warwick as a Translation IVANA DJORDJEVIĆ

M

any Middle English romances are translations of earlier Anglo-Norman or in some cases continental French narratives. While the use of the word ‘translation’ to describe some of them has been contested, few would deny that Guy of Warwick is indeed a translation, so closely does it follow its Anglo-Norman source. And yet, to say that the Middle English Guy of Warwick is a translation of the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic is to beg at least three questions at once. What do we mean by ‘the Middle English Guy of Warwick’? What do we mean by ‘the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic’? And what do we mean by ‘translation’? Let me begin by addressing this last question. Much has been written in recent years about the nature of medieval translation. In a move that may at first sight appear paradoxical, emphasis on its uniqueness, its difference from translation as we now understand it, has made it possible to argue for the inclusion of medieval translation practices in the transhistorical category of ‘translation’. To look at Guy of Warwick as a translation can help highlight and problematize the opposite aspect of medieval translation: its frequent indistinguishability from many other medieval literary processes. In what is still the most influential study of the insular romance tradition, Susan Crane concedes that the romances of Sir Beues of Hamtoun and Guy of Warwick are ‘so closely related to Anglo-Norman versions that some critics have treated them as translations’. Yet Crane herself is reluctant to think of the different versions of such stories as products of any kind of ‘textual revision’ because ‘no English manuscript translates an extant AngloNorman manuscript, so that their differences cannot be considered evidence of direct poetic reworking’. Although Crane is more interested in differences between texts, whereas I will be looking for similarities, her comment pinpoints an important reason why the study of medieval translation is often a very frustrating undertaking and why, more specifically, the answers to my first two questions are not at all simple. It must be said, however, that if we cannot establish direct transmission between entire manuscripts we can do this for individual passages, sometimes of considerable length. In many such passages, including the one I will be focusing on shortly, textual matching 

Susan Crane, Insular Romance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 54.

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between Anglo-Norman and Middle English is so close that despite the lack of direct manuscript evidence we cannot describe such instances as anything but translations. For Crane, differences between the Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions of the Bevis and Guy narratives ‘may be more accurately understood in terms of insular generic and historical developments’. There is no doubt that such developments must be a major factor in any attempt to explain the differences – and similarities – between Anglo-Norman texts and their Middle English progeny, but in charting this process we can hardly bypass textual revision. Indeed, to minimize the importance of textual revision is to overlook an important problem that is in fact implied in Crane’s discussion: the difficulty of distinguishing between translation and other kinds of textual revision in the kind of milieu in which our texts were produced and transmitted. It was a culture of trilingual writing characterized by a literary division of labour that cuts across conventional modern notions of literary work and whatever translators did at the interlingual level was also done intralingually, often by those same ‘translators’, but also by ‘authors’, ‘redactors’, ‘scribes’, ‘revisers’, ‘remanieurs’, ‘copyists’, or whatever we may decide to call them. The terminology is ours and to that extent confusing, imposing clear-cut categories on a situation where such categorial boundaries were fluid, if not entirely nonexistent. Our category-bound thinking about the people who worked with texts is inevitably reflected in the way we think about what they did to those texts. Because translation involves a change of language, it is easily distinguished from other kinds of textual recasting, including scribal translation between dialects; as a result, its importance is sometimes overestimated. If we think of all the versions of the Guy story written in England between the early thirteenth century and the early sixteenth century as a continuum of textual change, we tend to identify the passage from French to English as the one significant rupture in the otherwise fairly smooth progression from text to text, which is not necessarily an accurate perception. The many manuscripts and redactions of the Anglo-Norman and Middle English Guy of Warwick narratives provide ample opportunity for studying the complexities of textual revision in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England, at the same time as they make it hard to come up with simple answers to my first two questions. What is ‘the Middle English Guy of Warwick’? For many scholars, it is the version in the Auchinleck manuscript. Fascination with the celebrated manuscript, its early date, the completeness as well as the idiosyncratic nature of the Guy story in it, and the influential article in which Laura Hibbard Loomis conjured up a setting for its production – a workshop populated by professional hacks, including translators – all share responsi

The practice is described in Michael Benskin and Margaret Laing, ‘Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English Manuscripts’, in So meny people longages and tonges: philological essays in Scots and medieval English presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. by Michael Benskin and M. L. Samuels (Edinburgh: Benskin and Samuels, 1981), pp. 55–106.

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Guy of Warwick as a Translation

bility for the way the Auchinleck Guy has overshadowed the texts in other Middle English manuscripts. For those who study the Anglo-Norman tradition, the unavailability of the texts preserved in different manuscripts becomes a serious problem. If the Middle English Guy is often reductively identified with a single manuscript, the Anglo-Norman Gui is even more reductively identified with Alfred Ewert’s edition, an edition not ideally suited to the study of textual relations between the Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions. Of the sixteen manuscripts of Gui de Warewic, Ewert was acquainted with fifteen. While recognizing that they contain, in varying combinations, two different versions of the narrative, he chose to print only the earlier one, represented by E. Textual variants from the cognate manuscripts F and M as well as a representative of the later version, C, were provided, although much more selectively than Ewert indicated in his head-note, in which he also promised to shed light on dubious readings by bringing in variants from G and other related manuscripts. Since this too was done in a somewhat unsystematic manner, Ewert’s textual notes often confuse more than they enlighten. The Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic was translated into English at least five times between c. 1300 and c. 1450, as evidenced by the survival of the five independently produced redactions. The complicated relationship between different Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions has yet to be untangled. As Alison Wiggins points out, this would require the transcription of two more texts of Gui, C and G, representing the so-called b-redaction of the poem in its most ‘respectable’ and most ‘extreme’ forms, as Maldwyn Mills calls them. 

    

Admittedly, the Caius and CUL versions are not entirely neglected by the conscientious scholar even though they are mentioned far less frequently. The Northern couplet redaction, earlier but fragmentary, is not often consulted by those who write about Guy of Warwick. The Auchinleck’s tripartite Guy is well known for its mid-course shift from couplets to tail-rhyme stanzas and the separation of Reinbroun-related material into a free-standing narrative. As Alison Wiggins has convincingly shown, rather than shifting from one verse form to another and splitting off the adventures of the hero’s son – an account of the poem that bears the clear imprint of Loomis’s bookshop theory – the Auchinleck compiler brought together and combined three different redactions of the poem. Guy of Warwick played a central role in the formulation of Loomis’s theory, as set out in ‘Chaucer and the Auchinleck Manuscript: Thopas and Guy of Warwick’, Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York: New York University Press, 1940), pp. 111–28, and ‘The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330–1340’, PMLA, 57 (1942), 595–627. A summary of Alison Wiggins’s recent and extensive work on the Auchinleck text of Guy is provided below in her chapter for this volume. Gui, ed. by Ewert. For a description of all the manuscripts see Marianne Ailes’s chapter in this volume. Gui, ed. by Ewert, II, 189. For an overview of these different redactions and their manuscript affiliations see Alison Wiggins’s chapter below in this volume. Wiggins, ‘Guy of Warwick: Study and Transcription’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, 2000), pp. 370–71. Maldwyn Mills, ‘Techniques of Translation in the Middle English Versions of Guy of Warwick’, in The Medieval Translator II, ed. by Roger Ellis (London: Centre for Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 209–29 (p. 210). Parts of G have been published, but these partial transcriptions are not easily accessible. They include C. P. C. Schönemann’s ‘Guy de Warwick: Beschreibung und Proben einer noch unbekannten altfranzösischen Handschrift der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel’, Serapeum, 3 (1842), 353–65 and 369–76; numerous excerpts quoted

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It is from Mills, to whose work on Guy texts I am greatly indebted, that I borrow a summary of the intricate translational relationships involved: ‘On the whole, the earlier M[iddle] E[nglish] couplet versions are more often to be related to this second redaction than to the first, but their detailed affiliation is often complicated by eclectic tendencies in their translators. The text of [the NLW/BL fragments] becomes much more obviously dependent upon the second French redaction in its later parts than in the earlier ones, while those of [Auchinleck] and [Caius], although close to this redaction for much of their length, draw upon a text of the first version for quite substantial passages.’ The complexities outlined by Mills and Wiggins are rarely taken into account. Although Ewert himself had drawn attention to the closeness of G to the fourteenth-century redactions of the Middle English text, his remark has largely gone unnoticed.10 Even when they take Gui into account, the most influential treatments of Guy in recent decades proceed from the assumption that for all practical purposes the Anglo-Norman romance may be taken to be identical with the text in Ewert’s edition. The pitfalls of such an approach will, I hope, become obvious from the remainder of this chapter, in which I shall juxtapose a fairly typical passage in the Auchinleck text of the A-redaction of Guy with the corresponding lines in other Middle English and AngloNorman redactions.11 In my discussion I shall be referring to the following manuscripts: Anglo-Norman (a-version): E London, British Library, MS Add. 3866212 F Cologny-Geneva, Bibl. Bodmeriana, MS 168 (formerly Phillipps MS 8345) M Cologny-Geneva, Bibl. Bodmeriana, MS 67 (formerly Marske Hall, Yorks., D’Arcy Hutton MS) Anglo-Norman (b-version): C Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 50 G Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibl., MS Aug. fol. 87.4 P Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds français, 1669 B New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 591 (formerly Cholmondeley MS)13

 10 11 12 13

in A. Tanner’s Die Sage von Guy von Warwick: Untersuchung über ihr Alter und ihre Geschichte (Bonn: Georgi, 1877); and G. A. Herbing’s ‘Der Anfang des Romans von Guy von Warwick’, Programm der grossen Stadtschule zu Wismar (Wismar, 1872), which I have not been able to get hold of. Mills, ‘Techniques of Translation’, pp. 210–11. Gui, ed. by Ewert, II, 189–90. The A redaction, entirely in couplets, is represented by the first of the Auchinleck romances, most of the Caius text, and the Sloane fragment. I have not seen this manuscript, for which I rely on Ewert’s edition. I have not studied the text thoroughly enough to be able to draw any conclusions about its affiliation to either version; so far I have found examples of alignment with both a and b and, within b, both C and G. A number of idiosyncratic readings further complicate the picture.

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Middle English: Auchinleck Caius CUL NLW/BL

Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 107/176 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38 Binding fragments from Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 572, and London, British Library, MS Add. 14408

My analysis of the selected passage takes as its starting point the customary pairing of E (in the left-hand column, as printed by Ewert) and Auchinleck (in the right-hand column, from the online edition of David Burnley and Alison Wiggins).14 Blank lines have been added to highlight parallelism and facilitate comparison but do not indicate actual gaps in either of the two manuscripts. Ore entre Gui es chemins, Now is Gij in þe riZt way Envers l’ost as Sarazins; 3880 Toward þe SarraZins y say, Wele y-armed on his stede, A launce he bar gode at nede. Unques de errer ne fina, Smerteliche he dede him in þe ways 3875 Les munz, les vals trespassa; Ouer þe dounes & þe valeys. A l’host Sarazins est venuz. To þe SarraZins ycomen he is Tant trefs e pavilluns ad veuz & her pauilouns he seþ, ywis. E les vals e les granz munz, 3885 Qui tuz sunt tenduz de pavilluns; Veu ad le real pavillun A real pauiloun he þer seye E l’egle d’or tut en sum Wiþ an eren of gold an heye 3880 E l’escharbocle, qui ert luisant, Asis esteit el frunt devant, 3890 De nuiz jeta tele clarté Cume ço fust el jor d’esté. Þat was þe soudans pauiloun; Haue he cristes malisoun. Al pavillun est venu tut dreit, Tost errant a grant espleit; El trief a cheval entra, 3895 Into þe pauiloun Gij him wond Le soldan areisona; & an hast þer he fond Trové l’at el tref mangant, Alle atte mete þat þer was 3885 Od lui sa compaignie grant, & nouZt michel noise þer nas. Od set reis qui i mangerent, At þe heye bord eten kinges ten Qui l’empereur mult manascerent. 3900 Þat alle were Gyes fomen. Atant es vus al trief Guiun, Þan seyd Gij þe englisse, Ki fierement mustre sa raisun: ‘Vnderstond to mi speche. 3890 14

The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. by David Burnley and Alison Wiggins, National Library of Scotland Digital Library (July 2003) [accessed 14 January 2006]. The line numbering and references to the CUL and Caius texts, however, follow the standard printed edition: Guy, ed. by Zupitza.

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‘Icel seignur qui maint en halt, Þilke lord þat woneþ an heye Qui fait le freir e le chaut Þat al þing walt fer & neye E se leissa en croiz pener 3905 & in þe rode lete him pini Pur nus pecchurs d’enfern jeter Al Cristen men to saui, E qui en la mer fist l’esturgun, & in þe se made þe sturioun, 3895 Celui vus doinst sa maleiçun So Zif Zou alle his malisoun, E tuz iceles qui çaienz vei & alle þilk þat ich here se E qui creient en ta false lei! 3910 Þat misbileued men be. & þe at þe first, sir soudan Cristes wreche þe come opan. 3900 Yuel fure breninde fast þe opon & cleue þi brest doun to þi ton, For icham Gij Ze mow wel se; Yuel mot Ze alle ythe. Vnderstond, treitour, mi resoun. 3905 Haue þou cristes malisoun & alle þilke forþ mitt te Þat ich her about þe se. Þe heye God þat is ful of miZt Binim Zou Zour limes & Zour siZt. 3910 Iço vus mande nostre emperere, Bi me þe sent word þemperour Garioun, Qui bone meisné ad e fiere, Þat miZti men haþ in his bandoun, Par ki vos Sarazins sunt desconfiz, Þurth wham þou art ybrouZt to schond, Morz e destruiz e malbailliz, Que de sa terre vus en alez; 3915 & hoteþ þe wende out of his lond, E si vus nul dreit i chalengez, For here has tow no riZt. 3915 Troissez dunc un chevaler Finde a SarraZin oþer a kniZt Par ki vus la puissez dereigner, & he schal anoþer finde E il un altre troverat Þat schal deray[ne] his riZt kinde. Qui la bataille, si Deus plaist, frat; 3920 Y schal wiþ þe glotoun fiZt, E si par aventure li tuens & Zif þine haue þe more miZt 3920 En bataille venke le suens, & ouercomeþ our champioun, De sa terre treu vus rendra Mi lord þe schal Ziue ransoun & als his lord serue wille E cum seignur vus servira; Euer more, & þat is skille. Si ço avient que li nostre 3925 & Zif it so bitide þat our kniZt 3925 Ouercome Zour in feld in fiZt, Par bataille venque le vostre, Sa terre tost li delivrez Hastiliche þan y rede þe E ses granz pertes li restorez. Out of þis lond þat þou fle.’15 [Then Gui took the way leading to the Saracen army. He never stopped travelling, crossing the mountains and valleys. He came to the Saracen army and saw many tents and pavilions, and valleys and large mountains all spread with tents. He saw the royal pavilion and the golden eagle right at the top, and the gleaming carbuncle 15

The lines are numbered 3508–65 in the edition by Burnley and Wiggins.

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set in the front, which gave out as much light at night as if on a summer’s day. He soon came straight to the pavilion, travelling at top speed. He entered the tent on horseback and spoke to the sultan, whom he found at a meal, along with his large band and with seven kings also eating there, who were making many threats against the Emperor. Gui then appeared in the tent and spoke proudly: ‘May that Lord who lives on high, who makes heat and cold, and who let himself suffer on the cross to free us sinners from Hell, and who makes the sturgeon in the sea – may He curse you and all those I see in this place, who believe in your false religion! Our emperor, who has good and fierce followers, who have defeated, killed, destroyed, and harmed your Saracens, tells you this: that you should leave his land. If you dispute ownership of it, you should then find a knight through whom you can claim it, and the Emperor will find a knight who, God willing, will take on the battle. If by chance your man should defeat his in battle, he will pay you tribute for his land and serve you as his lord. Should it happen that our man defeats yours in battle, you will speedily hand over the Emperor’s land to him and make good his great losses.’]16

The layout clearly reveals the most radical interventions of the Middle English translator: the addition of ME lines 3873–74, 3881–82, 3924, and most prominently 3899–910;17 the omission of AN lines 3885–86, 3889– 94, and 3914. These changes can easily be accounted for by reference to a common fund of received ideas about Middle English romance. Thus the added ME lines 3873–74, and especially 3924, offer evidence of its pervasive fondness for ready-made narrative phraseology, while 3881–82 and the lengthy outburst in 3899–910 confirm the Middle English narrators’ predilection for directive commentary (3882) and the increasingly strident note of Christian self-righteousness often diagnosed in Middle English romance. Furthermore, line 3906 in the interpolated passage in ME obviously echoes line 3882 and both were probably triggered by line 3896, taken over from AN 3918 – perhaps a neat illustration of how narrative formulae are generated and propagated. The omission of AN lines 3885–86, both redundant since they add little to what was already said in line 3884, is the product of an understandable urge to streamline the narration, and the same is true of lines 3893–94, which slow down the hero’s advance through the enemy camp, and line 3914, which merely amplifies the statement in line 3913. Similarly, the excised lines 3889–92 are representative of the kind of description for which Middle English romance generally shows little patience, preferring whenever possible to get on with the story. While there is nothing implausible in this account of why certain lines 16

Translated passages from the Anglo-Norman text as printed by Ewert are taken from the translation of the complete romance by Dr Judith Weiss, to whom I am very grateful for permission to use them: Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances, trans. and intro. by Judith Weiss, The French of England Translation Series, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Arizona: ACMRS, 2007). Translations of passages from hitherto unedited Anglo-Norman manuscripts are my own. 17 None of the added lines are to be found in the fifteenth-century CUL redaction of Guy; the lines that correspond to the passage under consideration are 3635–74.

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came to be added or omitted, it would be a mistake to ascribe these changes to the Middle English translator of the Anglo-Norman romance. Venturing beyond the standard editions of the Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts, we find that nearly all these apparently translational changes can be traced back to an Anglo-Norman text close to the version preserved in G. Thus the formulaic ME lines 3873–74 are in fact the translation of an Anglo-Norman formula already present in G, though not in any other version I have seen: ‘Bien arme sur son auferant / En sa main vne gleiue trenchant’ (‘Well armed on his charger, with a sharp lance in his hand’; G fol. 26vb); and the narrator’s comment in ME 3881–82 renders G’s ‘Cel feu le pauillon al soudan / A qui dieus doine trauail & ahan’ (‘It was the tent of the sultan, to whom may God give affliction and distress’; G fol. 26vb). In both cases, the pattern followed is common in the translation of rhyming couplets: the first line is translated almost word for word and the second, now that options have been limited by the need to find a suitable rhyme, is freer in phrasing but remains as close as possible to the original in substance.18 The extended insult in ME 3899–910 is lifted directly from G: & adeprimes vus sire soudan Dieu vus doint trauail & ahan Mal fu vus arde le gernon & vus fende le piz desqu’al talon Ieo sui Gy que vus veez Ore aez vus cinc cent dehez. Entendez traitres ma reson Dieus vus doint sa maliçon. & a toz iceus ensement Que vus seent en present. Le grant dieus tot pussant Vus doint mal encumbremant.19

fol. 27ra

fol. 27rb

[And you first of all, sir Sultan; may God give you affliction and distress. May an evil fire burn your moustache and rend you from top to toe (literally, ‘split your chest down to the heel’). I am Gui whom you see. Have five hundred curses now! Listen, traitor, to my speech: May God curse you and likewise all those who are present here. May the great almighty God give you bad trouble!]

Comparison of these lines with the Middle English text in Auchinleck shows the latter to be thoroughly unoriginal. Even when the translator appears to exercise a certain amount of freedom, his recasting of the G version is in fact constrained by his concern to match his source. This concern should not be read as a sign of excessive respect for the original text; closeness to the source 18

The word order of ‘Cel feu le pauillon al soudan’ had to be changed because the equivalent possessive construction in English (‘the x of y’) would have resulted in a much clumsier line. 19 I have silently expanded the contractions in G but otherwise kept interventions to a minimum.

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simply makes the translator’s work easier. In lines 3905–06, for example, he is able to borrow both of the rhyming words in the couplet from the AngloNorman text. In lines 3907–08 there is a slight redistribution of the content of the Anglo-Norman lines, and the change of subject in the second line shifts the focus from the Sultan and his companions to Guy. The ME couplet 3901–02 shows a less common translation pattern, in which the second line is closely matched; here the apparent impossibility of retaining the first line’s more specific ‘gernon’ results in the more general statement we find in ME 3901. Apart from these two examples, the only radical intervention is the recasting of the last line to give the more specific and more vivid reading of ME 3910, but even this was no doubt prompted at least in part by the need to find a rhyme for the very closely translated first line of the couplet.20 Like the presumed additions to the Anglo-Norman text, the omissions from it turn out to be derived from a reworked version close to G. All the AngloNorman lines omitted in Auchinleck were already missing in G.21 And for a number of instances of apparent originality the author of the Middle English A-version is in fact indebted to G. Here are some of the more striking examples of what at first sight appears to be deviation from the Anglo-Norman text: — ‘Smerteliche he dede him in þe ways’ (3875) matches G’s ‘Mult bone eyre e tost sen va’ (‘He left at once and at great speed’; fol. 26vb).22 — Auchinleck’s lines 3886–88 (‘& nouZt michel noise þer nas. / At þe heye bord eten kinges ten / Þat alle were Gyes fomen’) are clearly a translation of G’s ‘Geres de noise laeinz ne font. / A la haute table . x . roys mangerent / Qui Gy de Warewyk manaserent’ (‘They made little noise in there. At the high table ate ten kings, who threatened Gui de Warewic’; fol. 27ra). — ‘Vnderstond to mi speche’ (3890) translates G’s ‘Ore entendez cest sermon’ (‘Now listen to this speech’; fol. 27ra). — The otherwise inexplicable ‘Garioun’ in Auchinleck 3911 goes back to 20

In his textual notes, Ewert makes no mention of this passage, exclusive to G. When lines not featured in E occur in some of his control manuscripts, including C, he is likelier to signal their presence. This he does, for example, in his note to line 1424 (p. 193), where he prints an eight-line anti-feminist tirade by the hero, taken from C. What he does not say is that the speech is also to be found in G (and B, of which Ewert was unaware). It is through a version of G that these lines reached Auchinleck (1557–66). Had they not been recorded in C they would have gone unmentioned in Ewert’s textual apparatus, and students of the Middle English romance could easily have read them as an original Middle English addition, testifying to the translator’s misogyny. The passage is briefly discussed by Maldwyn Mills, ‘Structure and Meaning in Guy of Warwick’, in From Medieval to Medievalism, ed. by John Simons (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 54–68 (p. 68, note 24). As Mills points out, it is found ‘in all the surviving English versions, and about half the French ones’. 21 Although no Middle English redaction preserves AN lines 3885–86 and 3893–94, lines 3889–92 and 3914 are to be found in CUL (3641–44, 3662), a version long acknowledged to be closest to the text printed by Ewert. The fragmentary text of the early Middle English translation in NLW/BL is damaged in this section but enough remains of its lines 1322–23 to indicate that they are almost certainly based on AN 3891–92; Fragments of an Early Fourteenth-Century Guy of Warwick, ed. by Maldwyn Mills and Daniel Huws, Medium Ævum Monographs, n.s. 4 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). 22 I have underlined the words and phrases which clearly show Auchinleck’s dependence on G.

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scribal confusion in G or a version thereof. G has ‘Gastun’ here (fol. 27rb), even though it had earlier referred to the emperor by his correct name, ‘Hernis’ (fol. 20va, corresponding to line 2906 in Ewert).23 — ‘Þurth wham þou art ybrouZt to schond’ (3913) is a rendering of G’s ‘Par qui mis es a destruccion’ (‘Who has inflicted destruction on you’; fol. 27rb). — ‘For here has tow no riZt. / Finde a SarraZin oþer a kniZt’ (3915–16) closely follows G’s ‘Car ci nauez nul droit fors par traison. / Trouez vn chiualer ou Sarazin felon’ (‘For here you have no right save by treachery. Find a knight or a wicked Saracen’; fol. 27rb). — Only G refers to the sultan’s potential champion as a ‘gloton’ (fol. 27rb), as does Auchinleck 3919. Only G has the doublet ‘tru & ranzon’ where the other Anglo-Norman texts have ‘treu’ (3923); unlike the fifteenth-century version, which preserves ‘trewage’ (CUL 3669), Auchinleck picks up ‘ransoun’ (3922) and, like G, uses it as the rhyming word in the second line of a couplet.24 It should be obvious by now that there is little justification for positing an unproblematic translational relationship between the Middle English text in Auchinleck and the Anglo-Norman in Ewert’s edition. The above examples demonstrate the need to be constantly aware of the intricacies of the manuscript tradition of both Anglo-Norman and Middle English, but they do not point the way to a simple solution. While long stretches of Auchinleck obviously derive from a version of G, other sections do not; instead they are clearly aligned with E or a text not unlike E. Conversely, unexpected readings from G crop up in CUL with some regularity. And even in passages that clearly derive from G, traces of the other version are found all the time. Echoes of E preserved in this section of Auchinleck, which otherwise relies heavily on G, include ‘þe dounes & þe valeys’ (3876), closer to E’s ‘Les munz, les vals’ (3882) than to G’s ‘les valeyes’ (fol. 26vb); the ‘pauilouns’ (3878), found in E (‘trefs e pavilluns’, 3884) but not in G, which has only ‘trefs’ in this line (fol. 26vb);25 and an entire couplet in Auchinleck, ‘& Zif it so bitide þat our kniZt / Ouercome Zour in feld in fiZt’ (3925–26) departs from G and aligns itself with E’s ‘Si ço avient que li nostre / Par bataille venque le vostre’ (3925–26).26 All this makes it very hard to separate Anglo-Norman from Middle English redactions and to distinguish between interventions that are due to translators and those that are not – or, perhaps more accurately, revisions that happen to involve a shift in language and those that do not. It also reminds us that 23

The text of Caius offers an interesting instance of a redactor’s inspired attempt to make sense of a garbled passage: ‘I am the Emperours garson’ (Caius 3906). 24 The choice of ‘champioun’ as rhyming word in the first line (unique to Auchinleck, as is ‘ransoun’) may have been prompted by the similar-sounding ‘cumpaignon’ in G. 25 The provenance of this line in Auchinleck is hard to establish; although the noun used matches E, the possessive pronoun that modifies it is the same as in G (‘her pauilouns’ for G’s ‘lur trefs’). 26 G has ‘& si le nostre veint le tun / par la grace Ihesu Crist nostre redempcion’ (fol. 27rb), i.e., ‘if ours defeats yours by the grace of Jesus Christ our saviour (literally, ‘our redemption’)’; a faint echo of the second line may be preserved in CUL’s ‘And, yf hys knyght thorow grace / Ouercome yowrys …’ (3671).

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it is impossible to establish with any certainty which of the two texts of the same Middle English version is closer to the translation from which they both descend. For example, it seems obvious that most omissions in Caius are part of its redactor’s radical abbreviation of a pre-existing English text, whereas the apparent gaps in the couplet version of Auchinleck often turn out to be inherited from the Anglo-Norman source. Nevertheless, as some of the above examples have shown, it would be wrong to conclude from this that Auchinleck is in every respect closer to the Anglo-Norman text from which both ultimately derive. Take, for instance, their different renderings of the same Anglo-Norman couplet, ‘El pais tant out sejurné / Ke assez est d’armes preisé’ (‘He stayed so long in the land that he was highly praised for feats of arms’; 1523–24).27 Auchinleck gives us here ‘So long in þat cuntre bileued he is / Þat ouer alle oþer he is praised, ywis’ (1689–90), and Caius has ‘So longe in the Contree ther his duelling is, / That ouere all other he bereth the pris’ (1689– 90). Auchinleck’s first line is solid but the second ends with the lamest tag in the Middle English romancers’ repertoire. Caius has a clumsily hypermetrical first line but a good second: formulaic, yet intelligently so. Both could be argued, on different grounds, to be closer to the Anglo-Norman original. And although the translators’ general tendency to try to reproduce the first line of a couplet more closely, allowing themselves more freedom in the second, might lead to the conclusion that Auchinleck is to be given preference, exceptions to the general rule are numerous enough to warrant caution. One thing is certain, however: all the translators of the Anglo-Norman Gui worked with the couplet as the basic unit of translation and their task was therefore relatively easy because the significant information in an AngloNorman line of eight to ten syllables could be transferred to an English line of roughly the same length without much adjustment.28 The pull of the AngloNorman couplet is strong enough that even when the translators are unable to preserve the close correspondence in a particular instance they try to make up for this by inserting an extra line (or, less often, deleting one), which allows them to return to the familiar pattern. An example of such an intervention is provided in Auchinleck 3915–24, where the translator seems to have been hard pressed to contain the relevant information in the first two couplets of the original. The information spilled over and the translator found himself out of step with the original, a situation he eventually remedied by inserting a 27

The variations in other Anglo-Norman manuscripts are minor and of no significance for the Middle English translation. 28 The exception, of course, is the translator (or translators) to whom we owe the stanzaic Guy and Reinbroun in the Auchinleck manuscript, whose job was more difficult because the material had to be more radically recast. Mills, ‘Techniques of Translation’, provides an excellent analysis of the problems inherent in this project and the range of solutions offered. On the conversion of couplets into tail-rhyme stanzas in general see the brief sketch in the introduction to Rhiannon Purdie’s edition of Ipomadon, EETS os 316 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. lxvii–lxx, and the studies cited in note 103, p. lxvii. A short explanation of segmentation and its importance in the study of translations is available in Ivana Djordjević, ‘Versification and Translation in Sir Beues of Hampton’, Medium Ævum, 74 (2005), 41–59 (p. 44).

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semantically redundant line consisting of two conjoined tags: ‘Euer more, & þat is skille’ (3924).29 The translators’ work was further facilitated by the growing affinity between the two languages, especially at the level of vocabulary. As more and more French words made themselves at home in English, it became more and more natural for English translators, especially if they worked in a hurry, to reach for the French word instead of racking their brains for an English equivalent or near-equivalent. Direct borrowings in Auchinleck include ‘valeys’ (3876), ‘real pauiloun’ (3879), ‘noise’ (3886), ‘pini’ (3893), ‘treitour’ (3905), ‘glotoun’ (3919), ‘ransoun’ (3922), and ‘serue’ (3923). Similarly, CUL takes over ‘pavelowne’ (3640, 3645), ‘egull’ (3641), ‘chalenge’ (3665), ‘trewage’ (3669), ‘serue’ (3670), ‘delyuyr’ (3673), and ‘restore’ (3674). The opportunity to borrow rhyming words would have been especially welcome, and the translators of Gui de Warewic availed themselves of it whenever possible. An example of such borrowing, already mentioned above, is Auchinleck’s ‘resoun … malisoun’ (3905–06) for G’s ‘reson … maliçon’ (fol. 27ra). ‘Malisoun’ had appeared as the second element of a rhyming pair in Auchinleck 3881–82 and Auchinleck 3895–96; in the latter couplet it was paired with ‘sturioun’ – another pairing borrowed from the Anglo-Norman text.30 In CUL too we find evidence of a tendency to stick to Anglo-Norman rhyming pairs: for E 3901–02 (‘Guiun … raisun’) we find ‘Gyowne … resowne’ in CUL 3651–52; and the pair ‘esturgun … maleiçun’ is rendered by ‘sturgone … malysone’ (CUL 3655–56), as in Auchinleck. The potential for the direct borrowing of rhyme pairs is an incentive to preserve the word order of the original, a tendency common in translation anyway, especially when the text to be translated is long, somewhat repetitive, and written in a straightforward, overwhelmingly paratactic style. This concern not to stray too far from the word order of the original is evident throughout the passage above, especially in pairs of rhyming words and phrases in English that translate corresponding pairs in Anglo-Norman: Auchinleck’s ‘wond … fond’ (3883–84) for G’s ‘entra … troua’ (fol. 27ra), ‘þer was … þer 29

As often in this section, Auchinleck follows a version close to G, which here reads: Car ci nauez nul droit fors par traison. Trouez vn chiualer ou sarazin felon Que pusse raindre le dreit que nus auom Il auera vn autre encuntre ton gloton & si le vostre veint nostre cumpaignon Mis sires vus rendra tru & ranzon & cum seignur vus seruira le prodom.  [fol. 27rb] [For here you have no right save by treachery. Find a knight or a wicked Saracen who could wrest [from us] the right that we have. He will have another against your scoundrel, and if your [man] defeats our companion my lord will pay you tribute and a fine; the worthy man will serve you as [his] lord.] 30 All the manuscripts here agree with E 3907–08 (‘esturgun … maleiçun’). To find the sturgeon singled out for special mention in this variation on a fairly common formulaic theme is unusual. The word is preserved in all the manuscripts, Anglo-Norman as well as Middle English, in which it is in rhyming position; in NLW/BL, in which the word order is changed and the word comes earlier in the line, a predictable semantic broadening has taken place and we find ‘fisses’ instead (1336).

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nas’ (3885–86) for ‘i sont … ne font’ (fol. 27ra), or ‘schond … lond’ (3913–14) for ‘destruccion … region’ (fol. 27rb). Couplets in which adherence to AngloNorman word order results in the borrowing or translation of the rhyming word in one of the lines (usually, though not always, the first), necessitating slightly greater freedom in the second, are numerous in all Middle English translations. Most translators of Gui have a very good grasp of French. Genuine translation errors, instances of the translators’ evident failure to understand the denotative meaning of words in the original, are not only rare but also hard to identify unequivocally as errors. The complexity of the manuscript tradition makes the diagnosis of incomprehension very difficult, as it is not always possible to say whether apparent confusion is translational or scribal in origin. The startling misreading of ‘Everwic’ as ‘Warwick’ in the episode of Guy’s fight with the dragon in Auchinleck and Caius may be a mistranslation, but the error already occurs in a number of Anglo-Norman manuscripts and could easily have been inherited from one of them.31 Similarly, the apparent misunderstanding of E 3789–90, ‘Dune vus sovent des set baruns / De Grece, des plus nobles Griffuns’ (‘Don’t you remember the seven lords from Greece, from amongst the noblest Greeks?’), which NLW/BL translates as ‘Thynkes te noht of sir Gr[i]ffoun, / That was sa nobel ay baroun?’ (1257–58) and Auchinleck as ‘No þenkestow nouZt of þat baroun / Þat was of so gret renoun’ is probably due, as Mills suggests, to a misreading of the number ‘set’ as a demonstrative adjective, compounded in NLW/BL’s case by unfamiliarity with the word ‘Griffuns’ (= Greeks).32 But the misreading of ‘set’ is already present in the Anglo-Norman text of B (‘Don’t ne vous sovent de ses baronz …’, fol. 27ra) and the reduction of seven barons to one in G (‘Ne vus souient de vn baron / De Grece le noble Griffon’, fol. 26rb), in which the ambiguous second line of the couplet lends itself easily to misinterpretation: are we being told, somewhat redundantly, that the baron in question is a Greek from Greece, or is ‘Griffon’ his name? A more probable case of actual mistranslation, likewise signalled by Mills, occurs in the NLW/BL and CUL passages that correspond to lines 3595–96 in E: ‘Roes de charettes unt dunc pris, / Ço crei, desqu’a seisante dis’ (‘Then they got hold of cartwheels, as many as seventy, I believe’). Only gaps in the translator’s French vocabulary could account for NLW/BL’s ‘The kyng of Chartre thay tok then, / With hym ma than sexty men’ (1083–84) and CUL’s ‘The kyng of Charturs was tane / And other Sarsyns many ane’ (3383–84).33 31

Auchinleck and Caius 7129, 7131, 7301, 7305; Ewert 7231, 7233, 7403, 7407. Anglo-Norman manuscripts F and M both have ‘Warewic’ throughout. C and B begin with ‘Warewik’ but return to ‘Euerwik’, though C, unlike B, does not correct the error. (I am very grateful to Dr Judith Weiss for checking the text of C.) Neither toponym is present in G, which offers a slightly different account of the episode. The fifteenth-century Middle English redaction in CUL confuses matters even further by having ‘Wynchestur’ first (6803) but then reverting to ‘Zorke’ (6961, 6965). 32 Mills and Huws, Fragments, p. 19, note 33. 33 Auchinleck gets the meaning right but its formulation is closer to G: ‘Weynes & cartes þai han ynome / Mo þan fiften þousende atte frome’ (3603–04) for G’s ‘Roes & charettes ad pris / Byen . xv . mile & dis’, i.e., ‘He took wheels and carts, at least fifteen thousand and ten’ (fol. 24va).

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If the source for this passage was an Anglo-Norman text similar to B, which has ‘roys’ for ‘roes’ (fol. 25va), the likelihood of mistranslation was indeed rather high. The translators’ fairly confident handling of technical terms provides further evidence of their easy familiarity with French. The vocabulary of fighting, arms, and armour does not seem to pose special problems; at least no mistranslations are obvious in terminologically dense passages such as the description of Colbrond’s arsenal in E 11,121–33 (G fol. 78va). The list in E includes ‘darz’ (spears), ‘gleives’ (lances), ‘lances’ of different kinds, ‘guivres’ (javelins), ‘haches’ (axes), ‘coingnez’ (hatchets), ‘maçues’ (clubs), ‘gibecz’ (bludgeons), ‘gisarmes’ (broadswords), ‘falsarz’ (hunting spears), and ‘arcs’ (bows). G rearranges the lines and their content, but contains more or less the same terms, except that it substitutes ‘gauelocs’ for ‘gleives’ in E’s line 11,123 and ‘dartz’ for ‘guivres’ in line 11,127. None of the Middle English versions can match the terminological richness of either Anglo-Norman text, but they deal with the catalogue competently enough.34 They also dedicate fewer lines to it (six in Auchinleck and CUL, eight in Caius). Whether they do so because they are anxious to preserve narrative momentum or because some of the terms were unfamiliar and better avoided is impossible to say. We find ‘axes’ and ‘gisarmes’ in all three manuscripts, ‘dartes’ in Auchinleck and CUL, ‘glaiues’ in Auchinleck and Caius, ‘sperys’ in Caius and CUL, ‘gauelongis’ only in Caius, and ‘mases’ and ‘gaddes’ only in CUL, which here boasts the greatest terminological diversity. The translators appear to know what these words mean and how they are used. But even if manifest errors were present, we would not necessarily be justified in ascribing them to the translators. The Anglo-Norman text in B, for example, contains several instances of miscomprehension in this passage, which could easily have been taken over by a translator working from B or a related manuscript.35 Accuracy in the translation of technical terms, both in this passage and elsewhere, was no doubt facilitated by the fact that many such words were recent French imports.36 Moreover, many were quickly becoming part of the growing repertoire of rhetorical and narrative stereotypes on which the Middle English popular romance depended to such an important degree. The description of Colbrond’s weapons thus opens with a variation on a frequently heard theme, ‘En sun poig tint un trenchant dart’ (‘In his hand he held a sharp 34 35

Auchinleck 258:1–6, Caius 10,614–21, CUL 10,243–48. The scribe of B (or of his exemplar) may have been wrestling with an illegible exemplar when he substituted ‘hauberz’ for ‘lances’ in E’s line 11,125 (B fol. 76vb), but in so doing he made nonsense of the text’s careful distinction between ‘lances a chevaler’ (lances suitable for a knight, 11,125) and ‘lances a pouner’ (foot-soldiers’ lances, 11,126). The opposite happened in the equivalent of E 11,133, which mentions ‘falsarz’ and ‘arcs turkeis’. There the failure to recognize the word ‘falsarz’ resulted in the spurious differentiation between ‘arcs turkeis’ (Turkish bows) and ‘faus arcs’ (false bows, fol. 77ra). 36 For a similarly competent rendering of a fairly technical passage see, for example, the account of a siege in E 2472–78 and the Middle English translations in Auchinleck 2426–32, Caius 2426–28, and CUL 2300–06.

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spear’, E 11,120, G fol. 78va), a line taken over by Auchinleck without much reordering: ‘A dart he bar in his hond kerveand’ (Auchinleck 258:1). The line has a formulaic ring in both languages; indeed, we find a very similar one at the beginning of the passage quoted at length above: ‘En sa main une gleive trenchant’ (G fol. 26vb), translated in Auchinleck as ‘A launce he bar gode at nede’ (3874).37 As already noted, the entire couplet is in fact a common narrative formula. But if the expression was a stereotype in Middle English narratives, it is because it was already formulaic in Anglo-Norman ones. Other examples confirm this: we find E’s ‘Unques de errer ne fina’ (3881) in the late Middle English redaction in CUL ‘He ne stynte nor he ne blanne’ (3637); the second line of the same couplet, ‘Les munz, les vals trespassa’ (3882), receives two different translations in Middle English, both drawn from the standard repertoire, ‘Ouer þe dounes & þe valeys’ (Auchinleck 3876) and ‘As he rode vp and downe’ (CUL 3638). The latter, while more remote from the Anglo-Norman, is still recognizable as a formula with the same general meaning, while a version of the former gained some notoriety as part of Chaucer’s presumed assault on Middle English popular romance in ‘Sir Thopas’.38 Pious formulae that open with ‘Þilke lord þat woneþ an heye’ (3891) or something very similar, ubiquitous in Middle English romances,39 are often direct borrowings from Anglo-Norman sources, as here: ‘Icel seignur qui maint en halt’ (3532). The Middle English romance is a genre that draws heavily on a common store of formulaic expressions and narrative motifs. No text illustrates this feature of the genre better than Guy of Warwick. Laura Hibbard Loomis used it as the cornerstone of her theory about the compilation of Auchinleck, a theory which relies heavily on the striking similarities between Guy and the Auchinleck Amis and Amiloun, first noticed by Eugen Kölbing.40 Whether we accept Loomis’s interpretation of the evidence, according to which the author of Amis must have plundered Guy, or agree with Maldwyn Mills, whose suggestion that the debt went the other way I find more convincing, mutual borrowing between the two is incontestable. Narrative and phraseological interdependence between generically related texts is not a Middle English innovation, though. As persuasively argued by A. J. Holden, the Anglo-Norman Gui is itself marked by wholesale borrowing from another Anglo-Norman romance, Waldef.41 Although similar relations between other pairs of texts have not 37 38

Or ‘ful good at nede’ in Caius 3874. ‘By dale and eek by downe’, Riverside, Canterbury Tales VII.796. Other appearances of the phrase in Auchinleck include ‘Ouer þe dounes & þe dales snelle’ (4038) and the expanded, two-line variation ‘He ouerernnes dounes & cuntre / Þe brod lond & þe valays’ (6730–31); in the stanzaic poem in the same manuscript we find ‘Barfot bi doun and dale’ (29:9) and ‘He yede over alle bi doun and dale’ (42:4). 39 Long lists of them, discussed in great detail, are available in Roger Dalrymple’s Language and Piety in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000). 40 Eugen Kölbing, ‘Amis and Amiloun und Guy of Warwick’, Englische Studien, 9 (1886), 477–78. 41 Le Roman de Waldef, ed. by A. J. Holden (Cologny-Genève: Foundation Martin Bodmer, 1984), pp. 29–32. In support of his thesis, Holden gives a list of uncommon words shared by the two poems (p. 30). One of them, interestingly, is ‘falsarz’, which, as we have seen, not only was omitted

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been studied in great detail, and no study of the common hoard of AngloNorman romance formulae is available, even superficial acquaintance with the Anglo-Norman representatives of the genre provides evidence of considerable formulaic density. But how justifiable is the linguistic segregation of the study of formulae and narrative stereotypes in insular romances? Partial answers to some important questions of romance composition and transmission can be arrived at with the help of existing compendia of Middle English romance formulae, a number of which have been published over the years.42 But can we ever arrive at a plausible account unless we look simultaneously at Anglo-Norman texts and their own formulaic repertoire? How many Middle English formulae and tags, often thought to be either relicts of oral composition (or transmission) or conscious attempts to imitate the oral mode, are actually translations of equally formulaic Anglo-Norman expressions? A study of formulae in the Middle English Guy would no doubt show that many of them are directly lifted from the Anglo-Norman. In order for such a study to be feasible, new editions of key manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman Gui are indispensable. Until they are, we can only speculate. The current unavailability of an edition of the G text is especially unfortunate, since neglect of this redaction severely limits the relevance of many pronouncements on the relationship between the Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts. Mentioned briefly by Ewert, the closeness of this manuscript’s version of Gui to the Middle English redaction in Auchinleck and Caius was discussed at greater length by Maldwyn Mills. Unfortunately, Mills’s work has not so far received enough attention, and untenable claims continue to be made about supposed omissions from the Anglo-Norman text, additions, and changes to it. I began by quoting Susan Crane’s warning that in comparing Middle English romances with their Anglo-Norman sources attention should be paid to ‘insular generic and historical developments’. There is no doubt that these developments have left their mark on versions of the Guy story. A good example is the emphasis on Guy’s Englishness in Auchinleck 3889: ‘Þan seyd Gij þe englisse’. This addition, unique to Auchinleck, is consistent with the marked and oft-noticed patriotism of the manuscript and cannot be explained by reference to the more straightforward kinds of textual revision, whether scribal or translational. Numerous other examples can be found throughout the narrative, many of them not very significant in themselves but with a from all Middle English translations but perplexed at least one of the Anglo-Norman copyists, possibly because of its rarity. Rosalind Field built upon Holden’s findings and showed that Gui is not the only Anglo-Norman narrative indebted to Waldef; see her ‘Waldef and the Matter of/with England’, in Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation, ed. by Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows, and Morgan Dickson (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), pp. 25–39. 42 Roger Dalrymple’s book, which limits itself to pious expressions, is one example. An older, shorter, yet still very useful contribution to the field is Albert C. Baugh’s ‘Improvisation in the Middle English Romance’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959), pp. 418–54. Laura Hibbard Loomis’s Auchinleck-related publications likewise contain lists of formulaic expressions, and so does her chapter on ‘Sir Thopas’ in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. by W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York: Humanities Press, 1958), pp. 486–559.

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powerful cumulative effect nevertheless. I will leave such examples unexamined, however, as my concern here was to point to similarities rather than differences and to look at what Middle English owes to Anglo-Norman rather than the interesting ways in which it diverges from it. Much could be gained, I believe, by highlighting the continuity between Anglo-Norman and Middle English and by studying the Anglo-Norman and Middle English romances as members of the same family of narratives. Together, these texts constitute a linguistically composite genre that has yet to be satisfactorily explored.43

43

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the preparation of this chapter.

43

4 From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance ROSALIND FIELD

G

ui de Warewic is one of the latest of the Anglo-Norman romances; Guy of Warwick is a comparatively early Middle English romance – the one responds to the foundational texts of insular romance and the other has an ongoing influence on later texts (as this volume demonstrates). Between them they form one of the most popular legends created by English romance writers, and the essential question remains that asked by M. Domenica Legge: ‘What, then, could be the cause of the strange fascination this story [Gui] has exerted?’ This chapter will re-examine the relationship between these two versions, arguing that the close resemblances are more significant to our understanding of the development of insular romance than the differences – the most obvious of which is the change in language. The story of Guy of Warwick indeed provides one of the most popular romances of the English middle ages, sufficiently popular to give rise to numerous versions across several centuries. Popularity is itself a slippery concept; it can be measured variously: by evident success, by subjective assessment of literary quality, or by assumptions about audience. By the first measure, Gui is evidently as popular, if not more so, than Guy, in that more manuscripts survive or are recorded. By the second measure, the legend of Guy is recognized as a benchmark – ‘an epitome of what was most popular’ – but in response to the apparent register of literature in French, subjective readings of the two linguistic versions have tended to find ‘popular’ attitudes and styles in the Middle English rather than the Anglo-Norman versions. This relates to the third, more problematic, measure. Gui, written in the socially superior vernacular of the thirteenth century, is associated with baronial patrons and audiences, seen as distinct from the ‘popular’ or populist audiences posited for Guy. I would suggest, however, that the popularity, however assessed, of the English-language versions of the story of Guy owes its existence to that of Gui, or to be more precise, it is the author of Gui de Warewic who can be 

M. Domenica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), p. 169.  Legend, p. 23.

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given the double-edged compliment of being recognized as the first writer of popular fiction amongst insular romance writers. We can start with investigating how Gui and Guy measure up to the more general and theoretical discussions about medieval popular romance in recent years. The large number of surviving versions of the story of Guy, in both vernaculars, together with the evidence for lost manuscripts, tells its own tale of success, apparently appealing to both secular and monastic audiences. Indeed a recent study of popular romance shows how references to the character of Guy top the lists of romance heroes. By comparison with the subjects of recent collections of studies on popular romance, which may deliberately encourage work on lesser-known romances, mostly available in only one manuscript, Gui/Guy is popular in the numerical sense. Whereas some surviving romances may in fact be unsuccessful or ephemeral popular romances, it is evidently a prime example of a successful one – so a template against which to measure the procedures of popular fiction in medieval England. Critical attitudes to popular literature have long tended to be awkward and dismissive. Velma Bourgois Richmond remarked in 1975 on a critical tendency to be supercilious, and in 2004 Nicola McDonald’s ‘polemical introduction’ to Pulp Fictions still found it necessary to make a robust defence: ‘Popular romance […] is fast-paced and formulaic; it markets itself unabashedly as genre fiction; it is comparatively cheap and, in performance, ephemeral; it has a sensationalist taste for sex and violence; it seems content to reproduce the easy certainties of sexist, racist and other bigoted ideologies. But this is not a reason to dismiss it.’ Recent recognition of the interest and importance of popular fiction to an understanding of its culture has restored some balance, but while such discussions will, on occasion, deal with Guy, they rarely if ever view Gui as falling within their remit. The status of Gui and Guy is also bound up with the perceived relationship between popular literature and class, or in medieval terms between popular literature and its ‘dominant other’, courtly literature. As Jane Gilbert observes: ‘Popular romances have been the less interesting to the literary critic because their audience is said to have no significant overlap with that of quality romance.’ This cuts both ways; the reverse of the long-established scholarly denigration of popular Middle English romances on grounds of perceived social class or lack of it is the concomitant assumption that texts  



   

See the evidence for monastic interest cited in Marianne Ailes’s chapter above, pp. 13, 16–19, 25. Lin Yiu, ‘Middle English Romance as Prototype Genre’, Chaucer Review, 40 (2006), 335–53. Guy, Bevis, and Charlemagne are the most frequently cited romance heroes in Middle English lists (p. 342). The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. by Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Harlow: Longman, 2000), and Pulp Fictions of Medieval England, ed. by Nicola McDonald (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Richmond, Popularity, p. 198; MacDonald, Pulp Fictions, p. 1. Putter and Gilbert, Spirit, p. 28. Putter and Gilbert, Spirit, p. 20. Sharply analysed by McDonald, Pulp Fictions, pp. 8–9.

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written for the aristocracy (as distinct from the ‘emergent’ middle classes) will show superiority in taste, style, and sentiment. So Gui, as a baronial romance is free of the taint of popular appeal, while the Auchinleck Guy is seen to reflect the aspirations of a rising middle class.10 From that point the trajectory should be firmly downwards, but of course the Guy legend rises steadily in terms of the social level of its patrons, challenging easy assumptions about the sophisticated tastes of late medieval aristocrats. Harriet Hudson’s 1989 article is both rare and welcome in the models it offers for objective non-judgemental assessments.11 She cites theorists of popular culture as identifying characteristics of the ‘popular’ which distinguish it from ‘high literature’ and, as her discussion demonstrates, while not all of these characteristics are clearly discernible in the manuscript culture of medieval England, the expectations they create do form an integral part of our assessment of popular literature. So Joseph Arpad finds ‘direct expression, pragmatic outlook, conventional design, the use of received material and nonexclusiveness’ while David Madden sees ‘popular aesthetics […] based on […] familiarity, affirming accepted values and encouraging the individual to identify with a picture of the world as he would have it be – a moral fantasy’.12 We now have a profile that includes narrative procedures as well as content. It remains to be seen whether Gui fits such a profile as well as Guy. A romance such as Gui is largely defined by its hero, and Gui is a hero with wide appeal. Unlike other Anglo-Norman heroes he is not born to rule either as a king or a local lord – of which more below. In the conventional role of the male Cinderella he is a comparatively humble man who wins high rank, together with the hand of his lady, on his own merits, established through a combination of charisma and fighting skill. As a meritocratic figure he exemplifies the dream of chivalry, of a system which creates heroes through nurture not, within limits, nature.13 It is in fact his nurturing, as a favourite at the court of the Earl of Warwick that gives him his identity from the start – ‘Gui de Warewic fut apelé’ (129).14 He is not ‘of Warwick’ in any sense of lordship, by comparison, for example, with Boeve, the heir of Haumtone. However, this may indicate that by the time of manuscript E, he was already famous enough for the cognomen to be recognizable from the start. As the narrative develops, Gui becomes the quintessential romance hero 10 11

See examples of this assumption given by Alison Wiggins below, p. 67. Harriet E. Hudson, ‘Toward a Theory of Popular Literature: The Case of the Middle English Romances’, Journal of Popular Culture, 23 (1989), 31–50. 12 Joseph Arpad, ‘Between Folklore and Literature: Popular Culture as Anomaly’, Journal of Popular Culture, 9 (1975), 403–22, and David Madden, ‘The Necessity for an Aesthetics of Popular Culture’, Journal of Popular Culture, 7 (1973), 1–13, both cited in Hudson, ‘Towards a Theory’, p. 41. 13 This is not just fantasy; because Gui de Warewic demonstrates that any good knight of modest descent can gain reputation, wealth, and family, it has often been seen as a reference to the career of William Marshal (as by Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 170). 14 Gui, ed. by Ewert; all references are to this edition. The Middle English gives ‘Guy of Warwick his name was’ (Auchinleck 157, Caius 157). All references to the Middle English versions are from Guy, ed. by Zupitza.

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if such a figure is one of individualistic fulfilment with a remarkable lack of responsibility. Indeed, his life trajectory, ambition, and achievements are rather different from those of Boeve and the rest of the exiled heroes. He has an unremarkable childhood, both his parents survive and the older generation is supportive. Gui never quarrels with the land of his birth, his king, or his neighbours. Neither his lands nor his wife are ever at risk, his friends are faithful. The narrative structure of his adventures has been seen as exile-andreturn, but his voluntary travels and pilgrimage are not really exile and the return is not dynastic. He has rather the attraction of the freelance, the freewheeler, the mercenary, not tied down by responsibilities; his parental duties are swiftly transferred to Heralt, his pious death is that of the hermit, not the monk. Indeed, as Rouse points out, a hero such as Guy has to leave England to find adventure; proud of his origins and boasting of the customs of his country, he puts the world to rights.15 None of the other Anglo-Norman heroes, not even Boeve, display this attitude. Of course, some of these missing motifs reappear in the career of Reinbroun, in a somewhat mechanical fashion, spiced with the supernatural, in such a way as to suggest a response to audience expectation or demand. Gui’s career demonstrates that the author understands aventure, the unplanned setting out with no goal other than proving oneself against all comers and taking what fortune offers. Whether the ostensible motivation is love or penitence, the outcome is notoriously the same, a lengthy accumulation of sensational episodes with an implication of deeper significance that lends some gravitas to the whole – a moral fantasy indeed. Medieval popular romance, unlike its modern descendants, is stronger on violence than sex, but there is frequently room for a frisson of forbidden sexual activity, and in Gui we find an oddly cavalier handling of the conventional Man with Two Wives theme, found in so many Anglo-Norman romances. Gui, whose every action is supposedly aimed at securing Felice’s good opinion, is offered the hand of the Emperor’s daughter, and goes as far as the marriage ceremony before he ‘remembers’ his first love (4225–52). As Calin points out, this is a scene lifted from Tristan, but it is sadly lacking in that poem’s intensity.16 The effect of Gui’s easily won and easily discarded romantic attachment here is to weaken any sense of him as a committed lover, or perhaps, any sense that the author understands such commitment. (As Legge puts it – ‘Felice […] could only have been drawn by someone who had entered religion very young and had been bewildered ever since by sermons on temptation’.)17 Similar uncertain handling of romance motifs is evident in the use of the quintessential romance theme of disguise, which is used here to prolong and ironize Gui’s career. As with other Anglo-Norman heroes, Horn pre-eminently, 15

Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), p. 114. 16 William Calin, ‘Gui de Warewic and the Nature of Late Anglo-Norman Romance’, FifteenthCentury Studies, 17 (1990), 23–32 (p. 25). This is reprinted in William Calin, The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 80–87. 17 Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 169.

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disguise serves to emphasize the hero’s personal status rather than to demonstrate his new-found piety.18 It requires a figure such as Chrétien’s Lancelot to demonstrate the high price in humiliation a genuinely self-effacing disguise extracts from a romance hero. Violence, however, is something that both hero and his creator appreciate. Gui de Warewic is full of the rhetoric of chanson violence, adapted for the couplet form. Along with the rhetoric goes the ideology of innate Christian superiority, of fascination with Saracen military culture, and above all of the bonds of male comradeship. The delight in battle, indeed the choreography of battle as discussed by Paul Price, overrides any moral questioning for most of the poem, and the demands of friendship create the strongest motivation for action.19 Gui’s relationship with Tirri governs his actions far more than his love for Felice and is responsible for exposing him to genuine, if never alarming, danger. Similarly, it is the negative side of the male network, the chanson-type family of traitors, Duc Otoun and his nephew Berard, that provides the only serious personal enmity that Gui encounters. Such recycling of conventional motifs to provide familiar and acceptable entertainment to a wide audience in a diluted and non-challenging form, is one of the characteristics of popular literature at any time. There are also some less conventional developments which may indicate the awareness of a wider audience, one of which is an unusual level of positive recognition of the noncourtly members of society. There are numerous poor messengers, who are not knights in disguise and who are treated with dignity.20 One detail stands out as unthinkable in a courtly romance, the encounter between the Emperor and the fisherman who rescues Gui: Atant es vus le peschur! Grant eire vient el paleis major, Tut dreit s’en va a l’empereur, De sun dei le bote par amur. ‘Sire, fait il, ça entendez’  [10349–53] [Then the fisherman appeared; he came quickly into the principal palace, went straight to the emperor and prodded him with his finger in a friendly way. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘listen to this’21]

Another way to assess the popularity level of the Anglo-Norman Gui is to set it within the context of the larger picture of insular romance, in particular 18

Paul Price, ‘Confessions of a Godless Killer’, in Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation, ed. by Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows, and Morgan Dickson (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), pp. 93–110, remarks on how Guy ‘constantly operates in the gap left by his renown’ (p. 110). 19 Price, ‘Godless Killer’, p. 103. 20 As in lines E 5903–30 where Gui benefits from his courteous treatment of ‘un vassal’ who lends him ‘un pel’ (a stake). 21 Translated and introduced by Judith Weiss, Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two AngloNorman Romances, The French of England Translation Series, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Arizona: ACMRS, 2007). All translations are from this volume. Compare Auchinleck ‘puked þemperour softliche’ (204). Caius, typically, omits this detail.

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the historical romance produced in England from the second half of the twelfth century. This is a clear type of narrative with its own patterns and interests;22 however, it is worth remarking here how far Gui departs from these norms. This may be because as a romance dating from the thirteenth century, it is comparatively late, also it may well be because it is aimed at a larger, looser audience, that it is ‘low-context’ or open rather than a ‘high-context’ work for a specific audience.23 It is in its intertextuality that Gui most aligns itself with the other AngloNorman romances, although it is intertextuality of such an extent as to be more a matter of imitation than of creative dialogue. That the author of Gui has drawn on the Tristan, Ipomedon, The Romance of Horn, Boeve, and Amis e Amiloun, as well as on texts circulating in England if not originating there, such as St Alexis, Yvain, and the Chançun de Guillaume, has long been recognized.24 A less well-known but even closer dependency on Waldef has only been established since Holden’s 1984 edition. Both at the close verbal level and at that of motif and incident, Holden’s comparison demonstrates the reliance of Gui on Waldef.25 He also establishes that the two romances are not by the same author – there is no link between Oxford and East Anglia to provide such a connection and Gui shows a marked degeneration of metrical correctness by comparison with the earlier romance. But some very significant passages in Gui show a dependence on the earlier romance – including the feudal appeal of Gui’s parents for their son to stay at home,26 and some of the proper names, including a Modred who enters a scene full of the political cynicism so typical of Waldef.27 If we turn this around and look not for similarities but differences, we can perhaps see what the Gui author chose to avoid in his plundering of Waldef. He avoids allowing the hero’s son to invade his narrative space – the tragic potential in this is apparent in Waldef. Furthermore, Gui cannot be pitted against Reinbroun, as his son is not his equal, while the traditional motif as in Marie de France’s Milun shows the son as the father’s superior and successor. He further avoids disturbing his audience with scenes in which women or young children 22

23 24

25 26 27

See Susan Crane, Insular Romance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Rosalind Field, ‘Romance in England, 1066–1400’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 152–76 (pp. 155– 62); Judith Weiss, ‘Insular Beginnings: Anglo-Norman Romance’, in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary, ed. by Corinne Saunders (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 26–44. See Hudson, ‘Towards a Theory’, p. 34 for these terms derived from Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (New York: Houghton, 1979). For the Anglo-Norman manuscript of St Alexis, the St Albans Psalter associated with Christina of Markyate, see Ruth Dean and Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London: ANTS, 1999), no. 505; for the Guillaume, no. 82. Knowledge of Yvain is attested by visual evidence: see James A. Rushing, Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Le Roman de Waldef, ed. by A. J. Holden (Cologny-Genève: Foundation Martin Bodmer, 1984), pp. 29–32. Holden, p. 29, identifies Waldef 15,029–80 as the source for Gui E 1147–60. Gui, 9157–9316.

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are exposed to serious violence and by avoiding the depiction of England as a collection of warring mini-kingdoms, threatening domestic and local security. He does adopt the wide European canvas of the earlier romance, but in order to use the continent as the locus of danger and internecine warfare. The result is a work which reassures where the earlier one disturbs.28 For Gui is also unusual amongst Anglo-Norman romances in its lack of interest in domestic politics, as much as in its informed interest in foreign affairs (see Weiss in this volume). It does not seem to relate with the same pointed intensity to the England of Henry II, or of John; indeed it seems unaware of the urgent issues of its own time that inform other late AngloNorman romances such as Fouke Fitzwarin. It does not even read like a baronial romance, although it is aware of the familial motivation of that class, perhaps seeing it as belonging to an older generation, the parents of the main protagonists. That Gui becomes a baronial legend is part of its after-history, not its origin. There is a general consensus that the author of Gui was a canon of Osney Abbey and Emma Mason has further argued that the occasion would have been the marriage between Henry Earl of Warwick and Margery D’Oilley – in which case it must date before her death in 1205.29 Such an explanation accounts for the celebration of both Warwick and Wallingford and is consistent with the ‘ancestral’ quality characteristic of Anglo-Norman romance. However, to argue from this that Gui itself is ‘lightly based on historical fact’, although cautious, is still to buy into the plausible, but fictional, historicity that is also a quality of Anglo-Norman romance.30 None of the candidates as models for Gui are particularly convincing – whether it is Wigod the cup-bearer of Edward the Confessor,31 Brian Fitzcount of Wallingford,32 or the English tournament

28 29

30

31 32

See further, Rosalind Field, ‘Waldef and the Matter of/with England’, in Weiss, Fellows, and Dickson, Medieval Insular Romance, pp. 25–40. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 162; Emma Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors: The Use of Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 25–40; Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1987), pp. 104–06. Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’, p. 31. See further, Rosalind Field, ‘Romance as History, History as Romance’, in Romance in Medieval England, ed. by Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows, and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), pp. 63–74. See Gui, ed. by Ewert, I, pp. iv–v. There has been an acceptance, from Gui, ed. by Ewert, I, p. v, that one of the models for Gui was Brian Fitzcount, lord of Wallingford during the reign of Stephen. Fitzcount did gain power through his marriage and he – and his wife – may have assumed holy orders in old age. He was one of the key supporters of Matilda in the civil war, important for the resistance of his isolated castle of Wallingford against Stephen’s forces. His other claim to fame lies in his correspondence with Gilbert Foliot, letters which, although doubtless dictated, have been seen to convey the attitudes and concerns of an individual baron. His politics led him to oppose the church on the subject of inheritance. The tendency of family histories to romanticize the past should not be underestimated, but it seems difficult to see in this backward-looking, stubborn, and letter-writing baron any trace of the career or motivation of Gui. See David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen (Harlow: Longman, 2000).

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champion, Osbert of Arden.33 Indeed, Hugh Thomas’s comment on Osbert’s tournament career: ‘This can stand as a symbol for the way in which native patrilineages were socially and culturally absorbed into the new immigrant aristocracy’, perhaps applies more to the processes of fiction. Gui provides so little in the way of ancestral knowledge as to indicate, as Crane suggests, that its intended audience was not the family. There is no need to seek a historical basis to validate the fictional construct that is the Anglo-Saxon past as a space for romance.34 In fact, Gui’s relationship with history is remarkably pro-active; it provides a fictional local history which in turn the locality was re-shaped to fit, and an ancestor that later generations adopted with enthusiasm. Gui’s treatment of its hero and of insular history is consistent with the characteristics of popular narrative as it developed through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, aimed at a wide rather than elite audience. Another indicator of popularity is the method of delivery. The declamatory address of the chanson style – ‘atant es vus’ – is equivalent to, and translates easily into, the direct address of the Middle English versions, often identified as a feature of their popular appeal. But, structurally as well as stylistically, the romances of Guy in both vernaculars are designed for delivery to a wide and perhaps casual audience. Gui has been criticized for its episodic structure, for a mere accumulation of events for their own sake as a method of lengthening thin material for the thirteen-thousand-line narrative. Most of these criticisms are of course levelled at Guy but the point remains. Such criticism seems wide of the mark; I would argue that the Gui author shows a remarkable awareness of how to construct an episodic narrative and by so doing deliver his material to a wide audience. Length as such is not a problem for the authors and audiences of AngloNorman romance. The majority are similar in length to Chrétien’s romances and some considerably longer, the extreme marked by the 22,000 lines of the single incomplete manuscript of Waldef. Such length denotes a level of audience and audience relationship with an author that is consistent with the baronial level posited for the audiences of Anglo-Norman romances. Even where one of these romances is shorter, a complexity of structure and richness of verbal resource makes demands on an audience – the Romance of Horn is an example of this. However a long episodic romance makes very different demands on its audience than a medium-length one. A romance such as the Romance of Horn requires not only an audience capable of following the subtleties of the plot, but even more, one which would be present for two or three occasions to hear the romance through to the end. Gui, like any series, can be picked up at any stage in the narrative; Ipomedon, or even Fouke Fitzwarin, cannot. So the length of Gui is of a different quality. Several readers have noted 33

Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 133–34. 34 As explored by Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England.

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that it can be broken down into twenty or more episodes, and that these divisions may vary from one reader to another is not important; indeed it suggests a certain freedom available to the performer or reader of Gui.35 What is significant is that the episodes work in a manner not unfamiliar from modern equivalents, being highly repetitive and linked by the presence of the hero, or his son, and various other recurrent characters, friend or foe. They tend to be marked by an initial change of scene that provides an opportunity to re-orientate an audience. In fact they have all the characteristics of a series, stock responses to recurrent situations, each reaching a favourable conclusion without bringing the whole to a close, each episode connected by character but self-sufficient and self-explanatory, set against a different background, quick-moving, dramatic and making few demands on an audience’s attention. This is, we should note, the procedure that builds up the series, rather than the serial. Before we dismiss it as undeniably formulaic, we should consider that the discovery of the formula may start here, that the narrative has a purposeful structure consistent with the nature of its audience and reception. A more serious criticism than that levelled against the accumulating processes of episodic delivery is that of a lack of structural integrity, that the episodes are not only discrete but too often contradictory.36 This, as I discuss below, together with the experimentation with interlace in the Reinbroun section, may well indicate that the original author is making it up as he goes along, adjusting, sometimes clumsily, to the ever-increasing complexities of his lengthening narrative. For while the author is perhaps to be credited rather than criticized for his handling of episode, other aspects of his narrative technique are less impressive. What Calin dubs ‘that is that’ – an inconsequential often anticlimactic handling of potentially powerful material – occurs too often at otherwise dramatic moments.37 Serious, even tragic, misunderstandings melt away on a word of explanation, as when the Emperor returns from hawking just in time to stop Guy and his men going over to the Sultan (3340– 3400) or when Terri’s beloved is easily comforted when she becomes suicidal (4900–5030). Long-standing enmities or conflicts are settled in a couple of lines; Gui kills Otoun at line 6521 with little ceremony and the final moments of the Colbrond fight are dismissed in the ten lines it takes from the killing of Colbrond to the Danes leaving for good (11268–78). This lack of proportionate pace to narrative content is just what Chaucer parodies in Sir Thopas:

35

I would identify the average length of an episode is just over one thousand lines, with shorter episodes for the central events, Gui’s marriage and conversion and the battle with Colbrond. The episodic structure is therefore at its most regular in passages which are not an integral part of the main plot, such as Gui’s wanderings in Europe and the east, or the adventures of his son, which suggests that these self-contained episodes could have a near independent existence. See Rosalind Wadsworth [Field], ‘Historical Romance in England: Studies in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Romance’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1972), pp. 180–82. 36 Price, Godless Killer, p. 95. 37 Calin, Gui de Warewic, p. 27.

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From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance This geant at hym stones caste Out of a fel staf-slynge, But faire escapeth child Thopas …38

Another way to account for the episodic, inconsistent, and accumulative nature of the romance of Guy has been to see it as a composite romance.39 The label ‘composite’ is usually pejorative, although as W. A. Davenport has recently argued, this can be to overlook positive qualities: ‘despite its negative suggestions of a second-hand hotchpotch, the word directs one’s attention to the composed quality of some romances, the idea that a courtly narrative may have been compiled, constructed, arranged, and that it may be looking for complexity of effect and interlocking of motifs and styles’.40 The much-discussed change in poetic form in Auchinleck (but none of the other Middle English versions) both draws attention to this aspect of the story of Guy and masks it – responds to it, but draws our attention away from its possible presence in the earlier version. I would suggest that the AngloNorman version, as much as the bi-form Auchinleck version, shows fundamental changes that indicate in this case an author exploring the potential of his material as he goes along. There are marked discontinuities in Gui, for example in the conceptualization of England. The land in which Gui is born and reared is that familiar to a thirteenth-century audience – a kingdom, with local lords holding powerful positions, but with no ambition to mini-kingship, with well-run households, seneschals, and families. It is a peaceful kingdom with no sense of threat, either external or internal. Then when Gui returns to fight the dragon (the final episode in Auchinleck 1), it becomes the kingdom of Athelston (who is not mentioned until E 7232 / Auchineck and Caius 7130), threatened by, in the first instance, a northern dragon, and, in the second, a Viking invasion. Because it is in the Anglo-Saxon past it enables the narrative to deal with the defence of the nation against the pagan threat. The author, it can only be surmised, has newly woken up to the additional possibilities of an earlier historical setting, of the thematic power of the liminality of civilisation, the monstrous, and the pagan. This is not there to start with. Amongst other discontinuities are: the famous change in motivation, bypassing the closure of marriage; changes in structure with the introduction of interlace to enable the narrative of a second hero to take place separately, changes in the nature of challenges faced by the hero – Gui 1 kills a dragon to win his lady (one of many Tristan borrowings here), Gui 2 defends all England against pagan hordes, Reinbroun faces Celtic magic. There are of course continuities as befits a roman fleuve, familiar figures (Terri, Otun, and 38 39

Riverside, Canterbury Tales, VII.828–30. So Laura Hibbard, Mediaeval Romance in England (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 135: ‘It is futile to attribute anything in Guy, save the mere art of compilation, to its author’. Richmond finds ‘a plodding compilation’ together with ‘a capacity to choose and combine’, Legend, pp. 7–8. 40 W. A. Davenport, ‘Sir Degrevant and Composite Romance’, in Weiss, Fellows, and Dickson, Medieval Insular Romance, pp. 111–31 (p. 111).

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their associates) reappear; the chanson-style violence is sustained across the change in motivation, and the return to base at Warwick becomes a significant motif in itself. The likely explanation for this may be less an aimless compilation or indeed careful construction than a continued deferral of closure and modernization presumably in response to audience demand, in order to exploit the initial success of the story of Gui.41 Gui is a long romance and would take some considerable time to write; it is not inconceivable that this process involved responses to audience reception and demand and the structure and nature of the work is indicative of this. This is another aspect of Gui that throws into question our assumptions about romance production and audience, and again recent examples of popular episodic culture, whether in print or film, offer a more helpful model than that of the finished and published book. The author’s stroke of defining genius was to supply the deferral characteristic of romance by introducing two new elements to Gui’s story, a story that begins as a male-Cinderella courtship romance with chanson-type fighting and friendship. The two new elements are God and England, working together, new to the second part of Gui, and they are directly responsible for Gui’s longevity as a hero. The narrative pattern is of course very similar; as Felice provides a hero for Warwick, so God provides a champion for England. Gui’s conversion, apart from its thematic appeal, is an effective structural device, prolonging the action; occurring half way through, it replaces the motivation of the first half – the love of Felice, now fulfilled – with a new quest, the service of God, which is guaranteed to take the rest of the hero’s life to fulfil. The marriage to Felice is a false ending, like Sherlock Holmes’s death on the Reisenbach Falls, although it is even more self-perpetuating as it provides the hero with a son whose adventures can prolong the romance after his death. However, that romance deferral is taken as an opportunity to develop Gui into a champion for England is less predictable, and above all this adds historicity. The steward’s son, killing a dragon and marrying the heiress in a thinly veiled version of contemporary England, is not so much a timeless tale as one lacking in temporality, rather like the peasant villages of pantomime. But the changes as the romance is continued introduce fundamental shifts. Gui as a penitent, a knight of God, inevitably brings in a different sense of time, a judgemental, eschatological view of human activity in history. Gui as God’s champion for England brings English history into the divine scheme of things while Gui as Athelston’s champion gives a precise temporal reference point for the intervention of God in English history. So while Gui models itself on the plausible historicity of previous Anglo-Norman romances, it adds the note of divine intervention. It is not just that Gui is the first hero to be the champion 41

It may be possible to detect the effects of the author’s reading; the opening courtship section owes much to both the Tristan and Ipomedon, Gui’s relationship to Terri relates to the romances of friendship, specifically the Amis story, his conversion draws on St Alexis, and the depiction of England under threat from Waldef, while Reinbroun seems to move through adventures culled from the Breton lai. These influences, and others, have been noted as part of the derivative nature of Gui, but they may be sequential to some extent rather than simultaneous.

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of all England, but that he is chosen to be so by God, so that England has as much claim on the divine attention as does the France of the Charlemagne tradition. The appearances of Guy in chronicle seem to confirm that it is this that makes Guy such an important English hero. The features we have already noted indicate that Gui is an unusual case amongst insular romances of the Anglo-Norman period. With a meritocratic hero, moving through a landscape of aventure, it shows an author not only well-versed and well-read in established narrative but also with an eye to modernizing his material to appeal to a wider audience than that of the earlier generation of Anglo-Norman romances. In Hudson’s terms, the close, highcontext courtly romance opens into a low-context text when it has a hero and events that hold a wider appeal than the narrowly elitist. The qualities of Gui that make it popular in terms of wide appeal and success are not only the perennial appeal of action and achievement but the design of easy accessibility and the reassuring assertion of normative morality. To see Gui and indeed Guy as popular is not to deny the ability of these texts to explore themes of interest and importance to their own culture and beyond, as is demonstrated in modern readings of the Guy legend as exploring tensions between war and piety, with the conceptualization of chivalry, with issues of national identity. But to recognize this is to accept that popular romance could be written in Anglo-Norman in the thirteenth century with all that implies for our understanding of audiences, readers, and language. This provides a context for enquiring further into the purpose and nature of the Middle English redactions. Gui is one of a group of Anglo-Norman romances translated into English to suit the audience’s linguistic tastes and abilities, but it changes less than any of them. With no significant ideological changes, large-scale omissions, or interpolations, Gui/y sails the troubled waters of language change, unshaken and unstirred. The comparatively short chronological difference between the Anglo-Norman originals and Middle English rewritings may account for some of this but more likely is the success of the Anglo-Norman author in exploiting, even creating, modernizing features and trends. This success is attested by the number of redactions of the original version that were produced in Anglo-Norman throughout the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth. Gui is already a popular figure when he is picked by the Auchinleck editor to act as a central and focusing figure to the collection, popular enough and with a strong enough identity to more than hold his own with Arthur, Richard, Charlemagne, and the rest. But this lack of change and its significance have tended to be obscured by the understandable interest in Guy of Warwick for the study of Middle English literature. Richmond’s appreciative analysis of Guy of Warwick, published in 1975, was perhaps the first lengthy discussion and defence of the poem on its literary merits, and offers the closest and most positive analysis of the literary procedures and moral values of Guy.42 However, it also offers a clear example 42

Richmond, Popularity, pp. 149–94 (chapter 6: ‘The Most Popular Hero: Guy of Warwick’).

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of the glossing over of the contribution of its source, Gui. The passages she discusses in support of her argument are, almost without exception, close translations of the Anglo-Norman: there may be interesting differences in verbal detail between Auchinleck and Caius, but both versions relate closely to some originals very close to E.43 Her praise for ‘the purity of conception and the skill of the writer in executing the design [which …] makes the romance of Guy of Warwick an admirable intellectual and aesthetic achievement, a culminating illustration of the distinctive Middle English romance’ is valid if the judgement is directed rather at the original writer than the translators of the Middle English versions.44 The moral values, the design and the hero’s growing awareness of his own nature that she finds in the romance do not originate in the Middle English versions. The same goes for a number of valuable and perceptive studies of the ME Guy that have followed since in which discussion of the romance versions of the Guy of Warwick story all too often generalize on the figure of ‘Guy’, thus glossing over the earlier figure of the Anglo-Norman ‘Gui’.45 If we recognize that the changes between Anglo-Norman and Middle English tell us much about the changes in the status of the two vernaculars, but little about an increase in the popularization of the story of Guy, we can identify what the English-language versions are in fact doing with the popular romance they inherit. Gui already addresses – evidently with some considerable success – a wide audience, but as the status of the two vernaculars shifts, as ‘prestige slides towards marginalization’,46 translation is needed to keep it available to as wide an audience as possible. This is consistent with Hudson’s observation that English is, in the fourteenth century, the language for popular literature, not ‘because it was the language of the lower classes, but because it was the most widely accessible literary language’.47 And it is just this process of translation that is the impressive achievement of the Middle English writers. Indeed the complex pattern of redactions (see Wiggins below) indicates a busy level of translation activity. To translate a work of this length is much more demanding a task than merely to copy yet another version from the AngloNorman, although of course that continues well into the fourteenth century. However, what Auchinleck also does, partly by the accident of the nature of 43

44 45

46

47

Richmond, Popularity, pp.172–93; on Guy’s sermon to Terri (Caius 10,250–59), compare E 10,741–58; Guy’s prayer (Caius 9776–91), compare E 10,215–54; Amoraunt as the devil (Caius 8153), compare E 8448, ‘ainz est diable’ (‘that’s a devil’); Guy’s expression of trust in God (Caius 7923–32), compare E 8217–26; Guy’s prayer before the Colbrond fight (Caius 10,560–71, Auchinlech 252), compare E 11,057–65. Richmond, Popularity, p. 193. Richmond’s later study, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, goes some way to balance this with a full chapter on Gui. But see also Fewster, Traditionality, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 116–20. Susan Crane, ‘Social Aspects of Bilingualism in the Thirteenth Century’, Thirteenth Century England VI, ed. by Michael Prestwich, R. H. Britnell, and Robin Frame (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp. 103–16 (p. 113). Hudson, ‘Towards a Theory’, p. 35.

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the different texts available, is to manipulate the structure of Gui, reshaping it by moving the marriage to the start of a clearly defined Part 2 and thus making a diptych structure not apparent in Gui. It is instructing the readers how to read the romance – an interesting and ambitious project, but achieved through pivotal structural rearrangement, not through changes in material. As Alison Wiggins has shown, the fifteenth-century Caius manuscript provides evidence of a different kind of editorial design, with careful excisions relating in particular to scenes of violence and emotional distress and to overlong description.48 It takes advantage of the episodic structure of Guy/Gui to omit entire episodes that may seem unchivalrous or morally problematic – the Florentin episode and that concerning Guy’s abortive marriage to Clarice. The resultant romance is a non-controversial ‘celebration of traditional chivalric values’. In some ways it resembles the late-fourteenth-century reworking of Ipomadon which renders more genteel a subversive courtly romance from the Anglo-Norman period.49 There are expansions and changes in detail provided in the Middle English versions which result in shifts in tone and interest – this is not slavish translation, as medieval translation rarely is. These are not, however, popularizing touches, often quite the reverse, as in the subtle symbolism of the image of the three kings on Guy’s shield in Auchinleck, or the intensification of the pious elements of the ending of the romance by the moving of the Reinbroun ­material to a separate text.50 The changes made by the Middle English redactors are thus more a matter of improving delivery or narrative structure, in the case of Caius omitting elements considered disturbing, or more generally with changes in some minor details and the larger theme of piety, modernizing the material slightly for a later audience. Such changes are interesting and indicative of changing tastes and interests although it must be stressed they are slight in comparison with the thousands of lines that are virtually unchanged. What they are not, however, is indicative of a development towards the popular in terms of content or aesthetic. Rather the popular success of Gui and the importance of its protagonist as an English hero is confirmed by the readings offered by the Middle English redactors. The change in romance address from local and elite to nationalistic and of wide appeal, has already taken place. One major theme that has been the focus of much recent attention would seem to be the exception to this, and that is the patriotic sense of England. The arguments in favour of reading the agenda of the compilers of Auchinleck as 48

Alison Wiggins, ‘A Makeover Story: The Caius Manuscript Copy of Guy of Warwick’, Studies in Philology, 104 (forthcoming, 2007). 49 Rosalind Field, ‘Ipomedon to Ipomadon A: Two Views of Courtliness’, in The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, ed. by Roger Ellis (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 135–41. 50 For a discussion of the shield see The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, ed. by Alison Wiggins (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), note to lines 2998–99; on the pious elements see Andrea Hopkins, The Sinful Knights: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 78–79.

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being one of adapting received material to suit the interests of a newly patriotic readership has become firmly accepted.51 The conjunction of patriotic material with a newly vigorous English-language narrative capability seems self-explanatory. In particular, Auchinleck’s treatment of the story of Guy of Warwick, as English knight and defender of the realm against the dragons and Danes that attack it, is seen as feeding directly into the adoption of Guy as an English hero, and indeed an English worthy. However the scholarship on Gui offers a different perspective: Crane points out that ‘Gui de Warewic brings us the first hero to defend all England against its enemies’, and Calin claims that ‘no single Anglo-Norman book can be said to have had so great an impact on the English consciousness and the English national character as did Gui de Warewic’.52 A comparison of Gui with Guy may confirm that this alternative emphasis needs to be taken into account in our reading of the relationship between the different versions. The Englishness of Gui may be modelled on that of Waldef, as Holden suggests: ‘On est frappé aussi dans chaque poème par le patriotisme fervent des personages, et l’insistence par l’auteur sur le caractère anglais de ses héros’ (‘One is also struck, in each poem, by the fervent patriotism of the characters, and each author’s insistence on the English character of his heroes’).53 And indeed the words with which Gui presents himself are clear enough: ‘Gui de Warwic sui apelez, En Engleterre la fui nez’ (‘I am called Gui of Warwick and I was born in England’, E 871–72).54 The opening of the poem, partly missing in Auchinleck, has already placed the action in England, and characterized the good rule of Sequart/Sywarde the steward by means of the safe travel motif.55 The setting of the romance and the identity of the hero are recognized consistently as English. Throughout the first part of the poem, the reader is hard put to distinguish the treatments of the material in terms of patriotic content: Gui speaks of ‘the land where I was born’ (‘la terre u jo fu né’, E 3944), where the Auchinleck hero is described as ‘Gij þe Englisc’ (3889; Caius has neither). The Middle English versions omit the remark that Gui’s deeds have ‘brought honour to his countrymen’: ‘ad Engleis ad faut mult honur’ (E 4523) but all versions have Guy choosing to return to his country, England (E 7145; Auchinleck 7042; Cauis 7043). However, twice (E 1025 and 5067) Gui’s return to England is in

51 52 53 54 55

See the seminal work by Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation, especially pp. 108–41 (chapter 4: ‘Englishness in the Auchinleck Manuscript’). Crane, Insular Romance, p. 65; Calin, Gui de Warewic, p. 24. Waldef, p. 29. These lines appear in Auchinleck as ‘Gij of Warwike men clepeþ me; Ich was y-born in þat cuntre’ (936–37; also Cauis 937–38) in which ‘cuntre’ would seem to denote Warwick. E 107–10: ‘E faite I aveit tele peis, / Si hom portast d’argent sun feis, / Ne trovereit robeur ne larrun / Que li tolsist vaillant un botun.’ (‘He kept such peace that if a man were to carry about a quantity of silver, he would not find a single robber or thief to steal a pennyworth from him’); compare Auchinleck 137–42, Caius 134–42. Rouse, Idea, pp. 105–12, notes its occurrence in Gui in his thorough discussion of the insular motif of the safety of the via regia.

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From Gui to Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance

order to see his king (unnamed), a sense of social duty not expressed by the English-language hero. Once the perception of England becomes that of Athelston’s Anglo-Saxon realm, the politics of the feudal court or parliament (Auchinleck 238) become tense and crucial and the external threats, fantastic and military, require the hero to attend to them. This is further recognized in E when Gui’s absence is seen as endangering the land.56 After his conversion, Gui’s introduction of himself prior to and during the Amoraunt fight, is self-consciously English in both languages: ‘Engleis sui […] En Engleterre, la fui nurri (E 8275–76). Chrestien sui […] El regne d’Engleterre fu ne’ (E 8592–94; cf. Auchinleck 110, Caius 8295–96). His disguise may conceal his personal identity, but his place of origin remains a matter of pride. For the author of Gui the opening of the Colbrond episode finds Athelston and his court in the ancient Anglo-Saxon capital of Winchester. This episode, dramatically and thematically the centrepiece of Guy’s career, is focused on the danger to Athelston’s realm – in Anglo-Norman articulated as ‘la tere’, in Auchinleck, famously and repeatedly, as ‘Inglond’(although in Caius it remains ‘this lond’). So Gui swears ‘de servage defendre la tere’ (11,064), and Guy ‘to make Inglond fre’ (Auchinleck 248). A modern reading will pick up on ‘fre’ as a key component of modern patriotic rhetoric, but in fact the technical term ‘servage’ is probably closer to the tribute-paying mini-kingdom that the Danes plan for England. The differences here are often taken to denote an increase in patriotism in the English language text, and indeed it may well mark a new vocabulary expressive of patriotism. We may however be dealing with something as simple as the metric equivalence of ‘la terre’ to ‘the lond’ and ‘Inglond’ by comparison with ‘Engleterre’. This argument can be pursued into further detailed phrases in both versions, but enough has perhaps been said to suggest that readers of the Middle English Guy have been finding what they have been looking for – an English-language text creating a hero for England – whereas what the text actually delivers (and Caius serves to emphasize this) is an articulation of ideas, concepts, and attitudes present in its original. This is not to deny what Auchinleck is doing here, but it is a process not a change. The depiction of Gui as an English knight and champion of all England explains why Guy of Warwick is chosen as the centrepiece of Auchinleck’s programme of ‘English knights’. And naturally the compiler or editor has emphasized his theme. This chapter has argued that an assessment of the Gui-author is essential to understanding the development of the entire legend. The unknown author of Gui selected his material and presented it to his audience with a firm grasp of the new directions needed for a wider appeal. He understood the concept of aventure, end-orientated romance deferral and the episodic structuring which makes the resultant lengthy romance accessible to a variety of audiences. He 56

E 8250: ‘Dunt la terre est mise en peril’ (‘which has put the land in danger’); not in Auchinleck; Caius has ‘Therfor that londe is now nere shente’ (7954).

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constructed a hero representative of a new attitude to feudal rank – a meritocrat who makes his way by sheer force of arms and personality to international fame and celebrity, and who achieves the highest rank by winning an heiress as bride. He shows an unerring sense of how to exploit the growing interest in the English past and attaching it to a place that was ready to welcome the secular relics of a romance hero. He keeps enough of the familiar and stirring poetic and rhetoric of the chansons de geste to appeal to his audience, while updating the legal and social issues they explore. He moves away from the limitations of ancestral romance to construct a romance of the nation and in so doing may be expressing a new sense of English self-confidence. He externalizes threats to the hero, his lands, and ultimately the nation, to make threat and violence less oppressive and to assure his audience of their ability, through their iconic heroes, to deal with anything. He introduces an attractive religiosity but never so as to overwhelm the generic limits of romance, taming the excesses of romance and hagiography so that a family is not destroyed by one member’s response to passion or vocation. He understands tone, pace, and the values of entertainment. He is one of the great unsung successes amongst the authors of medieval England; and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then his Middle English successors are sincere indeed.

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5 The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick ALISON WIGGINS

B

efore the era of print, there was no single standard text of the Middle English romance Guy of Warwick. Although Guy’s legend was known in many regions and over an extended period, his status and portrayal were not always and everywhere the same. The manuscript record does not indicate a situation whereby a single dominant version of the romance was repeatedly copied and re-copied and thus disseminated around the country. Like the majority of Middle English romances, Guy of Warwick never had contact with any organizing production force of the kind that can, at least to some extent, be associated with those medieval texts that survive in higher numbers or which cluster around, or spread out from, a single point of origin. Rather, the textual and manuscript evidence implies a tradition which was far more erratic, fragmented, and decentred, and which was varied in terms of language, manuscript context, readership, and locality. The impulse to translate, copy, or compile Guy of Warwick was influenced and inspired at particular moments by specific cultural stimuli. Versions emerged and receded at different times and in different locales. There are instances of re-writing, adaptating, extracting, and combining versions of this, one of the most lengthy of Middle English romances, as it moved between different communities and environments. This chapter describes this mobile, animate, and responsive textual tradition and how versions of the romance came to be translated, adapted, discarded, or revived according to the interests of some of its earliest reading communities. The situation is a dynamic one but it is worth pointing out that it is specifically and distinctively a written tradition. The romance (which is between eight and twelve thousand lines in the various Middle English versions) may have been read aloud from the manuscripts, but there is no evidence it was ever transmitted memorially or merged in any way with oral traditions. It is clear from the manuscript record, and from the kinds of very common othographic revisions and visual slips associated with copying, that the romance was transmitted in written form, copied from exemplars by scribes. There certainly were oral spin-offs of the story, or segments of the story, as well as versions that moved in and out of oral form, such as the stanzaic Guy and Colbrond 61



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now uniquely preserved in the Percy Folio (British Library, Additional MS 27879; c. 1600) but quite possibly of much earlier origin, and the Song of Colebrond that was sung in the Prior’s apartment at Winchester Cathedral in 1338 by a joculator named Herbert. However, these should be regarded as distinct and distinguishable from the manuscript record under discussion here. There survive three manuscripts and two sets of fragments of the Middle English Guy of Warwick, copied between c. 1300 and c. 1500: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 572 and London, British Library, Additional MS 14408 (NLW/BL). Early-fourteenth-century fragments in a Northern dialect. These eight vellum bifolia were cut up in 1473 for use in the binding of a pair of books. Now badly stained and damaged, the manuscript was evidently a neat but modest production with some rubrication, detached initials, and four columns, of around fifty lines, per page. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1. (‘Auchinleck’ Manuscript), fols 108ra–175vb (Auchinleck). A miscellany of mainly English items copied in London by six scribes c. 1330–40. The manuscript is constructed of twelve booklets, mainly (including Guy of Warwick at the head of Booklet 4) copied by Scribe 1, who also orchestrated the organization and compilation of the volume. The book’s visual scheme indicates the intention to produce a unified volume; however, discrepancies between the booklets reveal a production process that must have involved many ‘fits and starts’ and which probably included the incorporation or adaptation of some pre-existing textual material. LALME maps the language of Scribe 1 

For a discussion of these examples see M. Chesnutt, ‘Minstrel Reciters and the Enigma of the Middle English Romance’, Culture and History, 2 (1987), 48–67 (p. 60).  An overview of the manuscripts and redactions appears in the preface to the standard edition of the romance, Guy, ed. by Zupitza. This chapter provides an updated and revised account and departs from Zupitza on two main points: (1) it has been established that B and C are two independent redactions (whereas Zupitza has them as one), for further discussion see Alison Wiggins, ‘Imagining the Compiler: Guy of Warwick and the Construction of the Auchinleck Manuscript’, in Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John Thompson (Thurhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 61–73; (2) the date of Caius has been revised, discussed below. All the manuscripts are included by Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich: Fink, 1976).  Fragments of an Early Fourteenth-Century Guy of Warwick, ed. by Maldwyn Mills and Daniel Huws, Medium Ævum Monographs, n.s. 4 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), pp. 5, 87. Mills and Huws conclude that the language of both the scribe and the archetype originated somewhere in the North. It seems likely that the scribe’s dialect originated in a region north of the Humber, as indicated by his use of and for the reflex of OE ñ; fra (from); and -cht (might). Mills and Huws provide a detailed description of the NLW/BL fragments and their edition includes facsimile images.  The most detailed account of the codicology and production of Auchinleck is by T. A. Shonk, ‘A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 71–91; ‘The Scribe as Editor: The Primary Scribe of the Auchinleck Manuscript’, Manuscripta, 27 (1983), 19–20. Ralph Hanna takes up Shonk’s view of Auchinleck Scribe 1 as the editor of the book, but he supplements this with a detailed consideration of the surrounding environment and animates the bibliographical data with cultural, historical, and biographical information; London Literature 1300–1380 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chapter 3

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to London/Middlesex; Scribe 3 to London; Scribe 5 to Essex; and Scribes 2 and 6 to the Gloucester/Worcester border. The manuscript now contains 334 vellum folios and 44 texts. Although best known for its substantial collection of romances, it also includes saints’ lives, religious and didactic pieces, items of basic doctrinal instruction, complaint, chronicle, and a macaronic poem. The manuscript is defective at both ends and its current state may only represent around three quarters of the original length of the book. An attractive, spaciously set out volume, it is in double columns of approximately forty-four lines with blue and red initials and was originally decorated throughout with a programme of miniatures (now mutilated). The ‘Reinbroun’ material, copied by Scribe 5, is packaged as a separate romance and visually divided from Guy with a new miniature. London, British Library, Sloane MS 1044 (item 248) (Sloane). A single-folio fragment from the fourteenth century, originally in the library of John Bagford (1650–1716) and acquired after his death by Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). The leaf is written in an even Anglicana Formata in fifty-four-line double columns on good vellum. It is decorated with enlarged initials and paraphs in red and blue ink; rubrication is also used to highlight the detached initials and for the brackets that link couplet rhymes. Although now much trimmed the leaf measures 300 x 200mm; that is, more than a third larger than folios in Auchinleck. Evidently it was once part of a large, well-produced, and perhaps rather impressive book. With such a small sample it is difficult to draw any focuses on Auchinleck but see also pp. 74–81 for a discussion of the production of Auchinleck in a London context.  Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels, Michael Benskin, and others, Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), I, 88: Hand A, London/Middlesex border (LP 6510); Hands B and F are at closely proximate points on the Gloucester or Worcester border (LP 6940, Hand B and LP 7820, Hand F); Hand C, London (LP 6500); Hand E, Essex (LP 6350).  C. R. Borland, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Mediaeval Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1916), pp. 54–73. There are two full facsimiles of Auchinleck, a black-and-white printed version, The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 19.2.1, ed. by Derek Pearsall and I. C. Cunningham (London: Scolar Press, 1977), and a colour version with a full transcription available online, The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. by David Burnley and Alison Wiggins, National Library of Scotland Digital Library (July 2003) (Accessed 6 August 2006). A number of detached fragments from the manuscript have been identified (from Kyng Alisaunder, Richard Coer de Lyon, and The Life of Adam and Eve), these are: Edinburgh University Library MS 218; St Andrews University Library MS PR 2065 R.4 and A.15; and London University Library MS 593. On the discovery of the Aberdeen and St Andrews fragments see G. V. Smithers ‘Two Newly Discovered Fragments from the Auchinleck Manuscript’, Medium Ævum, 18 (1949), 1–11; and ‘Another Fragment of the Auchinleck Manuscript’, in Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. by Derek Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: Athlone Press, 1969), pp. 192–210.  S. Ayscough, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the British Museum Hitherto Undescribed: Consisting of Five Thousand Volumes; Including the Collections of Sir Hans Sloane (London: Printed for the compiler by John Rivington, 1782), I, 64. H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1883–1910; repr. 1961), I, 489–90. E. J. L. Scott, Index to the Sloane

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conclusions about the language of the scribe; most notable is the appearance (8x) of heo she, a form which retreated to the South West and West Midlands during the fourteenth century, although this does not exclude London as a possible place of production. Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 107/176 (Caius). A single-text manuscript produced in London in the 1470s. This is a carefully produced volume of 136 vellum leaves (paginated), 263 x 177mm. The text is copied by two highly competent professional scribes, who write in versions of Secretary and Bastard Secretary scripts. The layout is spacious: on each page is a single, ribbony, thirty-line column of verse, ruled in ink and padded around with generous margins. Throughout are blue initials with red filigree lacework. The opening page has an eight-line gold initial from which extends a fine spray-work border; the limner has been identified by Kathleen L. Scott as the English border artist of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 283. The second part of the story of Reinbroun is omitted. Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38 (olim More MS 690), fols 161r– 239r (CUL). A large ‘household’ type collection containing works of basic religious instruction, didactic lyrics, and saints’ lives followed by an almost unbroken sequence of nine romances. The earliest watermarks, identified by Pamela Robinson, are from 1479–84 though it is quite possible the book was not produced until the early years of the sixteenth century. Constructed of two large booklets copied by a single scribe in a mixed cursive script, this is a paper manuscript of 247 folios (approx. 297 x 205mm) written in double columns of thirty to forty lines and modestly decorated throughout with red initials. The contents and dialect make it most likely to have been produced in the North Midlands: the language of the scribe has been localized by LALME to Leicestershire and the book contains items that also populate the collecManuscripts in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904; repr. 1971).  LALME, I, 309 (dot map 17).  M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907, 1908), I, 107–08. The dating of this manuscript has for many years been incorrectly assigned to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century; see Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. viii; Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, p. 80; Legend, pp. 54–55. The correct date of production is the 1470s according to Kathleen L. Scott’s recent identification of the limner, discussed below. No facsimile is available of Caius. However, colour images of other work by the limner are available in the partial facsimile of Bodley 283, The Mirror of the Worlde, MS Bodley 283 (England, c. 1470–1480), ed. by Kathleen L. Scott (Oxford: Printed for the Roxburghe Club, 1980). A black and white plate of the limner’s work (from the Skinners’ Company Book of the Fraternity of the Assumption of Our Lady) is included in Scott’s Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders, c. 1395–1499 (London: Bibliographical Society, 2002), pp. 100–01. A full list of the manuscripts identified as containing work by this limner is discussed by Scott in ‘A MidFifteenth-Century Illuminating Shop and its Customers’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 31 (1968), pp. 170–96. Subsequent additions to this list are given in Scott, The Mirror of the Worlde, pp. 45–50, and Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, 354–55.

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tions of Yorkshire scribe Robert Thornton and Leicester scribe John Rate.10 The commencement of the second part of the story of Reinbroun is indicated by some features of the ordinatio and a rubricated initial.11 It is remarkable to find that these three manuscripts and two sets of fragments contain between them five different independent redactions of the romance, outlined below. Line-by-line comparison indicates very clearly that these different redactions represent independent translations into Middle English from one or other of the Anglo-Norman originals. They appear in the manuscripts in various combinations: Redaction A  Couplets, early fourteenth century, language of London. Auchinleck 123–7306; Caius 1–7444; Sloane fragment 1–216 (equivalent to Auchinleck stanza 4 line 7 – stanza 21 line 6; Caius 7315–98).12 Redactions B and C  Stanzas, early fourteenth century, language of the East Midlands. Auchinleck stanzas 1–299 (stanzaic Guy) and stanzas 1–127 (Reinbroun). Reaction D  Couplets, very early fourteenth century, Northern language. NLW/BL fragments. Redaction E  Couplets, fifteenth century, language of the North Midlands. CUL 1–11,976; Caius 7445–8218 and 8810–10,231. The geographical regions assigned to the language of these redactions (the North, North Midlands, London, and East Midlands) are based on analysis of the rhymes and it is interesting, in itself, to observe the varieties of dialect represented here. More difficult to establish, however, is the relationship between this kind of theoretical linguistic mapping and the actual geographical affiliations of the scribes, redactors, texts, and books. For example, the juxtaposition of the (couplet) A redaction and the (stanzaic) B redaction in the London Auchinleck Manuscript raises a number of questions. It may be 10

LALME, I, 67 (LP 531). CUL shares Sir Eglamour and the ‘Northern’ Octavian with the Lincoln Thornton manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91; 1430–40); The Marks of Meditaciouns (NIMEV 244) is shared with Rate’s book (Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole MS 61; late fifteenth century); and all three contain a copy of the Earl of Tolous. 11 A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1856–67; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). There is a full facsimile of this manuscript, Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.28, ed. by Frances McSparran and P. R. Robinson (London: Scolar Press, 1979). 12 It should be noted that two passages from Caius (8219–8809 and 10,232–11,095; a total of 1555 lines) cannot certainly be associated with any of the known redactions. Mills, ‘Techniques of Translation in the Middle English Versions of Guy of Warwick’, in The Medieval Translator II, ed. by Roger Ellis (London: Centre for Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 209–29 (p. 215, note 7), suggests that these sections must be from the A redaction. However, as no other manuscript contains the latter part of the legend it is not possible to be sure and the northern rhymes would appear to preclude this redaction. Comparison with CUL indicates that they are not from the E redaction, despite similar northern rhymes and despite being sandwiched between E-redaction passages in Caius.

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that the language of these texts correlates with the geographical origins of their translators; so, the B redaction may have been composed in the East Midlands and then imported into London. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that the language of each of these redactions is heavily reliant upon literary models. The A redaction displays strong affiliations with the socalled ‘Kyng Alisaunder group’ of texts identified by G. V. Smithers as having been composed in London around 1300, probably by the same redactor.13 This group is written in a distinctive language that includes a mixture of dialect forms, and the epic style and tone of its couplets is eminently well matched to the first half of the romance, which recounts Guy’s early life seeking glory. No less distinctive is the language of the B redaction, written in twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas, with many set rhymes, patterns, and phrases that likewise involve an admixture of northern and southern rhymes and forms. A lyrical tone and a predilection for themes of piety and long suffering characterize these early stanzaic romances and it is therefore a form ideal for emphasizing the reflective and penitent aspects of Guy’s later life.14 Maldwyn Mills argues, convincingly, that the stanzaic Guy was directly modelled on Amis and Amiloun – and this, in itself, is suggestive of how a translator might have learnt about this type of literary language from a written source, rather than from being physically located in the region to which its language corresponds. Certainly, it is clear that the composers of both A and B were knowledgeable about these different forms of romance. It may be that we need to think of the particular brand of language of each as a literary koine: a recognizable form of language that was in use at the time but was not strictly tied to a particular geographical location. What does seem clear from the variations in their language is that A and B were composed independently and by different redactors. The notion that this might have been a single redactor who switched to stanzas for artistic reasons at the textual mid-point seems to be overly influenced by modern concepts of the unity of books and texts. Far more likely is that the Auchinleck compiler patched together the legend from two different exemplars.15 The pragmatic realities of exemplar availability necessitated the kind of slicing and splicing evident here, and elsewhere across the textual tradition. It is a situation that is familiar from analysis of Canterbury Tales and Troilus manuscripts, where there are many examples of scribes making the best job they could of assem13

Kyng Alisaunder, Volume II: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. by G. V. Smithers, EETS os 237 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957; repr. 1969), pp. 40–55. 14 For a definition of the epic/couplet, lyric/tail-rhyme distinction in romance see Derek Pearsall, ‘The Development of Middle English Romance’, Medieval Studies, 27 (1965), 91–116. 15 Indeed, that the A redaction breaks off at approximately the same point in all three manuscripts (just before or after the marriage of Guy and Felice) suggests that it never continued beyond this point or that an important exemplar was damaged at some early stage. This is not, however, to deny the impact that the change in verse form would have had upon reading of the text (for example, see the chapter by Rosalind Field in this volume). The theory that Guy of Warwick was dismantled into three parts by poet-scribes who were translating the text at the Auchinleck stage of production is proposed by Laura Hibbard Loomis in her seminal article, ‘The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330–1340’, PMLA, 57 (1942), 595–627.

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bling complete versions of these poems from whatever bunches of exemplars were at their disposal.16 It is certainly a model that is compatible with current theories about the production of Auchinleck, all of which emphasize strenuous compilatory activities focused around Scribe 1. No work by Auchinleck Scribe 1 has yet been identified outside of the Auchinleck manuscript. However, he must have been a well-connected individual, able get his hands on a wide range of texts, who drew on inter-regional connections, and who fashioned the book in dialogue with a patron.17 The Auchinleck patron is also anonymous, although the question of his or her identity has been considered by successive studies. A persistent claim, and one that pervades early accounts, is that Auchinleck was produced for an ‘aspirant middle-class citizen, perhaps a wealthy merchant’.18 The notions that merchant and aristocratic culture were somehow separable and distinct; that the choice of English throughout most of the manuscript was necessitated by the patron’s educational limitations; and that romance is emulatory literature; represent some of the serious failings in past commentaries on Auchinleck and its milieu. These are notions that have been vigorously challenged in recent years. Among the most detailed and impressive rejections of these views is Ralph Hanna’s recent study of pre-Chaucerian London literature.19 Hanna immerses Auchinleck within the sophisticated polyglot textual world of ‘Edwardian’ London. He reflects upon the communality of interests between civic and royal culture and observes the many physical, textual, and thematic continuities between civic books, royal books, and Auchinleck. On the one hand, romance is contextualized within the milieu of legal and historical writings of the kind compiled by Andrew Horn and implicated imaginatively within the historical record. On the other, it is directly associated with the tradition of advice to princes and, specifically, with the texts presented to the young Edward III by royal clerk Walter de Milemete. It is through these kinds of overlapping civic and royal associations that the seriousness of romance in the Auchinleck MS is demonstrated: these are texts richly ‘inbricated’ in legal 16

See Charles A. Owen, The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), and Ralph Hanna, ‘The Manuscripts and Transmission of Chaucer’s Troilus’, in The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard, ed. by James M. Dean and Christian K. Zacher (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto, Associated University Press, 1992), pp. 173–88. 17 Hanna, London Literature, pp. 76–79, imagines a situation in which Scribe 1 was simultaneously seeking and borrowing exemplars, sourcing prefabricated booklet material, commissioning copying, and attempting to order the volume, all whilst showing and loaning portions to an enthusiastic patron. 18 Pearsall and Cunningham, The Auchinleck Manuscript, p. viii and note 3. It is a view founded on a conviction, expressed by Pearsall in an earlier article but common throughout criticism of Middle English romance, that ‘The audience of the Middle English romances is primarily a lower or lower-middle class audience, a class of social aspirants who wish to be entertained with what they consider to be the same fare, but in English, as their social betters’, see ‘The Development’, pp. 91–92. 19 Hanna, London Literature, see especially chapter 3 on Auchinleck. See also Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 136–41.

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and historical discourses; heavily imbued with models of the great heroes of Europe and the Classical world; pointedly focused around themes of legality, right, and chivalry; and which were read at the highest social levels. It is within such a context that we should imagine the reception of the Auchinleck Guy of Warwick. It is a text that was probably copied in the burgeoning Holborn-Fleet area of London, a neighbourhood well stocked with text writers and bookmen and buzzing with cultural interchanges, an ‘entrepot’ for exchanges between government, county, and city mercantile elites.20 For the readers of Auchinleck, romance was not trivial delight but a point on a continuum that also included historical and legal texts. These are readers who are likely to have appreciated Guy of Warwick’s detailed interrogation of chivalry; the conflict between armes and amors; and the extended examinations of counsel, honour, faith, penitence, motivations for violence, and the rationale for war.21 It is also an audience sensitive to symbolic aspects and alert to the narrative’s detailed consideration of the social responsibilities of knighthood.22 This is, furthermore, to imagine Auchinleck as part of a polyglot world. Previous accounts have tended to ignore the pointed, polyglot additions to Booklet 3 of Auchinleck, The Sayings of the Four Philosophers and the List of Norman Barons, both of which connect and resonate with the manuscript’s wider themes.23 Earlier accounts have also suffered from attempts to compare Auchinleck with later manuscript models and have been hampered by a desire to assimilate it within a tradition of ‘literature in English’. Far more pertinent, in terms of a literary comparison, would be the resemblances and affinities that exist between Auchinleck and illuminated French manuscripts (as David Griffith discusses below in this volume), or between Auchinleck and the manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic. These manuscripts recall Auchinleck visually but also in terms of what is known of their milieu. There is the example of Cologny-Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana MS 168 (F), a book copied in the late thirteenth century and owned, from the fourteenth century, by the magnatial Grey family: the handwriting and layout (in forty-two-line double columns with detached initials and alternating red and blue capitals) immediately recall Auchinleck and the copy of Gui is compiled with texts that blur history and fiction.24 Such comparisons may well reward further investigation. It is an approach that moves away from the notion, 20 21

Hanna, London Literature, p. 129. For an account of the interrogation of chivalry and its recognition by Spenser see Andrew King’s chapter in this volume. For a discussion of royal and baronial conflict and ‘the problem of counsel’ in romance, see Geraldine Barnes, Counsel and Strategy in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993). For a consideration of the theme of repentance and atonement, see Andrea Hopkins, The Sinful Knights: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 22 It seems significant, for example, that the figure of the lion (Guy’s psychological counterpart, discussed by Hanna) is a favourite feature in visual representations of the legend found in contemporary London illuminations; see the chapter by David Griffith in this volume. 23 However, for an account that does benefit from consideration of the List of Norman Barons see Turville-Petre, England the Nation, pp. 136–41. 24 On the Grey family see R. Ian Jack, ‘Grey family (per. 1325–1523)’, ODNB, XXIII, 800–02. On

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which has seemed to plague earlier accounts, of Auchinleck as some kind of anomaly. Not only is Auchinleck unlikely to have been one of a kind, it may be that the single-folio Sloane fragment of Guy, so reminiscent of Auchinleck in its appearance and layout, was from a very similar book of Middle English. These synergies with Anglo-Norman culture were largely overlooked by earlier commentators, who preferred to see Auchinleck as capturing a critical moment of translation from French to English and representing a significant rupture in literary history. This is a highly reductive view: as Ivana Djordjević emphasizes, above, choice of language was just one among a spectrum of linguistic changes that romances underwent during transmission and Auchinleck owes a great debt to Anglo-Norman. Recent reconsiderations of the manuscript from the point of view of cultural and postcolonial studies also emphasize that there was more to the choice of English than making Auchinleck romance available to a less literate audience. According to these accounts, the choice of English needs to be understood within the context of book’s wider interest in themes of ‘Englishness’ and expressions of national identity. Guy of Warwick is especially prominent in this respect and the numerous revisions to the Auchinleck version of the romance by a Middle English redactor, all designed to heighten Guy’s English identity, have been cited as further evidence of the manuscript’s patriotic intent.25 Whereas the revisions to the Auchinleck version are designed to accentuate Guy’s English identity, in the fifteenth-century CUL and Caius copies, the concern is with the hero’s regional and baronial associations and his chivalric status. In all three manuscript copies these specific adaptations can be confidently assigned to the Middle English redactors. The unique additions and excisions in CUL and Caius are of interest because they reveal shifts of expectation among later readers regarding the purpose and function of the romance. The physical appearance and compilatory strategies of these later manuscripts are also revealing in this respect. Like Auchinleck, CUL is a large-scale collection, but it is one that falls firmly into the category of ‘household book’. It opens with a sequence of religious pieces, largely instructional or meditative didactic works, followed by a group of texts concerned with secular and domestic responsibility and honesty in business. These are followed by ten romance narratives, five of which – the Earl of Tolous, Sir Eglamour, Sir Tryamour, the ‘Northern’ Octavian, and the Bone Florence of Rome – present a fairly consistent group and are marked by their preoccupation with themes relating to marriage, virginity before marriage, loyalty, adultery, and family relations. There are distinct continuities here with the preceding household-type texts that focus on moral, familial, domestic, and business matters. Particularly notable is the sequence of instructive and exemplary texts specifically focused around kinship relathe Anglo-Norman manuscripts of Gui de Warwic more generally see the chapter by Marianne Ailes in this volume. 25 See, for example, the discussion by Robert Rouse, below in this volume, where he also considers the studies by Clakin, Turville-Petre, and Wilcox.

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tions – How the Goode Man Taght Hys Sone, A Gode Mater of The Marchand and Hys Sone, and How a Merchande Dyd Hys Wyfe Betray. They reflect the moral choices and the ideological interests of householders who were perhaps gentry but more likely well-to-do townspeople, prosperous bourgeoisie. These are ‘family narratives’, ‘parental fantasies’, and, as Felicity Riddy has so ably demonstrated, a text such as the Bone Florence of Rome can well be imagined, in this context, to have been selected as appropriate reading matter for the daughters and young women of the household.26 If the Good Wife Taught her Daughter about marriage and virginity by reading the Bone Florence, it was perhaps with reference to Guy of Warwick that she taught her about such wifely qualities as loyalty, charity, and community work (all exemplified in the person of Felice), and that the Good Man Taught his Son about history and chivalry. Certainly, the CUL Guy of Warwick, a new translation in the fifteenth century, presents a polished and updated version of the legend that is more straightforwardly historical and exemplary than earlier versions. It includes a number of additional references to the cult of Guy recently developed at Warwick combined with more courteous and decorous behaviour on the part of Guy himself. Complete with these adjustments and contemporary references, the romance’s opening claim to be an ‘ensawmpull’ (7) of wise behaviour and a good life, a standard for other men to follow, is more realistic and credible than in earlier versions of the romance. It is worth describing the innovations in the CUL Guy of Warwick in more detail here as they provide information about the agenda of the fifteenthcentury Middle English redactor. Perhaps most immediately apparent are the series of additional scenes and reference that are entirely new to the E redaction. The first (387–422) describes the ceremony of Guy’s knighting at Warwick, beginning with his fine, jewel-encrusted, white, gold, and purple clothing and proceeding to an account of the various stages of the ritual. Sharing the preoccupation with Guy’s apparel is an additional scene prior to the climactic battle between Guy, who is disguised as a pilgrim, and the giant Colbrond (10,141–64): when King Athelstan’s men fail to find Guy a suit of armour, he instructs them to send to ‘Gyes wyfe’ (10,158) at Warwick who has one that he knows will fit and that she has kept in pristine condition since her husband left. Three more additions continue to focus on material trappings or visual references from Guy’s life; these also involve the hermitage that Guy removes to just outside Warwick. There is the detail of its location at ‘Gybbeclyf ’ (10,530); that is, a reference to the actual medieval hermitage on the Avon, close to Warwick, that came to be associated with Guy in the later Middle Ages and which leads John Frankis to conclude the E redaction

26

Felicity Riddy, ‘Temporary Virginity and the Everyday Body: Le Bone Florence of Rome and Bourgeois Self-Making’, in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England, ed. by Nicola McDonald (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 197–216.

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must have been created after 1423.27 There is the reference to the ring, sent by Guy to Felice from the hermitage as a token of recognition, that is here said to be a ‘halfe rynge’ (10,583), a motif that, as Martha Driver shows in this volume, appears exclusively in versions of the legend associated with the late medieval earls of Warwick. Finally, when Felice arrives at the hermitage just before Guy’s death, her entourage is significantly enhanced: she is accompanied by ‘Erlys barons and abbottys tho / Archebyschopes and byschoppes also’ (10,653–54). It is an addition that creates a more official and more publicly witnessed scene at the hermitage than is presented in Gui or any of the other Middle English versions.28 All five of these additions, then, share a concern to foster an explicit link with the local legend of Guy perpetuated at Warwick. The Middle English redactor was evidently well informed about the legend’s contemporary topographical connections and keen to enhance and elaborate upon the association. A concern with the outward forms of chivalry is also apparent, including the tangible, physical remains (the spurs, sword, armour, and hermitage that were all in evidence at Warwick) that testify to the ancient veracity of the legend. The impulse to present an authentic story, a legend of old, is further apparent in the sequence of seven conventional ‘oral’ references, consisting of additional interjections from the narrator (at 5859–62, 6687–88, 7117–18, 7389– 90, 7549–50, 10,749–50, and 10,779–86). Combined with these features are the efforts, on the part of the Middle English redactor, to smooth over some of the Guy’s rougher edges in order to present a more even and admirable brand of chivalry. Guy becomes more diplomatic and there is a greater regard for etiquette and social mores. For example, in one of Guy’s early disputes with Otus, rather than punching his arch-enemy in the teeth, he lays down his glove.29 Guy is likewise accorded a greater degree of courtesy in his fracas with Earl Florentine’s son, whereas his opponent becomes more aggressive in demeanour.30 Ultimately, the prominent interest displayed in the Auchinleck 27

Frankis cites the text’s specific use of the name ‘Gybbeclyf ’ and refers to Richard Beauchamp’s efforts, from 1423, to create a cult centre on the site of the hermitage. He points out that there is no earlier evidence for this kind of interest in the hermitage and that it therefore seems likely that the E redaction was made after this date: John Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage in Late Medieval England as Reflected in Versions of Guy of Warwick’, Medium Ævum, 66 (1997), 80–93 (pp. 85–87). 28 Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. 447, comments that these lines ‘are very likely to be spurious. Neither the French (at least the Cambridge and the Royal MSS) nor the other English versions have anything like them. Nor have we any reason to think the translator himself so stupid as to add such an absurdity’. 29 The CUL version recounts that ‘Whan Gye harde the dewke speke / (He thought longe to be awreke): / “Then lyest þou, dewke Oton, / When þou spekyst of soche felon […] Defende the nowe wyth me to fyght. / The grace of god fro me be reevyd, / But y smyte of thy heuydde.” / There he can hys gloue wage / Ryght before the baronage’ (CUL 2644–60), and before they come to blows the Emperor steps in and exerts his authority. In Auchinleck Guy is much less restrained: ‘When Gij herd Otus speke so, / Als a wilde bore he lepe him to: / “Otus!” quaþ Gii, “þou schalt daye, / When þou of tresoun clepes ous baye, / Boþe Segyn & eke me: / þou it schal abie, bi mi leute!” / Him he smot wiþ his fest / Amide the teþ, riZt al in ernest’ (Auchinleck 2737–44). 30 I am grateful to Andrew King for his observations regarding the CUL account of Guy and Earl Florentine’s son in the boar-killing episode.

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and Anglo-Norman versions in interrogating Guy’s failings in order to present an examination of chivalry, is weakened and partly phased out in CUL in favour of a more straightforwardly honorific version of knighthood. This shift towards a more idealized version of chivalry could be described as characteristic of the fifteenth-century versions and, if anything, is even more obvious in the Caius Guy of Warwick. Caius has received far less critical attention than Auchinleck or CUL, in part because it is a single-text manuscript but also because its text is late in date and very obviously displays evidence of scribal interference. Despite, or, rather, because, of these factors, it is an extremely valuable and interesting book in terms of the cultural information it provides and worth describing in some detail here. The text of Caius is spliced together from the A and E redactions, apparently (like the Auchinleck Guy some century and half earlier) the efforts of scribes associated with the London commercial book trade. The re-appearance of the couplet A redaction in Caius is intriguing and points to the way that much older versions of the legend could be resurrected and updated at particular moments. In literary terms, Caius presents ‘Guy lite’. Comparison with Auchinleck indicates a process whereby a substantial series of lines and passages were removed from an existing copy of the A redaction. Mills suggests this may have been the result of a damaged exemplar of A. However, closer analysis reveals a self-conscious process of abridgement. The missing sections are not random omissions; all represent divergences from the main narrative that could be extracted without disrupting the flow of the story. Battles and scenes of violence are the most drastically reduced. But static, repetitive, or descriptive sections of the narrative, such as laments, speeches, negotiations, and celebrations are also targeted for removal. Furthermore, the reviser took care to ensure that the narrative remained seamless, without loss of sense or abrupt switches of location and, where necessary, fashioned a ‘linking’ or ‘bridging’ couplet to patch up the excised portion of text.31 The majority of excisions are from the second narrative ‘move’.32 As the depiction of the protagonist Guy differs in each move, this re-weighting of the narrative alters his overall portrayal. The first and third moves offer unambiguously chivalric portraits of Guy. He begins the romance as the knight-turnedlover and the first short move features his love sickness and then supremacy in a chivalric tournament. In the third move he is depicted as the knight-turnedpilgrim engaged in three single-combat encounters, each justifiable on the grounds of either religion, friendship, loyalty, or the defence of the nation and where Guy is figured as an increasingly enfeebled and reluctant David to a series of Goliath-like opponents. Both of these portrayals contrast sharply 31

For example, see Caius 7387–88, 1955–56, 2989–90, 4879–80, and 5023–24. There is only one instance were an excision from Caius results in an awkward transition, after Caius 2448 (cf. Auchinleck 2448–2560). 32 For an outline of the structure of the narrative and the use of the term ‘move’ see Maldwyn Mills, ‘Structure and Meaning in Guy of Warwick’, in From Medieval to Medievalism, ed. by John Simons (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 54–68.

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with the depiction of Guy in the second move, where the focus is upon military prowess and sheer physical ability above other aspirations or qualities. In fact, Guy’s behaviour in the second move can often seem alarmingly unchivalrous.33 However, the cuts to the Caius narrative mean that the most violent, morally problematic, or unchivalrous scenes from Guy’s life are eliminated. These include the omission of the Florentine episode in which Guy kills Earl Florentine’s son and decimates his court all, apparently, for no good reason;34 the Clarice episode where Guy becomes so forgetful of Felice that he only narrowly avoids marrying another woman;35 and several episodes involving personal revenge and vendetta between Guy and his rivals Otous, Morgadour, and Berard.36 The omission of these episodes is accompanied by a significant reduction in the overall body count in the Caius Guy as a result of several large-scale battles being pared down or excised completely.37 The result is that Caius offers a less controversial portrait of Guy of Warwick in which his 33

34

35

36

37

See Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1987), pp. 86–92, for a discussion of the emphasis in move two on ‘the practical consequences of adventures and the defeat of opponents’ and move three as a reflection and critique upon this behaviour in a knight. The Florentine episode (Auchinleck 6587–7032, absent from Caius) opens with a boar hunt in which Guy is the final hunter to remain. After killing the boar he blows his horn and it is heard by Earl Florentine. The Earl’s son finds Guy and reproaches him for hunting without permission. They fight and the son is killed. Guy rides away until he reaches Earl Florentine’s castle where he receives hospitality. When Guy is revealed as the murderer of the Earl’s son, he takes on the entire court, killing the steward and the Earl’s best knights and injuring many other men on his escape. A discussion of this episode is provided by Fewster, Traditionality and Genre, pp. 89–93, who observes that the presence of this episode in Auchinleck contributes to the establishment of ‘moral and analytical criteria’ (p. 93) and highlights the ‘moral considerations and consequences’ (p. 92) of Guy’s actions. She observes that this episode is easily omitted by the Caius version as it ‘is not attached to the rest of the poem either in a linear or causative way, or in a standard interlace fashion’ (p. 93) but does not go on to consider it in the context of the other omissions and revisions to the Caius narrative. The Clarice episode (Auchinleck 4163–4280, absent from Caius) begins with Emperor Hernis arranging Guy’s marriage to his daughter Clarice for the next day. Next morning, mid-way through the ceremony, Guy suddenly remembers Felice and is unable to continue with the service. He retires to his bed for two weeks and decides, in the end, to remain faithful to Felice. The following episodes and incidents featuring Guy’s personal enemies appear in Auchinleck but not Caius. (1) Auchinleck 1955–80, Otous gives advice to the Emperor. (2) Auchinleck 2717–54, Otous becomes enraged that the Emperor has made peace and calls Guy a ‘treytour’; Guy leaps to Otous like ‘a wilde bore’, threatens him, punches him in the teeth, and the two are held apart by the other barons. (3) Auchinleck 5963–86, Guy wonders how Loyer could have acceded to Otous’s treacherous proposal. (4) Auchinleck 6073–84, Amis offers to help Guy revenge Otous and destroy his lands and towns. (5) Auchinleck 3067–90, Morgadour expresses his envy towards Guy. (6) Auchinleck 3165–72, Morgadour recounts his intended betrayal of Guy. (7) Auchinleck 3231–50, Morgadour accuses Guy of treachery and suggests how he should be punished. (8) Auchinleck 6440–6512, Berard attempts to avenge the death of his kinsman Otous then becomes furious when Guy wounds him and demands they fight in ‘plain arms’ to the death. When Guy refuses, Berard returns to Pavia where he buries Otous and becomes his successor. Virtually the entire battle sequence between Tirry’s father Earl Aubri and the Duke Loyer is excised from Caius (Auchinleck 5005–5634). Other battles are substantially reduced in length, as described above. In addition, two episodes where Guy kills an opponent are omitted: Auchinleck 3031–64 and 3091–3146, involving Guy’s fierce combat with the Saracen Esclandar who subsequently returns to the Soudan, bloody, with a launce through his body, and on the point of death; Auchinleck 6187–6274, where Guy, after his identity is discovered by a spy, beats out the spy’s brains with a staff then invents an explanation.

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actions are not morally problematized, the most sordid episodes are removed, and his chivalric qualities are more prominent than in any other account. The re-shaping of the text to de-emphasize violence and modernize and sanitize the hero raises the question of the level of intentionality. It is important to stress that the revisions are too specific to be accounted for as the result of pragmatic concerns, such as a desire simply to save time and vellum by having a shorter text. The nature of the omissions clearly indicates a reviser with a particular literary and cultural agenda. Furthermore, the sense that this was intended to be an air-brushed account of Guy’s life is bolstered by two changes to the second half of the narrative. The Caius Guy not only omits the story Guy’s son Reinbroun but also uniquely includes an elegiac public address delivered by King Athelstan over Guy’s corpse and summarizing the hero’s life.38 Both of these features are consistent with the agenda of the revisions and add to the sense of this as a text intended to focus on the figure of Guy and remove any material that may detract from his life as a chivalric hero. The stripping down of the narrative, which implies a desire to produce a more refined and modernized rendition of a much older romance, is also visible in features of language and register that seem to reflect a concern with status or literary fashion. Comparison with Auchinleck shows that the Caius text has been cleansed of forms that were rare or archaic by the mid-fifteenth century. In some instances this involves the replacement of one native form with another more current one, for example, gome (from OE guma) is consistently replaced with ‘man’ or omitted altogether and the adverbial suffix -liche is replaced with -ly.39 Preference is also regularly expressed for French-derived forms and the somewhat archaic mounde (from OE mund), fairhed (from OE fæger and h«afod), vnsele (from OE unsæl), and dreye (from OE dr«ogan) are each replaced in Caius with the French-derived forms renown, beaute, straunge case, suffred, and endured.40 These preferences resemble those of contemporary William Caxton in his modernization of Book 5 of Malory’s

38

Athelstan’s speech is unique to the Caius manuscript, 10,974–11,022. Athelstan addresses the crowd who have assembled to pay tribute to Guy’s corpse. Guy, he recounts, saved England twice by defeating both Colbrond and the dragon; turned down the wealth of an Emperor; and, campaigning against evil ‘thorough all the world’, slew the mighty Sowdan of Babylon, the heathen Ameraunt and the traitorous Otous and Berard. The first part of Reinbroun’s story is included in Caius, 8654–9029, but the larger concluding section that would usually appear at the end of the Guy narrative (10,725–11,976 in CUL), is missing. The ‘Amen’ at the end of the romance and the following blank page indicate that no leaves are lost from the end of Caius. 39 Compare 198 Auchinleck ‘noble gome’ and Caius ‘full sone’; 707 Auchinleck ‘wiþ him tuenti god gomis’ and Caius ‘other twenty for his love’; 852 Auchinleck ‘douZti gome’ and Caius ‘semely man’; 2006 Auchinleck ‘þe best gome’ and Caius ‘all christen men’; 2195 Auchinleck ‘gome’ and Caius ‘full sone’; 209–10 Auchinleck ‘freliche / bleþliche’ and Caius ‘freely / blithely’. 40 Compare 191 Auchinleck ‘of gret mounde’ and Caius ‘of grete renown’; 394 Auchinleck ‘fairhed’ and Caius ‘beaute’; 1267 Auchinleck ‘unsele’ and Caius ‘straunge case’; 574 Auchinleck ‘sorwe þat y for þe dreye’ and Caius ‘sorow that y have suffred by and by’; 576 Auchinleck ‘y dreye for þe’ and Caius ‘y for the have endured’.

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Morte Darthur that Norman Blake describes as designed to give Malory’s work a ‘fashionable’ and ‘more courtly’ appearance.41 It is not possible to know exactly which of the changes to the text can be attributed to the two Caius scribes, but that the changeover between them approximately coincides with the switch in redactions suggests they may have been involved in the adaptation.42 The nature of the text also suggests that the adaptations were deliberate and executed in response to a particular request or commission. Caius is remarkable among Middle English romance manuscripts for its quality and the care and professionalism involved in its production.43 Both scribes are proficient penmen and Caius Scribe 2 (who copies pp. 3–149), in particular, should be noted for his attractive Secretary-influenced script and for the calligraphic ascenders and descenders and Textura titles that appear on almost every page he copies. The blue initials with red lacework that appear throughout are finely executed. Most visually impressive, however, is the opening page of the manuscript which has an eight-line letter on gold ground and a fine border that extends around almost all four sides. The border is coloured with rose, blue, green, and gold and decorated with spray-work with raceme-like feathering, tinted lobes, gold balls, and curling acanthus leaves. The style is typically English and Scott has identified the limner as the English border artist of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 283, the artist who also illuminated the Skinners’ Company book and several other manuscripts and who did a considerable amount of work, almost certainly in London in the 1470s.44 Although the Caius scribes have not been identified, their contact with the English border artist of Bodley 283 is intriguing and suggests connections within the highest levels of the London book trade. The number of luxury manuscripts that the English border artist illuminated encourages the sense of a prestigious production context and his known customers were London merchants and wealthy nobility. Given the content of Caius, the sense that it was produced with a purpose, its date, and decoration, it would be tempting to think of the contemporary patronage activities of the Beauchamp family, Earls of Warwick. Within a few years of production of the Caius Guy the 41

N. F. Blake, ‘Caxton and Courtly Style’, Essays and Studies, 21 (1968), 29–45 (pp. 36, 40), and ‘Caxton’s Language’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 67 (1966), 122–32. 42 The linguistic and codicological data indicate that the Caius text was copied from two different exemplars (an A redaction exemplar followed by a Northern/North-Midland-derived exemplar based on the E redaction). The presence of comparable revisions at both ends of the narrative, relating to both exemplars, therefore increases the likelihood that the revisions may have occurred at the Caius stage of production. 43 Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, p. 80. 44 Kathleen L. Scott has confirmed the identity of this limner in Caius in a personal correspondence, August 2003. She points to the snake-head lobes, gold grounds pierced by vines, gold balls with three green lobes, the odd flattened flower motif in the upper spray, and the initial ‘S’ enclosing vines with stubs as especially characteristic of this limner and notes that a date later than c. 1440 is confirmed by the flourishing characterized by floating circles, two parallel lines on the long ­flourishes, and a little ‘bow’ tied at the long flourish. The best representations of work by this limner are collections edited by Scott (see note 9, above).

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family commissioned the Rous Rolls and the Beauchamp Pageants.45 The Rolls open with a series of figures depicting the Beauchamp’s legendary ancestors (Aeneas, Rohaud, Felice, Guy, and Reinbroun), the Pageants portray the ‘famous knyght’ Richard Beauchamp (d. 1439), and both represent a desire to restore the reputation of the family and aggrandize their heritage during a troubled period.46 The Beauchamp concern at this time with the representation of their own ancestry, including their legendary ancestry, leaves one compelled to wonder whether the Caius Guy might represent a similar commission. The production in the 1470s of a modernized, sanitized, and ultimately more chivalrous version of the romance of Guy of Warwick, decorated by an limner who is known to have collaborated elsewhere with an artist patronized by Anne Beauchamp, may well have been compatible with the family’s patronage agenda.47 However, as there is no direct evidence of a link with the Beauchamps, this possibility can only remain speculative. There is also some danger in presuming a direct association with the Beauchamps when it may in fact be more appropriate to think in broader terms of the general impact the figure of Richard Beauchamp had upon the reception of the romance. The marginalia in Caius certainly suggests that at least one later reader was influenced by their knowledge of fifteenth-century political history when they read the Caius Guy. On the final leaf of the manuscript, in a sixteenth-century hand, is written ‘Henricus Bolingbrokus’ (that is, Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV) alongside ‘Jaqu de apibus. Jackanopes’ (that is, the contemptuous nickname of the disgraced Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole) and ‘Warwick’ several times.48 These references to key figures in the rise and fall of the Lancastrian 45

For a description of the date, content, and production of both documents see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 355–62, and The Caxton Master, pp. 55–66. There are two versions of the Rous Rolls: a Latin ‘Lancastrian’ roll made between 1477 and 1485 and a Middle English ‘Yorkist’ roll made 1483/4; the Beauchamp Pageants were probably made around 1486. For a full account see the chapters by Martha Driver and David Griffith in this volume. For an alternative view see The Beauchamp Pageant, ed. by Alexandra Sinclair (Donnington: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust in association with Paul Watkins, 2003). 46 The production of these documents should almost certainly be seen in the context of the struggles of Anne Beauchamp (daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, d. 1439, and wife of Richard Neville, the ‘Kingmaker’, who assumed the title of Earl of Warwick on their marriage in 1434) to regain her rightful inheritances. From the death of her husband at Barnet in 1471 almost up until the restoration of her estates in 1487, Anne was excluded from her possessions and ‘kept’ by her son-in-law, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. During this period she wrote numerous letters appealing for the restoration of her rightful inheritances and is believed to have been directly involved in supervising production of the Beauchamp Pageants, see Scott, The Caxton Master, pp. 61–65. 47 The English border artist who decorated Caius was a collaborator on Bodley 283 (c. 1470–80), The Mirror of the World, a manuscript that features the work of the Caxton Master. Anne Beauchamp almost certainly commissioned the Caxton Master to illustrate the Beauchamp Pageants, see Scott, The Caxton Master, pp. 25–46 and pp. 55–66. 48 Other marginalia include, in brown ink in a fifteenth-century hand, Latin verses from Cato on the dangers of trusting fame; for a transcription and translation of these see Legend, p. 55. Richmond assumes that these verses imply the book was used by children learning to read. However, the hand is confident and clear, not that of a novice; furthermore, knowledge of Cato was not lost in adult life and could just as well indicate an educated adult as a child learning grammar. The first two

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fortunes suggest a reader of Guy of Warwick who was interested in the fates of the Lancastrian kings. For them, it seems, the Caius Guy was regarded as the legendary biography of the most famous ancestor of the Earls of Warwick, themselves renowned makers and unmakers of fifteenth-century kings.49 The annotations cannot be used to comment on the book’s origins or intentionality. But they do imply something about the way that Guy of Warwick came to function for later audiences and seems to have fulfilled a certain kind of interest in fifteenth-century kingship. It was through familiarity with famous figures such as Richard Beauchamp, champion of Lancastrian kings and chivalric protégé of Guy, that the romance came to have meaning and interest for at least one later reader. It is not certain who is responsible for these flyleaf notes. There are, however, a couple of leads and the most likely candidates, based on provenance and the signatures in the manuscript, are from among the Norfolk gentry. After production in London, there are strong hints that the book was associated with East Anglia and Norfolk for many years. The inscription ‘ffretten[ham] Lancastr[iensis]’ in a fifteenth-century hand on p. 162, referring to the Lancastrian estate of Frettenham in Norfolk, suggests that the book reached the county within two or three decades of production in London.50 Some century and a half later, in the seventeenth century, we know that the book was acquired by Norfolk-born Cambridge librarian William Moore.51 In between lines and then the first three words of these verses are copied again by another fifteenth-century hand in black ink. Other fifteenth-century marginalia include prayers for Guy (‘Blyssed be Gye’, ‘God haffe marcy on Gye es sole amen’, etc.), musical notation, and a line beginning ‘dominos [sic] deus’. 49 Richard Beauchamp is particularly interesting in this respect as he was not only well known as a faithful and powerful supporter of the Lancastrian kings Henry IV, V, and VI but, throughout his lifetime, cultivated a personal association with his legendary ancestor Guy. He aspired to the status of a chivalric romance hero, built tributes to his ancestor Guy, and was fashioned as Guy’s ‘living legend’: see Legend, pp. 118–23, and Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage’, pp. 80–93. Frankis does not consider the Caius Guy of Warwick. 50 The full inscription reads: ‘Arthur Styward ffretten … Lancastr …’. Attempts to trace an ‘Arthur Styward’ there have so far been unsuccessful, though ‘Steward’ was known as a family name in Norfolk in this period (there were family members at Well, Gestwayte, and Norwich). No fifteenthcentury court rolls survive for Frettenham Manor. It was known as ‘Frettenham Lancaster’ because the manor was held by one Earl of Lancaster in the early twelfth century, see Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards the Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (Lynn, Fersfield: Whittingham, 1739), completed by Charles Parkin (London: William Miller, 1805–10), X, 416. An attempt to trace the name ‘Arthur Styward’ was made by Caius College librarian J. H. Prynne and copies of the resulting correspondence with Norfolk and Norwich Record Office City and County Archivist Jean Kennedy from October 1971 are held in Caius College library. The only ‘Arthur Steward’ I have been able to trace lived during the second half of the sixteenth century, see The Visitation of Norfolk 1563, 1589, 1613, ed. by Walter Rye, Publications of the Harleian Society, 32 (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1891), p. 268, and Blomefield, An Essay, 8, 222, where the Steward pedigree is recorded. Arthur Steward of Gestwayte died in 1606 but it remains possible that there was an Arthur Steward, or a steward named Arthur, who was associated with this manor in the fifteenth century. 51 William Moore was born in Gissing, Norfolk, in 1590 and attended school in nearby Moulton. He attended Caius College 1606–13 and spent most of his life within the University, holding the office of University librarian 1653–59. He gave the manuscript to Caius College on his death in 1659: see R. Julian Roberts, ‘Moore, William (bap. 1590, d. 1659)’, ODNB, XXXVIII, 1006–07.

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these points, the book at some stage came into the possession of members of the Knyvett and Calthorpe families attested by the names ‘Knyvett’ and ‘Ja. Calthorpe’ on the final leaf. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these leading Norfolk gentry families were closely connected and their lives also intertwined with the Pastons. All three are families known for their involvement in local and national administration and for their book-owning activities, which included Middle English literature and romance. Anne Knyvett (d. 1541), daughter of Sir William Knyvett (b. 1440) of Buckenham Castle, owned a copy of Generydes. On her marriage to John Thwaites, between 1480 and 1490, the romance was bound with a book of Lydgate and decorated with coats of arms.52 The name Knyvett also appears on manuscript copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Troilus.53 ‘Thomas Calthorpp’ appears on the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales along with two inscriptions of the Paston mot.54 The Pastons were regularly involved in the trafficking of books between London and Norfolk and were readers of Chaucer, Lydgate, and romance. John II’s interest in all aspects of chivalry extended to the reading of romances and his inventory of books (made before 1479) includes, among the stories of Arthur and Richard, a copy of Guy of Warwick and another of ‘Guy and Colbrond’.55 It is a community of readers who were politically engaged (John II and III served in the Earl of Warwick’s army in 1471) and who, at the end of the fifteenth century, included among their ranks individuals known for their strongly held interests in politics, chivalry, and romance.56 The Caius Guy

52

53

54

55

56

The catalogue of his library, now Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.36, shows he was well positioned to acquire rare books but how this Guy of Warwick manuscript came into his possession is not known. Generydes, ed. by W. Aldis Wright, EETS os 55, 70 (London: Trübner, 1873), p. vi, suggests that Anne took either Generydes or both manuscripts with her when she married, a possibility also discussed by Derek Pearsall, ‘Notes on the Manuscript of Generydes’, The Library, 16 (1961), 205–10 (p. 209). For genealogies which illustrate Anne Knyvett-Thwaites’s descent from Sir William Knyvett of Buckenham Castle, Norfolk, and the links between the Buckenham Knyvetts and Sir Thomas Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe, see Rye, The Visitation, p. 284, Blomefield, An Essay, pp. 257–71, and The Knyvett Letters 1620–1644, ed. by Bertram Scofield (London: Constable and Co., 1949), pp. 52–53. ‘Knyvett’ appears on fol. 274v of Tokyo, Takamiya MS 24 (the Devonshire Chaucer, which also has the Knyvett arms) and on fol. 108v of the illuminated but unfinished copy of Chaucer’s Troilus (now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61). That is, San Marino, Huntington Library MS El.26.C.9. For further details of these inscriptions (on fols i and viii, the Paston mot in a hand from before 1450) see M. C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, Volume II The Canterbury Tales (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), p. 235, who observes that this Thomas Calthropp was ‘perhaps the great-nephew of Sir Robert Drury whose first wife Anna was the daughter of Sir William Calthorpe of Norwich’. For discussions of the spread of the chivalric revival to England and the renewed interest in tournaments from the 1460s with the accession of Edward IV, see Richard Barber, ‘Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Court Culture under Edward IV’, in Arthurian Literature XII, ed. by James P. Carley and Felicity Riddy (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993), pp. 133–56, and ‘Chivalry and the Morte Darthur’, in A Companion to Malory, ed. by Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), pp. 19–35. For a discussion of Joanna, second wife of Sir William Knyvett, see Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61, ed. by M. B. Parkes and Elizabeth Salter (Cambridge: Brewer, 1978). She is thought likely to be responsible for the ‘Knyvett’ on Corpus 61 as her mother’s name, Anne Neville, also appears on the manuscript. This Anne Neville, Duchess

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may well have been commissioned by someone from among their ranks; or, at least, it was certainly in the vicinity and seems to have been the kind of book they would have appreciated. Around the same time that the gold leaf was being applied to the Caius Guy, in another part of the country an old copy of the romance was being cut up for binding fragments. The blackened and brittle shards of parchment now kept in a box in the National Library of Wales, and their counterparts in the British Library, are all that remain of the single known manuscript copy of the D redaction. Composed in couplets in a Northern dialect around 1300, it is the earliest known example of Northern Middle English. The language may well have sounded outlandishly foreign and archaic to the final owners of the book, who were southerners. The name ‘Nycolas de Saint lo Chevalier’ appears on the BL book, as well as in various documents used in the NLW binding fragments, and has been traced by Maldwyn Mills and Daniel Huws to Somerset. Nycolas used the old romance to line the binding of two books of the new learning and this may well represent the fate of many other romance manuscripts now lost to us. But this was not the end of the line for the D redaction. There was at least one more copy of the D redaction in circulation in the south, and one that fell into more appreciative hands. By c. 1497 the D redaction, selected, it seems, for its robust and energetic style, had become the basis for the version of the romance printed in London by Wynkyn de Worde.57 The way that the D redaction persists across time and overlaps chronological periods, the way it can be connected with both London and the provinces, with the North and the South, and the way it was re-purposed for print, seem typical of the textual tradition more widely. The manuscripts and texts of Guy of Warwick resist any simple morphology of decline or decay and refuse to conform to any straightforward geographical pattern or social categorization. The range of information about dialects and provenance that the manuscripts contain attests to a romance that was widely known and to texts that travelled between different regions. Each of the redactions can be shown to have been in contact with the London book trade at some stage or another and there is the sense of the romance being trafficked in and out of London over many years. The recycling of texts – the slicing, splicing, and patching up of older exemplars – as well as the impulse to translate new versions, also characterize the textual tradition. It is an indication of the way that book producers sometimes struggled to find an appropriate version of the romance or, in some cases, to get their hands on any version at all. The adjustments to the fifteenthcentury CUL and Caius texts are suggestive of the place of Guy within the chivalric revival of the later fifteenth century. More specifically, these texts are indicative of the direct impact that the figure of Richard Beauchamp and the cult of Guy at Warwick had upon the romance; the revival and reconcepof Buckingham, has been associated with several fifteenth-century manuscripts, including the Roman de la Rose (p. 23). 57 The single surviving fragment of the de Worde print is now Oxford, Bodleian Library Douce e.xiv; STC 12541.

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tualization of Guy as a chivalric hero in these later manuscripts represents a distinctive phase in its reception. The strenuous efforts of successive Middle English translators, scribes, compilers, and patrons to produce versions of the romance that would live up to their expectations are testimony to generations of careful readers and their high regard for Guy of Warwick’s ancestral, historical, chivalric, and patriotic themes.

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6 The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition A. S. G. EDWARDS

T

he two verse works discussed in this chapter, the Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick, have in common their radical realignment of the Guy of Warwick narrative. In both the figure of Guy is moved from the world of romance into the orbit of devotional literature and reconstituted in ways that provide testimony to the associative adaptability of the legendary knight. Such new formulations have an intrinsic interest that is heightened by the demonstrable extent of their appeal to medieval audiences. The factors that led to them achieving such a degree of popularity invite examination both of the intrinsic qualities of the works themselves and of the surviving forms in which they were transmitted.

I The poem now generally known as the Speculum Guy de Warwick, which in its fullest form runs to 1034 lines, in couplets, recounts the desire of an ‘erle of gode fame, / Gy of Warwyk’ (29–30), to seek Christian guidance from ‘a god man […] / þat liued al in godes lawe / Alquin was his rihte name’ (37–39). Several of the manuscript titles of the poem draw attention to this association with Alcuin (c. 740–804), the English poet, scholar, and exegete, and advisor to Charlemagne. In British Library, Additional MS 36983, the poem is simply titled ‘Alquyne’ in both title and colophon (fols 268rb and 275ra); in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.11.89 it is described as ‘þe sermon þat 

References to the Speculum are to the version from the Auchinleck manuscript as edited by G. L. Morrill, Speculum Gy de Warewyk, EETS, es 75 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1898), henceforward cited parenthetically by line number in the text. Several manuscripts are substantially shorter than the length established there, in part because of the loss of final leaves: Arundel 140 ends at line 892; Harley 1731 at line 910; Harley 525 ends at line 828 (with a twelve-line conclusion). For general discussion and bibliography see T. Heffernan and P. J. Horner, ‘Sermons and Homilies’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, XI, ed. by P. Beidler (New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1905), pp. 4049–51 and pp. 4266–67.

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a clerk made þat was cleput Alquyn to Gwy of Warwyk how ich Cristen man owe for to hafe a remembraunce of þe passion of our lord Ihesu Criste’ (fol. 162v); and in British Library, Harley MS 525 it is called ‘Speculum Gydonis de Warewyke secundum Alquinam heremitam’ (fol. 44); this is also the only manuscript title to incorporate a form of words (‘Speculum Gydonis’), that corresponds to its modern one. Although the figure of Alcuin is given considerable prominence in the manuscript titles, as it is in the narrative itself, where his is the dominant expository voice, none of these titles indicate the specific work of his with which the Middle English poem is associated. Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, was written c. 800, and was designed to give instruction to the laity on a range of spiritual matters over the course of its thirty-five chapters. It was a widely influential work. The Liber survives in over 140 manuscripts, some clearly of English provenance; it was also translated into Old Norse and several times into Old English.  The Speculum Guy de Warwick, which probably dates from the early fourteenth century, is, however, the only Middle English work that appears to show its influence. Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis was written for another Guy, Guido of Tours. The association of the Middle English poem with Guy of Warwick was probably based on no more than the fortuitous link that permitted the transposition of the original commissioner’s identity to an appropriate English fictional ‘Guy’ who could be plausibly identified as an exemplification of Christian virtue. There is no evidence of a connection between Guy of Warwick and Alcuin’s work before the Middle English Speculum Guy de Warwick. The emergence in English verse of this pious Guy at virtually the same time as the Middle English romance protagonist is a curious feature of the Guy of Warwick tradition without obvious parallel. If the biographical association of Alcuin’s work with Guy of Warwick is wholly without historical substance, the direct relationship between the former’s De virtutibus et vitiis liber and the Middle English Speculum is at best extremely tenuous. The editor of the Speculum notes that ‘the larger portion of the Speculum is […] not to be discovered in the pages of the Liber, but deviates materially from it […] after the first one hundred and thirty-seven verses, the Speculum exists as a free production of an English redactor’. No purpose would therefore be served by any detailed comparison of the poem    



The Royal manuscript terms it ‘speculum vtile istius mundi’ in the colophon (fol. 36); no other manuscript has a title. For discussion see Morrill, Speculum, pp. xcv–ciii. The Latin original is edited in J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 101, cols 613–38. For a general account of the work see Luitpold Wallach, ‘Alcuin on Vices and Virtues’, Harvard Theological Review, 48 (1955), 175–95. For details see Paul Szarmach, ‘A Preliminary Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Alcuin’s Liber de virtutibus et vitiis’, Manuscripta, 25 (1981), 131–40; see further, Clare A. Lees, ‘The Dissemination of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis liber in Old English: A Preliminary Survey’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 16 (1985), 174–89. Morrill, Speculum, p. cxiii.

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with its ostensible source. The plot is concerned with Alcuin’s implementation of Guy’s request to show him ‘faire vertuz for to take / And foule þewes to forsake’ (70–71). It goes on to provide a series of succinct expositions of various elements of Christian doctrine or faith: the virtues (81–100), the deadly sins (101–36), original sin and Christ’s redemptive purpose, the final judgement (167–266), the joys of paradise (285–322), visions of the Godhead (339– 99), the importance of penitence, confession, and prayer (462–516), of mercy (523–68), patience, and humility (569–691), the avoidance of sin (692–854), and the imminence of death (855–918). The poem concludes with a discussion of the ‘vertu of almesdede’ (922), illustrated by the parable of a widow of Sarepta who is visited by the prophet ‘HeliZe’ by Christ’s command (947– 1012), an example based on 1 Kings xvii, 8–16. The expository sequences of the poem are intermittently broken up by brief Latin scriptural sub-headings and it is studded with other Biblical citations; there are also occasional references to the Church Fathers, Augustine (273–76), and Gregory (657–72) and to the ‘sauter boke’ (460, 692). The Speculum Guy de Warwick is a verse homily. Guy asks Alcuin to ‘make me a god sarmoun / And don hit write in lesczoun : / þat were my ioye and my delit / And to my soule a gret profyt’ (55–58). The implementation of this request removes the poem from any connections with the world of romance. It offers vernacular didacticism of a basic expository kind reflected in a wide range of Middle English treatises of religious instruction. Much of this material is so commonplace that no exact source is identifiable. As such a treatise the circulation of the Speculum suggests that it seems to have enjoyed quite a wide-ranging appeal. The Speculum survives in ten manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In all of these it appears as a part of larger collections in predominantly religious contexts, generally with other vernacular materials. In what is probably the earliest surviving manuscript, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1, the ‘Auchinleck’ manuscript, best known for its collection of Middle English verse romances, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, it is in a group of devotional works, saints’ lives, exempla, and homilies (on fols 39ra–48rb), that occupies the first section of the manuscript. It is noteworthy that Auchinleck is the only manuscript in which the Speculum occurs with a romance version of Guy, one in short couplets (fols 146vb–167rb) and tail rhyme (fols 167rb–175vb). The distance that separates the two works in the manuscript may be an indication that the compilers saw no relationship between them. Other manuscripts have a sharper compilational focus. Cambridge University Library MS Dd.11.89, is a late-fourteenth-century manuscript that comprises Middle English religious verse, most substantially, the Prick of 

A number of minor sources, of varying degrees of appositeness, are identified by Morrill, Speculum, pp. cxiv–cxxiv.  NIMEV 1101.  For facsimile and full description see The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 19.2.1, ed. by Derek Pearsall and I. C. Cunningham (London: Scolar Press, 1977).

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Conscience, which is immediately followed by the Speculum, on fols 162v– 179v.10 The collocation is a recurrent one. The two works appear in the same order in other manuscripts: in both the late-fourteenth-century Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Eng. 50 (where the Speculum is on pp. 205–24),11 and the early-fifteenth-century British Library, Harley MS 173112 (where the Speculum is on fols 134–148v), these two works are the only contents of the manuscripts. They also occur together in another early-fifteenth-century manuscript, British Library, Arundel MS 140 (where the Speculum appears on fols 147–151v), together with other Middle English verse and prose, the latter including Chaucer’s Melibee and what in this context is a rare secular text, Mandeville’s Travels.13 Finally, a substantial extract from the Prick is in BL, Additional MS 36983, a manuscript that probably dates from towards the end of the second quarter of the fifteenth century; this is a large collection of over three hundred leaves, chiefly of religious verse, but with some substantial Middle English prose devotional works, including the Three Kings of Cologne and The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost; the Speculum is on fols 268–75.14 The other manuscripts that include the Speculum generally confirm these religious and vernacular contexts for its circulation. British Library, Royal MS 17. B. XVII, an early-fifteenth-century manuscript, contains a number of Middle English verse and prose works of a religious cast, including the Lay Folk’s Catechism, together with a fairly large assemblage of Rolle and pseudo-Rolle in both Latin and Middle English, including his Emendatio Vitae; the Speculum is on fols 19–36.15 In BL, Harley MS 525 it appears to have been a later addition added to a manuscript that originally comprised two other verse texts, the Seege of Troye and the didactic romance Robert of Sicily; the Speculum is added after these poems in a different hand to the one that copied them on leaves that had been initially left blank, fols 44–53.16 In 10

11

12 13 14

15

16

For description see Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience, Medium Ævum Monographs, n.s. 12 (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1982), pp. 42–43. For description see Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, pp. 87–88 (where this manuscript is erroneously numbered ‘54’), and N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries III: Lampeter-Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 401–02. For description see Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, pp. 137–38. For description see Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, pp. 57–58 and the further references cited there. For description see Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, pp. 154–55, and The Southern Version of the Cursor Mundi, ed. by Sarah M. Horrall (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), I, 16–17. The Abbey also occurs in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.11.89, but as part of a separate manuscript only later bound up with the one containing the Speculum. A substantial chunk from this manuscript is printed in C. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, 2 vols (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1896), II, 1–71. For a description see G. F. Warner and J. P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Library in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: The Trustees, 1921), II, 228–30. For a full description see Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Münich: W. Fink, 1976), pp. 184–86; for some discussion of this manuscript see A. S. G. Edwards, ‘The Contexts of the Vernon Romances’, in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 159–70 (p. 165).

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Oxford, Bodleian Library, Additional MS C.220 (SC 29430), fols 2v–8v, it is part of a fragmentary manuscript that otherwise comprises the South English Legendary.17 Only in Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 256, an early-fourteenth-century manuscript, does the Speculum stand apart from this tendency to collocate it with English works: here it appears (pp. 254–68) after the chief content, the French devotional work, Somme le Roi.18 The popularity of the poem in terms of its number of surviving manuscripts was doubtless due, in part, to its ability to piggy-back on the far wider appeal of the Prick of Conscience, itself the most widely circulating of Middle English verse texts. But its relative brevity very likely made it a useful ‘filler’ in other vernacular religious compilations, since it could probably be copied in no more than a single quire. The clearest indication of this usefulness is its belated inclusion in BL, Harley MS 525, perhaps for no more compelling reason than that it was available and would fill a blank space. The geographical range of these manuscripts is considerable and generally indicates that the work (or at least the manuscripts in which it appears) circulated chiefly in non-metropolitan environments.19 Only the Auchinleck manuscript and, to some extent, BL, Additional MS 36983 and Harley MS 525, which both seem to have been compiled in Bedfordshire,20 have connections with London or its environs. The language of Manchester Rylands MS 50 indicates south-east Staffordshire associations.21 BL, Royal MS 17. B. XVII has Derbyshire associations;22 while BL, Arundel MS 140 has less defined links to the south-east Midlands.23 CUL MS Dd.11.89, BL, Harley MS 1731, and Bodley Additional MS C.220 all have pronounced west country associations. The first is probably from the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border24 and the latter two from north-east Wiltshire.25 St John’s College MS 256 has place names on a flyleaf that link it to the East Anglian Fens, although the evidence

17

18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25

Other parts of this manuscript are now British Library Additional MSS 10301 and 10626; see further M. Görlach, The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary, Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s. 6 (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1974), pp. 95–97. For a detailed listing of the contents see Carleton Brown, A Register of Middle English Religious Verse, 2 vols (Oxford: Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the University Press, 1916–20), I, 121–22, 388–92. For descriptions see M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of St John’s College Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), pp. 291–93, and The Cambridge Illuminations, ed. by Paul Binski and Stella Panyatova (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, 2005), pp. 257–58. Statements about the geography of the manuscripts generally derive from Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986); references are provided to the appropriate linguistic profile (‘LP’) by number and (parenthetically), volume, and page. This work is not, of course, a secure guide as to site of production but its evidence is noted because of its potential relevance. LP 8200 (III, 6–7), and LP 8190 (III, 6) respectively. LP 519 (III, 464–65). LP 3 (III, 66–67). See Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, p. 58; there is no LP but Lincolnshire is suggested in McIntosh et al. (I, 105). Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, p. 43. Lewis and McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide, p. 138 and Görlach, p. 96 and LP 6960 (III, 134–35).

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for its origins in this region is admittedly circumstantial.26 An erased fifteenthcentury inscription associates BL, Royal MS 17. B. XVII with Norfolk.27 Clearly the Speculum Guy de Warwick was a poem whose audience was not regionally restricted.28 It is difficult to speculate with much confidence about the nature of the audience. Clearly it was one that was likely to have some degree of vernacular literacy. One might guess that it was predominantly secular, but that would not necessarily be a secure assumption; it could conceivably have included parish clergy with limited knowledge of Latin who drew on vernacular works for basic religious instruction. The occurrence of the Speculum with the Prick of Conscience provides some support for such an assumption, since that work deals with a range of eschatological topics and their bearing on Christian conduct. What is clear is that the manuscripts of the Speculum demonstrate the widespread appeal of such a relatively compact work of generalized vernacular religious instruction. That such an appeal draws, however implausibly, on the figure of Guy of Warwick, seems to suggest a sense of the potentiality of Guy’s name and status for spiritual exhortation that is unique among English romance protagonists.

II If, in the Speculum Guy de Warwick, we see the romance hero transformed into the compliant student of a doctrinal expositor, in Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick we see wider spiritual and regional dimensions to his presentation in narrative mode. The poem is set in ‘Fro Cristis birthe complet nyne hundrid yeer / Twenty and sevene’ (1–2),29 in the reign of King Athelstan, during the Danish oppression of southern England. The English are given the choice of either paying tribute to the invading Danes or nominating a knight to fight against ‘Colybrond of Denmark the Geaunt’ (123) as a way of gaining their freedom. Initially the English are at a loss to find a champion. But Athelstan is directed in a vision to find a pilgrim living humbly in Winchester; this pilgrim is actually Guy, who has recently returned to England from a pilgrimage abroad. Although not recognized by the king, Guy agrees to accept the challenge and 26

Pace James’ confidence that ‘the book most likely belonged to Peterborough’, A Descriptive Catalogue, p. 291; cf. the more cautious view in Binski and Panyatova, The Cambridge Illuminations, p. 258, that ‘this evidence remains only suggestive’. 27 Royal Catalogue, II, 230; in the sixteenth century it was owned by the collector Edward Banyster who possessed a number of other Middle English devotional works and others; see M. C. Seymour, ‘MSS Douce 261 and Egerton 3123A and Edward Banyster’, Bodleian Library Record, 10 (1978– 82), 162–65 (especially p. 163). 28 To the surviving copies may be added the record of a further one, now no longer identifiable, of York provenance: in 1469, ‘Gilamote Carrek de Ebor’ bequeathed a Speculum Guidonis or Speculum of Guy of Warwick: see Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by James Raine, Part I, Surtees Society (London: Nichols, 1836), p. 352. 29 All references to the text of Lydgate’s poem are to The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. by H. N. MacCracken, Part II, EETS os 192 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 516–38, cited parenthetically by line number in the text.

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fights Colbrond on 12 July at ‘Hyde Meede’ (379), near Winchester. Guy is victorious and the Danes leave England. Guy then reveals his identity to the king, declines any reward and returns, again in disguise, to ‘Warwyk, his castell and his toun’ (492). He does not, however, return to his wife, Felice, and his home, but remains in a hermitage until, after two years of penitential exercise, at the point of death, he identifies himself to Felice. After his death, Guy is succeeded by his son, Reinbroun. Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick comprises seventy-four eight-line stanzas, a total of 592 lines. It is not based directly on a romance version of the Guy narrative but professedly on an account in the Latin chronicle of Gerardus Cornubiensis (Gerald of Cornwall). This work is claimed as its source in the poem; near the end Lydgate asserts: For more auctorite in this mateer, Whos translacioun is suych in sentence, Out of the Latyn maad by the cronicleer Callyd of old Gerard Cornubyence Wich wrot the dedis with gret dilligence, Of them that wern in Westsex crowned kynges Gretly comendyng for knyghtly excellence Guy of Warwyk in his famous writynges Of whos noblesse ful gret heed he took, His marcyal name puttyng in remembraunce The xi. chapitle of his hystorial book.  [569–79]

Gerard’s chronicle does not survive as a complete work, but only in extracts. His account of Guy’s victory over the Dane Colbrond occurs in the Liber monasterii de Hyda (Hyde, Winchester) and also as an addition to a manuscript of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon in Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 147.30 Lydgate’s poem includes a number of other references (cf. 571), to ‘the Cronycleer’ (3) or the ‘cronicle’ (36, 75, 91, 281, 502). It seems to follow its source quite closely in general.31 But there are occasional points where small details in Lydgate’s poem suggest that he may have supplemented his main source by borrowings from the French Prose Guy, a work very probably commissioned by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1382–1439), as John Frankis has plausibly argued.32 Richard’s daughter, Margaret (1404–67), 30

For details of Gerard of Cornwall and the circulation of his work I am indebted to Alexander R. Rumble’s article on him, ‘Gerard of Cornwall [Girardus Cornubiensis] (supp. fl. c. 1350)’, ODNB, XXI, 929–30. The Latin text of Lydgate’s source is most readily accessible in G. Schleich, ‘Lydgates Quelle zu seinem Guy de Warwick’, Archiv, 146 (1923), 49–52. 31 Cf. Walter Schirmer, ‘In general he follows the chronicle accurately, making omissions only where the material is of purely local interest, and expanding it by verbose digressions and reiterations, mythological and scriptural allusions, introducing images from nature and human emotions’, John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century (London: Methuen, 1961), p. 93. 32 John Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage in Late Medieval England as Reflected in Guy of Warwick’, Medium Ævum, 66 (1997), 80–93, especially p. 88. I am much indebted to this valuable study of the revival of the cult of Guy.

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probably commissioned Lydgate’s poem on Guy at about the same time, c. 1425, that Richard commissioned the French Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne.33 The conjunction of these two works at one time suggests some sort of regional magnate concern in renewing interest in the figure of Guy. Indeed, some of the rubrics in manuscripts of Lydgate’s poem draw attention to the relationship between Margaret and her ancestor. Those in the Harley and Harvard copies assert that the poem was commissioned ‘at the requeste of Margarite Countas of Shrowesbury Lady fourniual and Lisle of þat moste worþy knyght Guy of Warwike of whos bloode shee is lyneally descendid’.34 These rubrics occur in manuscripts that share a common derivation from lost exemplars prepared by John Shirley (c. 1366–1456), London scribe and member of Richard Beauchamp’s circle. Shirley was an important early copyist of Lydgate manuscripts.35 Lydgate’s Guy can most plausibly be situated, then, in relation to a cult interest in Guy that has both dynastic and specific local associations, in the promotion of which poet, patron, and scribal circulation were closely linked. Lydgate refers to Guy living out his final days ‘nat fer from Warwyk […] / [in] an hermytage / Where he fond on dwellyng in wyldirnesse’ (502–04). Margaret’s father, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1382–1439) established a shrine to Guy, at Gibcliff, in Warwickshire, about 1422, near such an hermitage.36 Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick is not a work that has received much critical approval. For Walter Schirmer it is ‘an example of [his] style at its worst. It can hardly be accounted a poetic work’.37 Derek Pearsall offers a far more sympathetic view seeing it as ‘consistently serious and elevated in language; [it] must have served its purpose well’.38 This is a view that sees some consonance between style and subject in Lydgate’s treatment. But the sense of subject is not in itself wholly clear, at least from the evidence of the seven surviving manuscripts themselves, and the titles they give it. Thus, in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud misc. 683, a collection of Lydgate’s religious poems, it is called ‘the lyff of Guy of Warwick’ (on fols 75–78), that is, by implication, a 33

34 35 36 37 38

This date is the generally accepted one for Lydgate’s poem; see, for example, Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1970), p. 167, ‘probably about 1425’; a view that Frankis supports (p. 88); Schirmer, John Lydgate, p. 92, suggests ‘presumably written between 1423 and 1426’. Only Richmond, Legend, p. 124, asserts that ‘Margaret probably commissioned the poem in the mid-1440s’; her argument is, she explains ‘based on the names’ (p. 474), by which she appears to mean the later title Margaret held as Countess of Shrewsbury from 1442 and by which she is referred to in the rubrics to the Harley and Harvard manuscripts (see below and note 32). But the date of these rubrics is not, of course, evidence of the date of composition. There are a number of other errors in Richmond’s account of Lydgate’s Guy (pp. 123–27), not least her belief that John Shirley himself wrote these two manuscripts (p. 124). The rubric occurs in British Library, Harley MS 7333, fol. 33 and Harvard, Houghton Library English MS 530, fol. 4v; see MacCracken, The Minor Poems, p. 516 On Shirley’s activities see Margaret Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). On this shrine see Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage in Late Medieval England’, pp. 87–88. Schirmer, John Lydgate, p. 93. Pearsall, John Lydgate, p. 167.

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saint’s life; it is similarly titled in Harvard, Houghton Library MS Eng. 530, fols 4v–12v and British Library, Harley MS 7333, fols 33–35v. These titles doubtless reflect Lydgate’s own in the poem; he calls it the ‘Lyf of Sir Guy’ (586). However, in Leiden University Library, MS Germ. Gall. Vossius Q.9, pp. 33–57 it is headed ‘Danico invasio regnante Ethelstane una cum Guidonis de Warwik’ suggesting the work was seen as an historical one.39 In the closely related British Library, Lansdowne MS 699, fols 18–27v the title is, more grammatically, ‘Guydo de Warwik.’ And in Cambridge, Trinity College MS R. 3. 21, fols 305–14 it is called ‘a tale of Guy and Colbrond’, a designation which seems to associate it rather loosely with romance. (The version in Peterborough Central Library s.n. on fols 54–63 is untitled.)40 It seems that the poem was capable of shifting generic configurations in the minds of medieval compilers. In fact, it is not easy to arrive at a clear generic categorization of Lydgate’s poem. It clearly contains elements of both romance and saint’s life, though it cannot be identified with either genre. This may be in part at least because the narrative focus of Lydgate’s poem is not easy to establish. The actual battle between Guy and Colbrond forms only an extremely small part of the poem (381–416). Much greater emphasis falls on the process by which Guy’s role as champion is established and the aftermath of his victory, his identification of himself to the king, and his return to Warwick. The poem seems to seek to establish parallels between the episodes in which Guy conceals his identity, both before and after his battle with Colbrond. Guy only reveals himself to Athelstan after his victory (470–72); on his own instructions, he is only identified to his wife Felice after he has died (518–28). These parallel actions suggest a relationship between the knightly and devotional dimensions of Guy’s conduct. Guy’s prowess is clearly a reflection of the worth of his knightly identity: he is characterized as ‘lyk a knyght’ (395), or ‘this noble knyght’ (418), or ‘this noble famous knyght’ (293), and finally as ‘this notable, ffamous, worthy knyght’ (529). But with greater frequency he is portrayed as ‘lyk a pilgrym’ (190, 319, 443), ‘a pilgrym’ (255, 257, 468), and ‘this pylgrym’ (362, 446). At one point he is simultaneously both: ‘The olde pylgrym quyt hym lyk a knyght’ (385). It is these spiritual dimensions that shape Guy’s conduct which are given greater prominence in the narrative. Thus, the only points where the narrative moves to direct speech are when King Athelstan prays to God for guidance in finding a champion (209–22) and the angel replies (241–64). The effect of the shift is to emphasize the power of prayer and divine agency in directing the course of earthly affairs and resisting the forces of evil the Danes embody. In the end, the narrative emphasizes, Athelstan ‘by grace of Goddys myht, / Hadde of Denmark the pompe 39

On this manuscript see J. A. van Dorsten, ‘The Leyden “Lydgate Manuscript” ’, Scriptorium, 14 (1960), 315–25. 40 Described in N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries IV: Paisley–York (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 170–71. Ker suggests that the manuscript was copied ‘probably at Westminster’ (p. 171) and dates it to the late fifteenth century.

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ful repressed’ (423–24), through Guy’s victory over Colbrond. His conduct, through his interconnected roles as both knight and pilgrim, reflects a specifically Christian triumph, embodying the spiritual qualities Lydgate ascribes to the characterization of Guy in his source text: ‘The parfight lyf, the vertuous gouernaunce, / His wilful povert, hard goyng, and penaunce’ (580–81). Like the Speculum Guy de Warwick, Lydgate’s version of the Guy legend was a popular one as its seven surviving manuscripts attest. The majority of these copies are in collections of Lydgate’s shorter poems, collections that place an emphasis on his religious verse.41 Only one manuscript, Peterborough Central Library s.n., is primarily in Latin; it includes a Life of King Edward and related texts.42 The only English verse in it apart from Guy is a copy of a version of Lydgate’s ‘Verses on the Kings of England’. There are some recurrent collocations that are suggestive in relation to Guy of Warwick: some five manuscripts, Peterborough Library, BL, Lansdowne MS 699, Leiden MS Vossius 9, Trinity College MS R. 3. 21, and BL, Harley MS 7333 all also include Lydgate’s ‘Verses on the Kings of England’, and three, Lansdowne, Leiden, and Bodley MS Laud misc. 683 include his Life of St Giles. These provide the most obvious parallels to the historical and ­hagiographical elements in Guy of Warwick. In another two manuscripts, Harley and Harvard MS Eng 530, the historical element is extended by the inclusion of the prose Brut. In some instances the evidence of the manuscripts indicates that those in which Guy appears reflect commercial patterns of book circulation. Bodley MS Laud misc. 683 is one of several manuscripts solely of Lydgate’s poems that seem to have been professionally produced from exemplars that may derive ultimately from Lydgate’s Benedictine house at Bury St Edmunds.43 Two manuscripts, Lansdowne MS 699 and Leiden MS Vossius 9, were again commercially produced; their close relationship in order and content suggests their derivation from a common original.44 Other manuscripts, for example, Trinity College MS R. 3. 21, were produced in booklets by scribes active in the London book trade whose hands can be identified elsewhere;45 and, as already noted, both BL, Harley MS 7333 and the Harvard manuscript can be associated with exemplars that derive from the activities of the London-based copyist, John Shirley. The Harley manuscript shows the geographical range of Shirley’s influence since early in its history it entered the library of the house of Augustinian canons at Leicester.46 Doubtless, the circulation of Guy must 41 42 43

See NIMEV 875. See NIMEV 882. See A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Fifteenth-Century Middle English Verse Author Collections’, in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 104–05. 44 See further van Dorsten, ‘The Leiden Lydgate Manuscript’. 45 See further Julia Boffey and John Thompson, ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. by J. Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 288. 46 On Harley 7333 see Boffey and Thompson, ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies’, p. 288 and Connolly, John Shirley, pp. 174–75. On Harvard 530 see F. N. Robinson, ‘On Two Manuscripts of Lydgate’s

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have been seen as reflecting the larger commercial factors that shaped the production of manuscripts of Lydgate’s shorter poems. Given such commercial factors it is unsurprising that the fifteenth-century popularity of Lydgate’s Guy was not sustained. The afterlife of his Guy of Warwick reveals only a few post-medieval literary engagements with it. The most extensive evidence of a careful later reading of it comes in the New Cronycles of Englande, printed by Pynson in two volumes in 1516 and generally ascribed to Robert Fabyan (d. 1513). Here, in ‘The CLXXXV. Chapiter’, there is an account of Guy drawn from ‘a goodly treatyse’ made by ‘Dane Iohn Lydgate a munke somtyme of saynt Edmundes bury’. This gives a lengthy prose version of Lydgate’s poem. Fabyan is at pains to characterize and emphasize his source: ‘al whyche sayde treatyse is shewyd at length in meter of viii. Stauys, after the maner of the precedentes, and dylygent labour of the sayde Dane Iohn Lydgate’. At the end he quotes directly from near the conclusion of the poem (569–76, cited above). Lydgate here achieves the status of an historical authority, one whose testimony is sufficiently reliable to be compared to other authorities like ‘old Gerardus Cambrence’ [sic] and ‘Policronica’ (Higden’s Polychronicon). Some details from this account survive in later sixteenth-century ones, like John Leland’s Itineraries (1549), John Stow’s Abridgement of Chronicles (1566), Richard Grafton’s Chronicle (1568), and the Historia Anglicana Eclesiastica (1622).47 The interest in Lydgate’s poem manifested by the early-seventeenth-century poet John Lane (fl. 1600–30) is much harder to define. In 1621 he copied into British Library, Harley MS 5243 a work he described on the title page as The corrected historie of Sir Gwy, Earle of Warwick, | surnamed the Hermite; begun by Don Lidgate moncke of St Edmunds | but now diligentlie exquired from all | Antiquitie by John Lane  [fol. 2]

The word ‘exquired’ ‘to find out by searching’,48 does not adequately convey what Lane has done. Nor does his characterization in the colophon as ‘a corrected historie’ (fol. 132). His poem consists of twenty-six cantos, in rhyme-royal stanzas, together with an initial ‘complaint’ (fol. 7) and epilogue (fols 130v–132) in couplets. The main text amounts to over seventeen thousand lines. Clearly Lane had a taste for this sort of thing. A few years earlier he had composed a continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale of an equally capacious kind.49 The effect of his expansions to the Guy narrative resists generalization. The beginning of the poem, ‘Lidgates Complaint’ announces: Guy of Warwick’, Harvard Studies & Notes in Philology & Literature, 5 (1899), 177–213 and Connolly, pp. 173–74. 47 For some account of the references see Legend, pp. 183–87. 48 OED, s.v., ‘exquire’, v. obs; the only citations for the verb are seventeenth-century ones. 49 John Lane’s Continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, ed. by F. J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, Series 2, 23, 26 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1888, 1890).

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A. S. G. Edwards Provokd out of my grave I com on cause To plaine the breach of Allegorical lawes I com, Saint Edmundsburies moncke of late Don Chaucers pupil …  [fol. 7]

But neither the voice nor the following poem have much to do with Lydgate. Indeed, in spite of the claims on Lane’s title page the main source seems to have been a metrical romance version of the Guy narrative.50 There are other obvious influences. Clearly the division of the poem into cantos, each prefaced by its ‘Argument’ or summary, recalls Spenser’s Faerie Queene; he is among a number of distinguished predecessors Lane invokes. What precisely is ‘the breach of Allegorical lawes’ that is being rectified here is not clear. Allegory is not a mode that Lydgate particularly favoured. And even such a naturally prolix poet would have found Lane’s work baffling in its scope and mode. Beyond Fabyan and Lane evidence of interest in Lydgate’s poem in the Renaissance is not easy to find.51 There is, however, a passage that may contain an allusion in the Historiarchos (1659) of William Prynne (1600–69), the moderate Puritan who became, on Charles II’s accession, keeper of the records in the Tower. As an historian Prynne was noted by his contemporaries for his wide reading and antiquarian interests and seems to have drawn for his account of Athelstan’s reign on ‘Henry de Knighton, de Eventibus Anglie’ together with ‘some other fabulous Authors’, among which he specifies in a side note ‘the history of Guy of Warwick’ (p. 96). Lydgate may have been the source for the events surrounding the battle between Guy and Colbrond. By Prynne’s account ‘God by an Angel from Heaven, directed the King to find one Guy of Warwick, comming thither as a Pilgrim who undertook to encounter Colybrand; and after a sharp battel with him in the view of both kings and their Armies cutt off one of his handes, and after that his head’ (p. 97; italics in the original). All these details occur in Lydgate’s poem, even down to the sequence of dismemberment. Guy Smette the Geaunt evene in the firste wounde, Made his stroke so myghtyly to glyde That his lefft arme and shuldir ffyll to grounde … And then Fleih with his ax, smet of the sturdy heed Of the Geaunt, and hadde of hym vyctorye.  [406–08, 415–16]52 50

See further R. S. Crane, ‘The Vogue of Guy of Warwick, from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival’, PMLA, 30 (1915), 125–94, especially p. 159. 51 Crane, ‘The Vogue of Guy of Warwick’, p. 154, discusses the possibility that Samuel Rowlands’s The Famous History of Guy Earle of Warwick (1609) may have been influenced by Lydgate’s poem, but concludes that direct influence was unlikely. 52 Events do occur in this order in some of the manuscript versions, but not in any of the print ones. It seems inherently unlikely that a Puritan historian would have sought to consult Middle English romance manuscripts when an historian, Fabyan, would have made him aware of Lydgate’s version. Another point that suggests Lydgate’s influence is the name ‘Colybrond’ which occurs in

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Prynne dismisses the story: ‘But this Relation, being contrary to the truth of History, and the Stream of all our Historiographers, I shall repute it merely fabulous’ (p. 97). Since Prynne is a scrupulous historian he says he ‘could not well omit it, for that Relation it hath to this my Theame’ (p. 97). Although there is doubtless an element of Protestant bias in his response, his discriminations are clear. The story of Guy is now clearly distinguished from historical narrative (‘the truth of History’) and reduced to the ‘merely fabulous’. It is a perfunctory dismissal of a figure who had once enjoyed far greater regional and national prominence.

Lydgate’s poem (see lines 123, 136, 390, 399, 409) and in Prynne but not in romance versions of the narrative. I am much indebted to the editors for their advice and for their efforts to improve my argument.

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7 An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero Robert Allen Rouse

T

he Middle English Guy of Warwick narrates a vita that is, even by the often outrageous standards of medieval romance, extraordinary. Guy’s life leads him from somewhat humble beginnings as the son of a provincial steward – the very margins of chivalric society – to his predestined place as chivalric, Christian, and most importantly, English culture-hero. Along the way he obtains chivalric glory, a courtly paramour, and associated noble title (Earl of Warwick), he vanquishes Saracen threats both defensively (at the walls of Constantinople) and offensively (whilst on a one-man Crusade in the Middle East) – thus taking on the mantle of defender of European Christianity – before returning home to become England’s saviour from invasion and to finally die, as the circle of his life completes, back in Warwickshire as a devout hermit. As an example of popular romance entertainment, Guy of Warwick has few peers either in terms of popularity or its impact on wider English culture. However, the romance’s importance is not limited to its function as popular entertainment. Much recent scholarship has established the important role of medieval romance in the articulation of national and group identity, figuring romance as a genre that is of great interest to the literary scholar and cultural historian alike. In addition to the importance of Guy of Warwick in the discourse of identity politics, the figure of Guy also enjoys a powerful influence outside the romance, as he is appropriated for the promotion of family, civic, and national pride more widely within English culture. The narrative



For the purposes of this chapter I will primarily be making reference to the version of Guy of Warwick as found in the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS. 19.2.1), as this is the Middle English version of the romance that has been most fully discussed in terms of its ideological and manuscript contexts; see Guy, ed. by Zupitza. This will be augmented at times with readings from the Caius MS version, in those places where the Auchinleck is deficient.  On the popularity of the romance, see Susan Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Guy of Warwick and the Question of Exemplary Romance’, Genre, 17 (1984), 351–74. A recent discussion of Guy’s place in the wider English culture of the Middle Ages can be found in Yin Liu, ‘Richard Beauchamp and the Uses of Romance’, Medium Ævum, 74 (2005), 271–87.

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development of Guy as a medieval culture-hero – a figure who embodies a number of different identity groups – is the subject of this chapter. Thorlac Turville-Petre has described Guy as ‘the model of the knight of England’. Implicit within this designation is an understanding of this romance as exemplary narrative: a vita that in some fashion was intended to be imitated by its audience, or at the very least was intended to inspire its readers through admiration of the hero’s deeds. This purpose of the text is made clear from its very beginning: Many aduentures hath be wrouZt Þat all men knoweth nouZt. Therfore men shull herken blythe, And it vndirstonde right swythe, For they that were borne or wee Fayre aduenturis hadden they; For euere they louyd sothfastenesse, Faith with trewthe and stedfastnesse. Therfore schulde man with gladde chere Lerne goodnesse, vndirstonde, and here: Who myke it hereth and vndirstondeth it By resoun he shulde bee wyse of witte; And y it holde a fayre mastrye, To occupye wisedome and leue folye.  [7–20]

The text is clearly envisaged as didactic in nature, with Guy providing a model of behaviour and character that expresses communal values and expectations for its audience. Having accepted an exemplary function for the romance, we need next to address a number of questions with regard to both the ideological tenets that the text articulates, and the processes by which the text acts as exemplum: what is the text’s project, and how is it impressed upon the reader of romance? So, what is the exemplary function of this romance? This is in many ways a question that defies a simple answer: the complicated literary archaeologies that lie behind the creation of many medieval romances represent a process of literary accretion that, in the words of Geraldine Heng, ‘exemplifies medieval textual culture and literary production at work, [and thus] can be read only as a sedimented repository of cultural patterns, investments, and obsessions 

The appellation ‘culture-hero’ is intended to signify Guy’s embodiment of English cultural and national identity. In my use of this term I differ somewhat from the more common folkloric definition of culture hero as ‘a character […] regarded as the giver of a culture to its people’: see ‘Culture-Hero’, in The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, ed. by Maria Leach (New York: Funk & Wagnells, 1972), p. 268. Rather than acting as a giver of culture to the English, Guy acts instead to reinforce and rearticulate the central cultural tenets of the English.  Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290– 1340 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), p. 116.  Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Guy of Warwick’, p. 368, convincingly argues that ‘[m]edieval romance is itself an exemplary form’.

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that were deemed important enough to be inscribed, and reinscribed, over a span of centuries’. In the context of such a model of textual production, a popular romance such as Guy of Warwick can be seen to voice many and varied cultural discourses. However, arguably the most important concern within Guy of Warwick, and the one that has been the focus of much recent scholarly interest, is the romance’s role in the cultural project of articulating a sense of English group identity. Turville-Petre observes that ‘the establishment and exploration of a sense of a national identity is a major preoccupation of English writers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: who are the English; where do they come from; what constitutes the English nation?’ In my recent study of the use of the cultural memory of Anglo-Saxon England within this phenomenon, I have argued that Guy of Warwick, along with that other Auchinleck manuscript romance Bevis of Hamtoun, seeks to answer these pressing questions, and in doing so appropriates England’s Anglo-Saxon past ‘as an important temporal space in which [...] tensions of national identity can be examined and incorporated into a national fantasy of Englishness’. However, while Guy has been understood as representing, especially within the context of the Auchinleck manuscript, a particularly English project of national identity creation, the English are not the sole identity group that he embodies. Guy is constructed within the Auchinleck romance as a hero who has multiple group affinities: ‘Gij of Warwike’ (157), ‘Gij þe Englisse’ (3889), and Guy the ‘Cristen’ (110:5) – a series of epithets which alert the reader to the multiple identity groups which he stands for within the text. Guy of Warwick acknowledges the claims of at least two group affinities other than that of ‘English’. The first, and what from the title of the romance appears to be the most immediate one, is that of the region or city: Warwick. Secondly, over and above the claim of the nation came the knightly duty to God, expressed territorially in the defence of a much larger realm than the homeland, namely Christendom. These identity categories are further complicated by Guy’s reputation as the epitome of knighthood, the identity that is his goal – demanded by his objet d’amour Felice – during the first half of his romance. This complex hierarchy of group affinities and the sense of everexpanding ‘territories of the self ’,10 from personal chivalric identity, to region,  

Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 67. Thorlac Turville-Petre, ‘Havelok and the History of the Nation’, in Readings in Medieval Romance, ed. by Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Brewer, 1994), pp. 121–34 (p. 121).  Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), p. 158. Heng, Empire of Magic, p. 67, comments that ‘[the] characteristic freedom of romance to merge fantasy and reality without distinction or apology, and the ability of the medium to transform crisis into celebration and triumphalism, mean that romance has special serviceability for nationalist discourse’.  These titles are not editorial, and are found in both the manuscripts and in other medieval references to the romances such as the Paston letters: see Ronald S. Crane, ‘The Vogue of Guy of Warwick from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival’, PMLA, 30 (1915), 125–94 (p. 126). 10 A term taken from Erving Goffman, ‘Territories of the Self ’, in his Relations in Public: Micro­ studies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 28–41.

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to country, to Christendom, informs both the action of Guy of Warwick and the differing epithets through which the text identifies its hero.11 However, it is important to note that these multiple identities are in no way contradictory: rather they are indicators of Guy’s role as polysemous symbol within the text. As culture-hero, Guy represents a complex understanding of the multiple allegiances demanded of a knight in medieval society, a figure around whom accrete multiple levels of identity as he moves through the different stages of his vita. Susan Dannenbaum [Crane] sees in Guy of Warwick an impulse to ‘integrate diverse interests through the hero’s character and actions’,12 and these discourses manifest to differing degrees at different points within the narrative. The junctures between the stages of Guy’s life are marked by a series of transformative moments, and it is within these moments that we find some of the key episodes of identity formation with the romance. Caroline Walker Bynum has highlighted the importance of moments of transformation in medieval narratives of identity formation: The question of change is, of course, the other side of the question of identity. If change is the replacement of one entity by another or the growth of an entity out of another in which it is implicit, we must be able to say how we have an entity in the first place. What gives it its identity […] ?13

Moments of change thus ask multiple questions regarding identity: what identity is being transformed? Is it replaced in such moments of change, or simply modified? What is the nature of the transformed identity? And what is the process or mechanism of such change? This chapter will examine four such moments of identity change within Guy’s vita: firstly his maturation narrative rise to fame as a chivalric knight – a process which culminates in his defence of Constantinople against the Saracens; secondly his religious epiphany after he has married Felice, which prompts him to leave his new bride to undertake a penitential pilgrimage; thirdly the climax of his pilgrimage to the East – his defeat of the Saracen giant Amoraunt; and fourthly his transformation into an English hero-saint through his defeat of Colbrond the Dane and his subsequent sanctified death as a hermit.

11

We find in Geoffroi de Charny’s Livre de Chevalerie a useful contemporary account of the expression of this hierarchy of identities, based on an ever-expanding territorial scale. Geoffroi outlines the honour gained by the knight in tournaments and local wars (good), foreign wars (better), and crusades (best); see The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, ed. by Richard W. Kaeuper and trans. by Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 84–103. 12 Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Guy of Warwick’, p. 359. 13 Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone, 2001), p. 19.

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Robert Allen Rouse Identity at the Edge: Guy as Maturation Romance

Guy of Warwick constructs its hero as a shining example of a chivalric knight. In the couplet romance that narrates the first section of his vita, Guy seeks to establish a chivalric reputation through deeds of arms in order to earn the love of Felice, daughter of the Earl of Warwick. He ventures to the continent, winning there a reputation at tournaments in Normandy, Spain, and Germany, and in numerous wars in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. It is important for the exemplary strategy of Guy’s vita that he initially establishes his reputation within this historically realistic behavioural frame: if the romance is to be seen as a model of the chivalric life – as secular imitatio – then it must necessarily structure itself in a manner familiar to the lived experience of contemporary knights.14 This first movement within Guy of Warwick follows the familiar pattern of the maturation romance: the young knight constructs his personal chivalric identity through martial combat with other knights. However, the usual pattern is extended within this romance as Guy’s efforts are initially rejected by Felice, who repeatedly sends him out to seek higher degrees of glory, and to face greater dangers, whenever he returns to Warwick to seek her approval. The apotheosis of Guy’s reputation as secular knight comes in his defence of Constantinople from the Saracen army of the Sultan of Coyne. While at the Emperor Reyner’s court in Germany, Guy and his companion Herhaud encounter foreign merchants arrived from the East, carrying with them grave and momentous news. The merchants tell of the dire need of Ernis, the Emperor of Constantinople, who is besieged by a Saracen host. This report of the siege provokes in Guy a desire to confront the ultimate enemy of a medieval Christian knight, the Saracen. Equipped by the Emperor with a company of one hundred German knights, the two Englishmen travel to Constantinople and put themselves at Ernis’s command. From the very start, this ‘aventure’ has a markedly different tone to those that Guy has undertaken thus far. Guy wishes to aid the Emperor against the Sultan’s forces, who ‘Þat lond destrud & men aqueld, / & cristendom þai han michel afeld’ (2853–54). Here Guy’s actions turn from his earlier individual tournaments and the squabblings of European princes to the defence of a larger religiously delineated geo-political entity: he seeks to defend ‘cristendom’ from its heathen enemies. Given the religious overtones of this expedition, it is tempting to imagine Guy’s defence of Constantinople as representing a form of crusade, especially given the associations of the city with numerous historical crusades – a point of reference that would not have been lost on the romance’s medieval audience. Such an optimistic reading of the motivations that lie behind Guy’s exploits would lead us to view him as already developing into the role of the milites Christi. However, Guy is not yet 14

On Guy of Warwick as secular imitatio, see Diana T. Childress, ‘Between Romance and Legend: “Secular Hagiography” in Middle English Literature’, in Philological Quarterly, 57 (1978), 311– 22 (p. 312).

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ready for such a spiritual transformation, as can be seen from the comments of his companion Herhaud, who provides the following secular gloss on Guy’s motivation: ‘y graunt it be / Miche worþschipe it worþ to þe’ (2855–56). That Guy’s motivation at this point is not governed by a sense of Christian duty is further indicated through his complaint to Felice during his eventual transformation into a milites Christi: ‘Ac for þi loue ich haue al wrouZt / For his [Christ’s] loue dede y neuer nouZt’ (25: 7–8).15 Rather than casting Guy in the role of a pious milites Christi, the romance presents him as the more troubling figure of a crusading knight motivated not by God, but by his own continuing quest for chivalric glory: a secular figure replete with dubious connotations of previous, historical crusaders. In the process of aiding the defence of Constantinople, Guy’s vita moves into the defining stage of its development of Guy’s reputation as the ‘best doynge / In armes that man may fynde’ (1157–58). The choice of Constantinople as the site of Guy’s confrontation with the Saracen is one that is geographically appropriate, given the city’s position at the margins of Christendom, but historiographically problematic, in the context of the uneasy relationship between Constantinople and the crusading knights of Western Christendom. Rebecca Wilcox has argued that Guy’s defence of Constantinople, and more importantly his refusal to marry Ernis’s daughter Clarice, is emblematic of a narrative that seeks to elide the historical memory of the conquest and sack of Constantinople by the Western crusaders during the Fourth Crusade.16 In contrast, however, Heng views such romance refiguring of crusade history not as acts of elision, but rather as narratives that emphasize the discourse of empire and conquest that is implicit within crusade.17 Far from being a narrative that is in any way apologetic for the conquest and civic rape of 1204, Guy of Warwick reads as a reaffirmation of Western military and cultural superiority over the Christians of the East, and Guy’s personal rejection of the city acts to condemn further its hybridized cultural status.18 However, despite such tantalizing historicizing of the text, Guy’s sojourn in Constantinople is clearly important in terms of its own narrative function, acting as an important episode in the development of Guy’s identity as superlative chivalric knight, without the need for us to provide extra-textual meaning for Guy’s actions by conjecturing the Guy-romancier as some species of cultural apologist. Constantinople provides an appropriate location for the realization of Guy’s chivalric reputation, and the most powerful aspect of this process of identity 15 16

This episode is discussed in detail in the following section of the chapter. Rebecca Wilcox, ‘Romancing the East: Greeks and Saracens in Guy of Warwick’, in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, ed. by Nicola McDonald (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2004), pp. 217–40 (p. 222). The place of Constantinople and the 1204 sack are discussed in relation to the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic in Judith Weiss’s chapter above (p. 7) 17 Heng, Empire of Magic, pp. 153–54. 18 The Western view of the problematic hybridized nature of Constantinople is discussed more fully in Heng, Empire of Magic, p. 48, Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 77–80, and Wilcox, ‘Romancing the East’, pp. 222–29.

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construction is to be found located within the bodies of the enemies that he faces there: the Saracen Other. As the antithesis of the Christian West, the image of the Saracen provides a powerful racial, cultural, and religious Other during the later Middle Ages. Making use of psychoanalytic theory, scholars such as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen read medieval images of the Saracen as acting to simplify the inherent complexities of identity formation.19 By adhering to the binary paradigm of Christian as good and Saracen as evil, the oppositional model of identity formation produces a construction of identity that, while reductive, allows a clearer and less problematic definition of self and nation.20 Diane Speed describes the important role fulfilled by such racial and religious Others in the process of national and group identity formation: The nation is defined and asserted essentially as a response to the challenge of the unknown, what Regis Debray explicates as the ‘twin threats of disorder and death’. Prominent amongst particular discourses signifying nationness is what Bhabha speaks of as ‘the heimlich pleasure of the hearth, the unheimlich terror of the space and race of the Other’.21

The opening chapter of Siobhain Bly Calkin’s study of the image of the Saracen within the Auchinleck manuscript addresses the important role that Saracens play within the process of identity construction within romance.22 Pointing towards the ‘bizarre similarity’ that exists between the Saracen and Christian knights in the Auchinleck romances, Calkin argues that this sameness ‘provokes consideration of how groups may be differentiated when the samenesses connecting them are many and the differences few’.23 In her discussion of Guy of Warwick, Calkin points towards Guy’s first encounter with the Saracen Other as an example of this ‘sameness’. In the process of defending Constantinople, Guy encounters for the first time the Saracen Other – in the person of the invading Sultan’s nephew, ‘þe amiral Costdram’ (2905). This initial image of a Saracen warrior is presented in surprisingly complimentary terms: So strong he is, & of so gret miZt, In world y wene no better kniZt; 19

20

21

22 23

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1999), pp. 132–33. Cohen further develops these ideas in his chapter ‘On Saracen Enjoyment’, in Medieval Identity Machines (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), pp. 188–221. A more extended exploration of the strategies of identity formation in Guy of Warwick and Sir Bevis of Hampton can be found in: Robert Rouse, ‘Expectation vs. Experience: Encountering the Saracen Other in Middle English Romance’, The Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, 10 (2002), 125–40. Diane Speed, ‘The Construction of the Nation in Medieval Romance’, in Readings in Medieval English Romance, pp. 135–57 (p. 146), citing Homi Bhabha, ‘Introduction’, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 2. Siobhain Bly Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 13–60. Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity, p. 59.

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Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero For þer nis man no kniZt non Þat wiþ wretþe dar loken him on.  [2907–10]

Costdram is a knight of great strength, without peer, upon whom other men fear to look, a mirror image of Guy’s own reputation, and thus an appropriate chivalric foe against whom Guy can test himself. However, while it is true that Costdram does closely resemble the Christian knight, this mirroring effect is not without imperfection. In presenting her argument, Calkin omits the lines that follow this initial description, which provide one important difference that does exist between Guy and his Saracen foe: His armes alle avenimed beþ: Þat venim is strong so þe deþ: In þis world nis man þat he take miZt Þat he ne schuld dye anon riZt.  [2911–14]

The envenomed nature of Costdram’s weapons indelibly mark him out as Other, casting doubt upon his honour and thus differentiating him from Christian knights such as Guy, to whom the use of such weapons is both unknown and unthinkable.24 Costdram here represents an image of a knightly Other, unheimlich in comparison with the normative values of Guy’s own Western conception of knighthood. Costdram’s role as a doppelgänger figure in relation to Guy is emphasized by the way in which the battle is structured. Each of Guy’s knights are involved in individual combats within the wider melee, pairing off with named opponents: Herhaud slays the King of Turkey (2943), the French knight Tebaud kills Helmadan (2949), while the German Gauter strikes down Redmadan (2955). This initial encounter with, and vanquishing of, the Saracen Other utilizes a comparative model of chivalric behaviour through which Guy’s identity as a chivalric knight is established. Guy’s defence of Constantinople allows Guy’s identity as culture-hero to reach the conclusion of its first stage of development: Guy as superlative secular chivalric hero. Subsequent to this point of extremity in his outward movement from England (within the couplet romance at least), the narrative draws him slowly back towards his homeland, and the object of his love. The final symbolic moment of identity formation that we witness in this first half of Guy’s vita – his slaying of the Dragon in Northumberland – is an act of monster slaying that operates both as Guy’s final act of secular knighthood and simultaneously engenders the first in a series of personal and symbolic transformations.

24

The use of poisoned weapons is often used to indicate a dishonourable knight in medieval chivalric literature. One example of this motif is found in the Morte Darthur, where Marhault uses a poisoned spear-head against Tristram; see Malory: Works, ed. by Eugène Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 237–38.

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Following the slaying of the dragon, and his subsequent triumphant marriage to Felice, Guy undergoes the first of a series of transformative episodes: from chivalric knight to penitent pilgrim-crusader. Soon after the marriage, having begat an heir upon his new wife, Guy undergoes a ‘road to Damascus moment’ that irrevocably alters the course of his vita. Late one summer’s evening, walking upon the battlements of a tower in Warwick castle, Guy finds himself awestruck by the vastness of the heavens. Falling into a state of wonder, Guy reflects upon the life that he has led thus far, and upon his motivations in carrying out his heroic deeds:25 To a turet sir Gij is went, & biheld þat firmament, Þat thicke wiþ steres stode. On Iesu omnipotent, Þat alle his honour hadde him lent, He þouZt wiþ dreri mode; Hou he hadde euer ben strong werrour, For Iesu loue, our saueour, Neuer no dede he gode. Mani man he hadde slayn wiþ wrong.  [21:1–10]

The awesome nature of the firmament causes Guy to take stock of his life at the very point that most romances end.26 Rather than allowing Guy to settle down into married life, the stanzaic section of the romance propels our hero onwards through the trajectory of life, asking – and answering – the question of what course of action best befits a knight once he has achieved the secular goals of the maturation romance: reputation, noble title, wife, and heir. Guy’s revelation – that he has performed deeds of arms solely for the purposes of earthly love – is one that represents an existential crisis in his vita. Why, Guy seems to be asking himself, is he here? And what are the correct motivations for a knight in this world? The answer, of course, is clear, and the wondrous sight of the heavens reminds Guy of the proper motivation for a Christian knight: the service of Christ. Having realized this, Guy laments upon the misdirected heroic deeds that he has undertaken to win Felice’s love:27 Ac Zif ich hadde don half þe dede For him þat on rode gan blede 25

Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 37–75, discusses the importance of moments of wonder in narratives of transformation. 26 Like its hero, Guy’s vita itself undergoes a transformation at this point, changing from a standard maturation romance into a ‘pious’, or exemplary, romance. 27 While not carrying the same degree of scorn and rejection as Troilus’s infamous laugh during his ascent through the spheres at the end of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Guy nevertheless participates in the contemptus mundi discourse in his abandonment of Felice and his unborn son.

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Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero Wiþ grimly woundes sare, In heuene he wald haue quit mi mede, In joie to won wiþ angels wede Euer-more wiþ-outen care.  [25:1–6]

Guy recognizes that his deeds have indeed been misdirected, and it is this realization that acts as the catalyst for his transformation from secular chivalric hero into an exemplum of the milites Christi. His former primary motivation – his love for Felice – is transformed into his love for Christ: For his loue ichil now wende Barfot to mi liues ende, Mine sinnes for to bete  [26:4–6]

This new identity that Guy takes on, that of the pilgrim-knight, is one through which he seeks redemption for his past sins. As he explains to his understandably confused wife, Y schal walk for mi sinne Barfot bi doun & dale. Þat ich haue wiþ mi bodi wrouZt Wiþ mi bodi it schal be bouZt, To bote me of þat bale.  [29:8–11]

Walking, the act of penance mandated to many a historical knightly sinner, is one that is to define the remainder of Guy’s vita.28 Notably, in the Middle English versions of the romance, Felice takes an active role in the affirmation of Guy’s newly chosen path in life. Upon his departure, Felice gives to Guy a golden ring as a love-token – a ring that will later operate as the recognition symbol expected through generic convention. However, in this romance the ring also acts to symbolize Felice’s tacit approval of Guy’s actions, as Crane notes: ‘Felice remarkably extends the convention that love improves knights when she connects Guy’s love for her to service of God.’29 Felice’s act is one of extreme self-sacrifice, but is fully in keeping with the exemplary tone of the romance, highlighting the fact that it is not only knights who may have something to learn from Guy’s vita, but also the female readers of romance: one might be tempted to read Felice’s approval of Guy’s penitential abandonment of her and their unborn child as a tacit acknowledgement of her own role, and the role of the courtly paramour more generally, as the motivating inspiration for his lack of focus on the service of Christ. Guy’s journey through Europe and the East, which dominates the rest of the 28

The act of walking, for a knight, is a rejection of that most symbolic of chivalric possessions – the horse. The horse defines the medieval knight, and as such is an integral part of his identity: as Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, p. 49, points out, the warhorse was ‘the knight’s beloved companion and the sine qua non of chivalric identity’. 29 Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Guy of Warwick’, p. 361.

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romance, represents on one level the allegorical pilgrimage of the ­Christian soul through the world, facing challenges and combating evil with the full confidence of Christian belief, while simultaneously acting as the stage for a new and very real heroic identity that Guy begins to embody. As Cohen describes it, ‘[h]e sets off for Jerusalem to become a martial saint, the next transfigurative plateau of heroic selfhood’.30 This new stage of Guy’s multivalent culture-hero identity allows him to be inscribed with the cultural discourses of penitence and repentance, while still maintaining the narrative drive of the romance’s imperial project through his repeated affirmations of both Christian and English identity during his experiences in the East. However, it is important to understand that Guy’s pilgrim status does not in fact replace his role as chivalric knight: nor, as Crane observes, ‘does Guy ultimately deny his identity within his family, or abandon its interests for the interests of God’.31 In the development of Guy’s identity from secular knight to Christian pilgrim, we witness the characteristic model of identity (trans)formation found within this romance. Guy’s identity is indeed altered, in that his motivation for chivalric deeds is now located in his love for Christ, but his previous chivalric identity remains vital to his new identity as a martial-pilgrim: identity change in this romance is accretive in nature, rather than a matter of replacement-change.32 Further still, the personal salvation that Guy seeks in this second section of his vita becomes the essential preparation for the divinely approved national salvation that occurs at the end of the romance, thus inscribing saintliness as an integral part of Guy’s developing English culture-hero identity.

Arms and the Man Guy’s pilgrimage to the East is crowned by his single combat against another monstrous foe: the Egyptian giant Amoraunt. Guy enters into this contest on behalf of the Saracen King Triamour at the behest of Jonas, the Christian Earl of Durras.33 Amoraunt, as Saracen giant, operates within the text as a powerful signifier of identity, the defeat and decapitation of whom represents an important step in the hero’s process of identity construction. The excess of 30 31 32

Cohen, Of Giants, p. 87. Dannenbaum [Crane], ‘Guy of Warwick’, p. 361. Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 20, discusses the nature of evolution-change (developmental, or accretive) vs. replacement-change. 33 Jonas tells him a long tale of misfortune, which has resulted in him being sent to search for Guy, so that the latter can champion the Saracen King Triamour in a judicial combat. The back-story to this request for Guy’s help is a long and complicated tale, in which Jonas and his sons defend Jerusalem from the Saracens, but then make the fatal mistake of following them into their own lands where they are captured by King Triamour. Sometime later, Triamour’s son inadvertently slays the Sultan of Alexandria’s son following an argument over a game of chess, which leads to Triamour’s accusation by the Sultan and his committal to the judicial duel. Triamour, faced with the prospect of fighting Amoraunt, seeks the advice of his Christian prisoners who inform him of the renown of Guy and Heraud, which leads to the King offering Jonas his freedom if he can find Guy (48:1–72:12).

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the Saracen Other is here manifested in the body of the giant Amoraunt. This avatar of bodily excess, the conquering of which is so important to the process of the physical and spiritual maturation of the romance hero, combines the Other of the Giant with the Other of the Saracen, creating a potent synthesis of these two elements of identity formation.34 The Saracen Giant embodies all those things that the romance hero by necessity approaches, but must not become: he is ‘michel & unrede’ (62:7), huge and uncontrolled – an image of unrestrained masculine power, which Western heroes such as Guy must seek to sublimate within chivalric codes of behaviour and honour. This uncontrolled masculinity is given demonic form in the figure of the Saracen Giant, characterized by the blackness of the fiend, the Western archetypal construction of the uncontrolled nature of the African. Guy’s defeat of Amoraunt partakes of the common romance motif of the subjugation of the monstrous Other, an action through which Guy’s identity as chivalric knight and Christian martial saint is realized.35 However, Guy’s defeat of Amoraunt is not the only important aspect of this stage of his development as culture-hero. Prior to the battle, the romance presents another important moment in the process of heroic identity construction: the arming scene of the hero. Arming scenes are found, as Derek Brewer observes, ‘usually at a crucial moment in the development of a story’, and operate as a form of heroic descriptio in which the virtues and qualities of the hero are described, often through a symbolic understanding of their arms and armour.36 Well-known examples of such semantically replete scenes include the arming of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, of the eponymous hero in Beowulf, and of Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the Auchinleck Guy of Warwick, we find a similarly significant example of the arming topos: Gij was ful wele in armes diZt Wiþ helme & plate & brini briZt Þe best þat ever ware. The hauberk he hadde was Renis Þat was King Clarels, ywis, In Jerusalem when he was þare.  [91:1–6] His helme was of so michel miZt, Was never man overcomen in fiZt Þat hadde it on his ventayle. It was Alisaunders þe gret lording, When he fauZt wiþ Poreus þe king, Þat hard him gan aseyle.  [92:7–12] 34

Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 118, notes that ‘the lengthy fight with Amoraunt is not just between a Christian and an infidel, but also between an Englishman and a foreigner’. 35 Cohen’s theorizing of the role of gigantomachia has made clear the important connection between the defeat of the monstrous opponents and the development of heroic identity in romance; see Of Giants, pp. 62–95. 36 Derek Brewer, ‘Arming II: The Arming Topos as Literature’, in A Companion to the Gawain Poet, ed. by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 175–79 (p. 179).

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Guy’s arming topos is here characterized by a desire to provide for his arms and armour a ‘heroic genealogy’.37 Guy is described as being armed in the hauberk of one King Clarels, and as wearing the helm of Alexander. Furthermore, he also receives a sword – that essential symbol of knighthood – which has an equally resonant legendary provenance: A gode swerd he hadde wiþ-outen faile, Þat was Ectors in Troye batayle, In gest as so men fint. Ar he þat swerd dede forgon, Of Grece he slouZ þer mani on, Þat died þurch þat dint.  [93:1–6]

Hector’s sword – with its readily accessible Trojan connotations – provides a third heroic referent for this scene of heroic identity creation.38 The heroic provenance of his arms transforms Guy into a new stage of his culture-hero identity. The legendary heroes associated with Guy’s arms are Hector and Alexander, two of the Worthies of the ancient world, and the somewhat more problematic King Clarels. Judith Weiss has suggested that this arming scene, as it is found in the romance’s source, the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic, was intended to establish Guy amongst the company of the Nine Worthies – that exalted list of famous legendary heroes from across the ages.39 Alison Wiggins argues that the effect is somewhat lessened in the Auchinleck version of the narrative, as the reference to Charlemagne (another of the Nine Worthies) that is found in Gui de Warewic, is replaced by the reference to ‘King Clarels’. Clarels is a Saracen king who appears in another of the Auchinleck manuscript romances, Otuel, and Wiggins proposes that ‘[t]he replacement may suggest an interest in representing warriors from the East or it may represent a particular knowledge of Otuel on the part of the redactor or scribe’.40 One might also propose that the name-substitution may equally have been the result of scribal error. However, whatever the cause for the dilution of the arming scene, its purpose remains clear: to present Guy as taking on – in a most literal fashion – the mantle and arms of his culture-hero predecessors. In taking up the sword of Hector, Guy is laying claim to the legacy of

37

The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, ed. by Alison Wiggins (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), p. 139. 38 In addition to the connotations of Guy’s appropriation of Trojan majesty, the allusion also works in a more straightforward narrative sense: ‘The association of Guy with Hector (he carries Hector’s sword, line 1105) and Amorant with Achilles (his sword having the strength of Achilles) also colours the battle through a further legendary allusion. Portrayed as the descendants of these heroic ancestors, their meeting is dramatized in terms of the famous battle between Hector and Achilles, Trojan and Greek’, Wiggins, The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, p. 140. 39 Judith Weiss, ‘Emperors and Antichrists: Reflections of Empire in Insular Romance, 1130–1250’, in The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. by Phillipa Hardman (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 87–102 (pp. 101–02). 40 Wiggins, The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, p. 139.

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Troy, with all its medieval connotations of translatio imperii.41 Guy’s role as the defender of Western civilization, and by extension the defender of ­ Christendom, is made clear by his defeat of Amoraunt in the following battle.42 The significance of Guy’s arming and subsequent victory is two-fold. Firstly, Guy wins for all Christians the right to safe pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as this is one of the promises made by King Triamour, thus ensuring that his own pilgrimage provides a clear path for subsequent pilgrims in both a geographical and an exemplary sense: And so gode pes y schal festen anon, Þat Cristen men schul comen & gon To her owhen wille in wold.  [88:7–9]

Secondly, and more importantly for the trajectory of Guy’s role as culturehero, his victory elevates him to the status of the Nine Worthies, glorifying his role as not simply a knight of the Christian faith, but as a martial-pilgrim of the first rank. The notion of Guy as being one of the Nine Worthies is one that becomes a powerful aspect of his reputation in the following centuries.43 The arming topos acts to set the scene for yet another transformative episode within Guy of Warwick, which inscribes upon Guy a further layer of symbolic identity. His reputation as one of the Nine Worthies appears in the Auchinleck romance as an attempt to further elevate his status as culture-hero, fulfilling both the task of cementing his identity as Christian militant-pilgrim and preparing the ground for his final transformation into an English national hero.

St Guy of England? Guy of Warwick constructs Guy as a series of successive exemplary models: firstly as chivalric knight, then as repentant milites Christi, and thirdly as one of the Nine Worthies. However, as an English text, in a compilation manuscript that articulates a marked sense of English identity, there is one further trans-

41

On the use of the legacy of Troy and its role in the medieval discourse of translatio imperii see ‘Introduction’, in Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages, ed. by Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1–21 (p. 7). 42 There also exists a later tantalizing inter-textual meaning to Guy’s acquisition of the sword of Hector. There is a tentative connection between Guy’s reclaiming of this weapon from the Saracens, and the discourse of empire inherent in the text (aside from the obvious one of Trojan translation imperii): in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516), Roland’s sword Durendal is also said to have been the sword of Hector, and this (at least from the later sixteenth-century context – when Guy was still being widely read and printed) gives us the fascinating possibility that Guy’s acquisition of the sword represents a reclaiming of what was lost at Roncesvalles. 43 An example of this aspect of Guy’s reputation can be found in Richard Lloyd’s A brief discourse of the most renowned actes and right valiant conquests of those puisant princes, called the nine worthies (1584), which is discussed in Siân Echard’s chapter below (p. 164).

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formation awaiting him: into his enduring role as English national saviour.44 Following a similar itinerant arc to the couplet romance, the stanzaic vita narrates a journey that leads from England to the lands of the East, before returning at the end of the romance to the land of his birth. Guy, driven by a desire to find his son, Reinbroun, arrives back in England where he finds the kingdom in a state of national crisis. England has been invaded by the Danish army, which sits encamped near Winchester, where the Danish king has issued a challenge to the English King Athelstan: to find a champion to fight, in a judicium Dei, the African giant Colbrond to decide who shall rule the country. Athelstan, informed through an angelic vision that England’s salvation is to be found in the body of a mysterious pilgrim, meets the disguised Guy at the gates of the city and entreats him to take up the battle for his nation’s sake. Guy eventually accepts, and the scene is set for his final defining battle against the monstrous Colbrond. Once again we find the romance use of gigantomachia as the basis of an episode of identity transformation.45 Giant slayings, as Cohen as shown us, are key episodes of heroic identity creation, and Guy’s defeat of Colbrond is no exception. However, this battle holds more significance than simply that of individual heroic identity, and the combat provides the scene for the fullest manifestation of Guy’s multi-layered identity as chivalric, Christian, and English culture-hero.46 We recall, at this point, what we have learned of the changing motivations that lie behind Guy’s chivalric feats of arms, and the hierarchy into which they have been organized by the romance. Guy began by fighting for the love of Felice, a purpose that motivated the first seven thousand or so lines of the romance. Then, after his starlit revelation, he turned his mind to Christ, abandoning his wife and unborn child to carry out chivalric deeds inspired by divine love. In this final episode of Guy of Warwick, we find a curious correlation of the secular and the divine: this final battle is fought to ‘saue ous þe riZt of Inglond’ (246:11), but Athelstan asks Guy to do so ‘for him þat dyed on rode’ (246:7). Here, in the final martial drama of the romance, we find the English national interest underpinned by divine approval, both in Guy’s tacit conflation of the national cause with his divine mission, and in the angelic intervention that initially leads Athelstan to Guy. Following his defeat of Colbrond, Guy returns to Warwick, where he lives out his final days in a hermitage at what will later become Guy’s Cliffe. At his death, Guy’s soul is received into heaven by one thousand and seven angels and his body emits a ‘swete braþe’ (294:8): clear signs of his saintly nature. 44

The ideological discourse of Englishness that dominates the Auchinleck manuscript has been the subject of a number of recent studies, including Turville-Petre, England the Nation, Calkin, Saracens and the Making of English Identity, and my own study, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England. 45 Cohen, On Giants, pp. 88–90, discusses the specifics of the Guy and Colbrond fight in terms of identity theory. 46 Guy’s role as an English national hero becomes the most important aspect of his role as culture hero in the centuries following the composition of the Auchinleck manuscript. Later medieval retellings of his legend, such as the Percy folio Guy and Colebrande and John Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick, focus on this episode to the exclusion of the wider narrative of his life.

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Once again we witness the complementary nature of Guy’s successive transformations, which build upon each other to ultimately coalesce in his final incarnation as English hero-saint. National heroes are vitally important to the articulation of national identity, and the process of sanctifying such a hero is often the final act in their development. Steven Grosby comments on this process of hero sanctification: When the king or hero of a nation becomes a saint, the nation is joined to the universal order of the universe, thereby contributing to the justification of its territorially bounded, cultural distinctiveness.47

England is ‘materialized through the body of Guy’,48 and this body is revealed to be that of a saint. England is thus construed, by association, as having the same degree of divine approval as Guy possesses throughout his vita: and if England enjoys divine endorsement, then, the romance reminds its readers, so do the English. In the course of his vita, Guy embodies multiple identities that appeal to the varied readers of his romance. He is by stages heroic monster-slayer, courtly lover, penitent pilgrim, one of the milites Christi, a member of the Nine Worthies, English national saviour, and ultimately saint. The romance thus constructs a multi-layered conception of chivalric knighthood through a series of transformative episodes, figuring Guy as an exemplum who encompasses a broad range of ideological and social concerns. In any project of national identity construction, the bounds of this identity must be both clearly delineated yet flexible enough to encompass the disparate elements of such an ‘imagined community’.49 It is through the multiple yet complementary identities that Guy represents that he is constructed as an ideal culture-hero for the English. The transformative process he undergoes through the course of his vita is accepting of difference, yet at the same time acts to encourage a progressive development towards a religious and national ideal. It is the very nature of the developmental process that accommodates Guy’s pluralistic symbolism. As we have seen, Guy’s various stages of identity change do not represent ‘replacement-change’, to use Bynum’s phrase, but rather a process of the accretion of multiple and non-contradictory identities, reminding us of the medieval mode of reading that provided ample imaginative space for one thing to be many: Guy stands simultaneously as Guy of Warwick, Guy the paragon of chivalry, Guy the pilgrim-saint, and Guy the National hero.

47 48 49

Steven Grosby, Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 88. Cohen, Of Giants, p. 95. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), p. 6.

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8 The Visual History of Guy of Warwick DAVID GRIFFITH

K

ing Arthur’s only serious rival for the affections of the late medieval public was the legendary English hero Guy of Warwick. Guy’s fame is the result of a combination of factors but, as with Arthur, it is rooted in an intersection of history and romance that raises him above mere chivalric exemplar to the status of national hero. This iconic role manifests itself in a diverse textual culture from the thirteenth century that spans fictional and historiographic works. These texts in turn generate a substantial visual and material legacy that complements the literary versions and which must have appealed to the same kinds of audiences. Such a diverse collection of objects is a testimony to the power and influence of textual activity over an extended period of time, and to the ways in which Guy, like Arthur, inhabited a central place in the nation’s cultural heritage. Images and artefacts underline the ways in which Guy functions as a model of martial prowess and spiritual growth but, further, they reveal how his legend contributes to the formation of familial, civic, and political identities in the late medieval period. Guy’s position as acknowledged English hero is demonstrated by the appearance of episodes from his career in a number of mid-fourteenth-century English manuscripts. To judge from these surviving examples Guy found relatively early pictorial form in a variety of linguistic and generic contexts. Of these the most technically proficient, and probably the earliest, appears in a copy of Peter Langtoft’s French verse Chronique d’Angleterre produced between 1307 and 1327 (British Library, MS Royal 20. A. II). As a history of the English peoples Langtoft’s work hardly emerges from the shadows of its authorities – Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and others – though it does provide an important contemporary witness of most of the reign of Edward I. This range and topicality accounts for its general popularity, and for its use in the late 1330s as a primary source for Robert Mannyng’s English chronicle Brut.

 

For an overview of the visual legacy see Legend, pp. 91–106, 118–23, 127–34. The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft in French Verse from the Earliest Period to the Death of King Edward I, ed. by Thomas Wright, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1866).  Robert Mannyng of Brunne: ‘The Chronicle’, ed. by Idelle Sullens, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 153 (New York: State University of New York, 1996), 15,919–22. The manu-

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The BL Royal manuscript is notable for a series of miniatures depicting legendary and historical English rulers. A number of these are whole folio pictorial images depicting the life and origins of King Arthur (Vortigern burned alive in his castle, Uther conferring with Merlin, a portrait of a King Arthur standing over emblematic crowns of conquered kingdoms). Most though are miniatures that introduce the relevant regnal passage, acting principally as illustrative bookmarks that allow the reader to more easily identify specific sections within a lengthy text. This is especially true of the images of post-Conquest rulers where the king, sitting on a throne of state, is depicted at a defining moment of his reign (William Rufus clutching an arrow in his chest, Henry I mourning the loss of the White Ship); some of these Norman and Plantagenet kings are also accompanied by genealogical tables (William I, John, Henry III). In this context the fine miniature accorded to Guy (fol. 4v) is a sign of a legendary status almost the equal of King Arthur. The royal peg on which this story hangs is King Athelstan. Although the interweaving of the histories of Athelstan and Guy has limited historical value by Langtoft’s time it became a common feature of Anglo-Norman and French versions of the legend, and thereby found its way into English accounts. Traditionally said to have been inspired by the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 in which Athelstan’s English army vanquished a combined Scottish and Danish force, by the thirteenth century the victory had been credited to Guy’s defeat of a giant champion of the Danish King Anlaf. In the legendary version the invading force advances to the capital Winchester before presenting Athelstan with an ultimatum to either pay tribute or find a champion to fight the Danish giant. With limited options the king prays to God for guidance and, according to Langtoft, is told in a dream that: Ke al matyn troverayt un velz palmer et lent, A la porte del seu, et cely seurement Parfrait la bataille, pur Dieu omnipotent, Si pur Deu ly priast; co fu verrayment Guy de Warwik, sun livre dist coment It tuayt Colebrand, par quai tut quitement. [In the morning he could find a palmer old and slow, / At the south gate, and he assuredly / Would perform the battle for God Almighty, / If he prayed him for God’s sake; this was truly / Guy of Warwick, his book tells how / He slew Colebrand, whereby all quit.]

This image is an integral element of the visual exposition of Langtoft’s chronicle and, significantly, the miniaturist ignores the battle itself to concentrate script tradition of Langtoft’s Chronicle is surveyed by Thomas M. Smallwood, ‘The Text of Langtoft’s Chronicle’, Medium Ævum, 46 (1977), 219–30.  Legend, pp. 65–76; and Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The Battle of Brunanburh in Later Histories and Romances’, Anglia, 117 (1999), 201–35.  Wright, The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, I, 332.

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upon the relation between Guy and his king. Crowned and dressed in a simple tunic, the king is shown kneeling before the barefooted, staff-bearing pilgrim with his hands raised in supplication. Guy acknowledges his monarch in a gesture of blessing and Athelstan’s obvious subservience is a powerful marker of Guy’s role as national saviour and of his divine favour. The Langtoft miniature shows that the earliest visual response to the Guy legend is governed by a chronicle tradition in which Guy’s role as national saviour has greater significance than his role as chivalric model. It is equally clear from illustrations in near contemporary manuscripts that the burgeoning romance tradition rapidly exerted its influence over the iconography of the legend, though this rarely manifests itself in illustrations actually appearing in romance manuscripts. The early to mid fourteenth-century circulation of Anglo-Norman and English versions of the Guy story indicates widespread appeal within literate secular society but these texts are rarely accompanied by pictorial illustrations. This is largely to do with the limited cultural esteem of vernacular fictional writing in England prior to 1400 – expensive commissions involving costly illustrative programmes were much more likely to be devotional or functional works. In this context Guy assumes considerable cultural significance. A taste for stories of romance and chivalry appears to have been a major factor in determining the choice of illustrative programmes in a range of manuscripts, and Guy’s popularity was such that his narrative could be used to illustrate non-romance materials even where the image bore no relation to its accompanying text. The two surviving witnesses to this tradition are the Taymouth Hours of c. 1325–35 (British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13) and the slightly later Smithfield Decretals (British Library, Royal MS 10. E. IV). In both books pictorial sequences of Guy of Warwick and the equally popular Bevis of Hampton share in a complex interaction of word and image. In general terms such correlations between religious text and sacred and profane images characterize the illustrative programmes found in liturgical books produced by scriptoria in London and East Anglia in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. More specifically, these two books are stylistically and iconographically close to a large group of religious and secular manuscripts produced in a London workshop from the 1310s through to the mid-1330s that have been shown to bear some relationship to the Queen Mary Psalter (British Library, Royal MS 2. B. VII). This psalter, produced c. 1310–20, is generally understood to be the ‘parent’ for a group of thirty 

For an overview see Lesley Lawton, ‘The Illustration of Late Medieval Secular Texts, with Special Reference to Lydgate’s Troy Book’, in Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), pp. 41–69.  The nature of text-image relations in late medieval manuscripts is the subject of numerous recent studies largely inspired by the groundbreaking work of Michael Camille, for which see The Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1992), and Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). See also Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘The Study of Marginal Imagery: Past, Present, and Future’, Studies in Iconography, 18 (1997), 1–50.

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or more manuscripts. That the Taymouth Hours artist is also responsible for the illustrations in a contemporary volume of works of moral philosophy, Glasgow University Library, Hunter MS 231 (olim U.3.4), apparently made for Roger of Waltham, a canon of St Paul’s, London, who died c. 1336, further validates the London provenance. The larger part of the Taymouth Hours consists of the Offices of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, both of which are illustrated by biblical scenes.10 These standard texts are prefaced by a collection of French prayers that are accompanied by devotional miniatures and a sequence of energetic bas-de-page miniatures depicting the exploits of the two English heroes. These are identified by the rubrics boues de hamton (fols 8v–12) and variants of gwi de warwyk (fols 12v–17). This rubrication denotes the use of an Anglo-Norman source text and the recurring image of a crowned woman in both margins and miniatures may point to patronage by a queen or princess (as for example on fol. 7r where she is pictured adoring the Host at mass). Presented here without any form of explanatory narrative and with only labels to guide the reader these images speak of the general appeal and the cross-generic currency of the two knights. Neither picture cycle represents anything more than a snapshot of its textual referent but the choice of images appears to complement broader thematic issues within the manuscript as a whole. Jessica Brantley, for instance, has argued that the prominence of Josiane, Bevis’s beloved, contributes to a ‘coherent exploration of appropriate feminine roles, a topic of undoubted interest to [a] feminine readership’.11 While the damage to the quire carrying the episodes from Gui de Warewic (now probably one or two leaves deficient) makes the precise scene selection difficult to explain,12 the images, like those from Bevis of Hampton, span secular and religious discourses. The first five images show Guy protecting a lion against the onslaught of a dragon, an obviously symbolic contest between good and evil. Guy’s selfless actions are rewarded by the lion’s fealty as it follows its new master in the final scene of 



10 11

12

The pioneering studies of the Queen Mary Psalter style group are by Lynda Dennison, ‘An Illuminator of the Queen Mary Psalter Group: The Ancient 6 Master’, Antiquaries Journal, 66 (1986), 287–314; and ‘ “Liber Horn”, “Liber custumarum” and Other Manuscripts of the Queen Mary Psalter Workshops’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in London, ed. by Lindy Grant (Leeds: The British Archaeological Association, 1990), pp. 118–34. See also Anne Rudloff Stanton, The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2001). See Glasgow University Library Special Collections Manuscript Catalogue, [accessed 8 August 2006] for a full description of the Glasgow manuscript. See Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), II, 107–09. See Linda Brownrigg, ‘The Taymouth Hours and the Romance of Beves of Hampton’, in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700. Volume 1, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 222–41; Jessica Brantley, ‘Images of the Vernacular in the Taymouth Hours’, in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700. Volume 10: Decoration and Illustration in Medieval English Manuscripts, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 83–113; and Legend, pp. 94–96. Brownrigg, ‘The Taymouth Hours’, p. 235.

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this first sequence – here the qualities of fidelity and loyalty are as explicit as in the equivalent episode in Chrétien’s Yvain. The second episode (fols 15–17) is a redaction of the Anglo-Norman text in which a fight with a wild boar leads to Guy killing Earl Florentin’s son. Guy is first shown killing the animal, and then being challenged by a young man before a doorway (fol. 16v). Like a continuing catchword the title Gwi beneath each image establishes the subject as a continuation of the story: readers familiar with the romance recognize the youth as the son of Earl Florentin. In the narrative version the boy tries to take Guy’s horse only for the knight to slay him. The lost leaves would most probably have shown this episode.13 The visual narrative picks up Guy’s journey with his reception by the unsuspecting Earl. Once the son’s body is brought home Guy’s culpability is uncovered and in the ensuing mêlée Guy wreaks havoc on the company. The penultimate images show two men carrying a bier into a hall where Guy is being entertained followed by Guy standing over a mass of bodies, the aftermath of the discovery of his slaying of the youth. Taken from separate sections of the textual narrative these two mini-series represent a summation of Guy’s early career – heroism coupled with a ferocity, even bloodthirstiness, that eventually leads to contrition and a rejection of his former life.14 This kind of visualization of a secular narrative in an unrelated or alien context such as a Book of Hours typifies the reflective and constitutive aspects of secular illustration. For royal and aristocratic readers the visual celebration of chivalric honour is an obvious pronouncement of personal status and identity. But these images also lay bare the inherent dangers of masculine aggression and underscore the moral dimension of secular narrative thus signifying the spiritual objectives of the religious text. It is this ability to play with the signification of these images that affords a mutual reinforcing of aristocratic cultural pursuits and religious sensibilities. An extended sequence of miniatures of Guy of Warwick is also found in a copy of the Decretals or Canon Law texts of Pope Gregory IX, with a gloss by Bernard of Parma, now in the British Library (Royal MS 10. E. IV). This manuscript is traditionally known as the Smithfield Decretals after a fifteenthcentury ex libris of St Bartholomew’s Priory, London, and its illustrations are stylistically related to the Taymouth Hours and the so-called Neville of Hornby Hours (British Library, Egerton MS 2781).15 Though the text was written in Italy the volume had arrived in England by the 1330s or 1340s when a Kalendarium and a prodigiously inventive decorative scheme were added, the latter executed in what Lucy Sandler calls an ‘unstylized’ vernacular idiom.16 Even more dynamic than those in the Taymouth Hours its marginal spaces offer a procession of pictorial subjects inspired by scenes both from everyday life and from popular narrative. Given the provenance of both manuscripts 13 14 15

Brownrigg, ‘The Taymouth Hours’, p. 235. Legend, p. 94. Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England (London: British Library, 2003), pp. 39, 155, 223. 16 Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, p. 111.

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the Taymouth Hours may have been an inspiration if not a direct examplar. The Smithfield Decretals’ images are also drawn from secular and religious narratives that, with one exception, have no connections with the legal text. Here, however, the frequent use of personalized heraldry allows for its original owner to be identified as John Batayle, a member of an Essex gentry family and a canon of St Bartholomew’s in the 1370s and 80s.17 We can assume that a young man such as Batayle would have been in the 1340s might have insisted on close involvement in the design of his substantial and expensive commission. But with an illustrative programme that covers all six hundred pages in the volume the choice of decoration probably lies somewhere between the patron’s requests and the artists’ resources.18 In a recent study of the manuscript Andrew Taylor identifies a contestive spirit in operation throughout the manuscript, an intermingling of the literate clerical discourses represented by the law text and glosses and the orality of popular storytelling and ‘common memory’ represented by the marginal images of saints’ lives, romances, and popular traditions.19 In this context we are reminded that the early-fourteenthcentury stories of Guy and Bevis were part of a large visual resource deemed suitable for illustrating a range of manuscript titles, including those for monastic readers who no doubt derived intellectual pleasure from exploring innate links between incongruent materials.20 There is no identifying rubrication but the Guy episodes are largely recognizable. So as to fill the large number of available openings they are more extensive than those in the Taymouth Hours and the care with which events are ordered suggests more than just passing familiarity with a romance text. First, seemingly to amplify the dominant themes of fidelity and perfidy, the episode of the lion-dragon fight is spread across sixteen scenes (fols 80r– 88r). The lion’s gratitude and nobility (fols 81v–82v) are juxtaposed with the ­Emperor’s treacherous steward Morgadour who slays the beast (fol. 83v) and the revengeful Guy’s subsequent murder of the killer (fol. 84v). The reconciliation between Guy and the Emperor is sealed by a violent assault on the pagan Sultan (fol. 85v; Plate 1) whose crowned head is presented to the Emperor’s daughter (fol. 86r). This represents a major reworking of events that further reveals the illustrator’s agenda. The textual incident with the Sultan both precedes and is thematically less significant than the killing of Morgadour. For the illustrator this pagan decollation represents an irresistible opportunity 17

Alixe Bovey, ‘A Pictorial Ex Libris in the Smithfield Decretals: John Batayle, Canon of St Bartholomew’s, and his Illuminated Law Book’, in Edwards, English Manuscript Studies, pp. 60–82. 18 Bovey, ‘A Pictorial Ex Libris’, p. 69. 19 Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 137–96 (p. 191). For Taylor this formulation of wordtext interaction in the manuscript reflects social tensions, especially between the literate and the unlettered, and exposes a symbolic threat posed by the marginalia, mirroring the real-life chaos of Smithfield, that threatened to engulf Batayle’s Augustinian house. 20 Little information about the Priory canon’s books has survived but there is some evidence that in later periods monastic readers, Lydgate aside, had a taste for reading chivalric romances in English and French including Guy of Warwick: Taylor, Textual Situations, p. 190.

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to end a sequence of events in which honour and loyalty are paramount. This strategic reordering of events continues with the compression of two conflicts into three images. In one Guy faces Amoraunt (fol. 87), in the next two he crushes his massively larger foe, unquestionably to be taken as Colbrond, with an axe blow to the head (fols 87v–88r). The last scene where Guy parades Colbrond’s detached head before royal admirers in a castle is another of the illustrator’s inventions and seems designed to prioritize the destruction of the symbolically treacherous heathen forces. At this point the story stops abruptly and the flow of marginal images follows other channels, only for Guy to make a re-entrance some one hundred folios later in a lengthy sequence of events (fols 290v–312r). Without labelling, absolute identification of these later episodes is challenging but a number of discrete strands seem to be woven together to form a compendium of Guy’s career.21 Guy’s initial wooing of Felice (fols 290v–93v) leads into the legend of the Dun Cow (fols 294r–95r), one of Guy’s legendary adversaries but known only from post-medieval versions. The introduction of this element suggests that the Dun Cow sub-plot enjoyed a vigorous life in oral tradition, inspired by folklore and images of worlds beyond the textual, and sits comfortably with a grander illustrative scheme. Further sets may illustrate Guy fighting more bestial enemies (fols 295v–97r), Felice involved in charitable deeds after Guy’s departure to the Holy Land (fols 297v–98r), Guy’s brotherly love for Tirri (fols 298v–301v), and a revisiting of the famous victory over Colbrond (fols 298v–305r). Two final strings are drawn from the story of Reinbroun, the son of Felice and Guy (fols 306r–12r). Taken together these image do much to prove Guy held equal appeal for English readers to any Arthurian material, and that even by the mid-fourteenth century his legend had generated compelling literary, oral, and visual cultures. The only illustrations explicitly related to an English textual version of Guy’s story are in the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1).22 Produced in London in the 1330s, this important collection of Middle English romances is one of the very few manuscripts of the period in which illustrations accompany vernacular fiction.23 Guy’s career is the volume’s leitmotif and amply demonstrates his appeal to the fourteenth-century lay urban community generally taken to be the manuscript’s patrons and owners. He features in both a couplet and a stanzaic version of Guy of Warwick, the Speculum Guy de Warwick, the anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle, and in Reinbroun, the history of his son. Originally the manuscript contained a full set of images, a most 21 22

For a detailed analysis of the imagery in this section see Legend, pp. 99–104. An online digital facsimile of the manuscript with extensive analysis and textual notes has been produced by Professor David Burnley and Dr Alison Wiggins for the National Library of Scotland: The Auchinleck Manuscript, National Library of Scotland Digital Library (July 2003) [accessed 8 August 2006]. 23 See Timothy A. Shonk, ‘A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 71–91, and for further references to scholarship on this manuscript see the chapter by Alison Wiggins above in this volume.

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unusual feature of pre-fifteenth-century English literary manuscripts, and its dialogue between visual and verbal components mirrors the reading practices more commonly associated with a French-speaking literary elite. In the main these appear to have been small miniatures standing as visual incipits to their respective narratives. Only five small pictures remain, however, with most having fallen victim to the so-called ‘scrapbook collectors’ who either cut away the small image to leave a defaced folio or, perhaps where a larger illustration stood, removed the whole page. The imperfect opening of the couplet version of Guy of Warwick indicates that it may have had a large image of the hero that tempted the miniature hunter to detach the leaf. Some sense of the style and matter of this lost image is given by the illustration placed at the head of the first column of Reinbroun, identified by the caption ‘Reinbrun Gij sone of Warwike’ (fol. 167rb). Framed by two turrets this picture shows a combat on a bridge between two knights. The larger figure holds a buckler on his left arm and appears to fall beneath the blow of his smaller opponent, who is probably meant to be taken as the young hero. In the absence of a strong visual tradition of images for English literary works the Auchinleck illuminator, as with the artist of the Smithfield Decretals before him, may have had to rely largely upon his own designs.24 Reinbroun’s textual history opens with his abduction from the protection of Guy’s master Heraud at Wallingford, and proceeds through a series of heroic fights in foreign lands, often complicated by mistaken identity, until a final journey back to England. This miniature looks like a stock image of chivalric combat, but the dynamic attitude of a knight fighting against the odds captures the sense of the young Reinbroun recreating the exploits of his father. If Guy is indeed the dominant presence in the manuscript the programme of illuminations may have been specifically designed to complement the sequential development of his narrative. The complex illustrative responses to the literary and oral versions of the legend extend to other contemporary art forms. Antiquarian records indicate relatively widespread representation of secular literary subjects in a variety of media within the church space, but only carvings on misericords – the flip-up wooden ‘mercy seats’ in choir stalls used by clergy during services – offer significant extant examples. Most notable are those derived from the Reynard the fox cycle but the romance genre also provides subject matter including images of Guy, Alexander, and the Knight of the Swan.25 At Wells and Gloucester cathedrals early to mid fourteenth-century misericord carvings appear to depict celebrated episodes from Guy’s career, though neither identification has won universal recognition. Those on the prebendal stalls at Wells date from the extension and refurbishment of the Quire in the 1330s.26 Each 24 25

Brantley, ‘Images of the Vernacular in the Taymouth Hours’, p. 105. The standard reference works are G. L. Remnant (with an introduction by M. D. Anderson), A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), and Christa Grössinger, The World Upside-Down: English Misericords (London: Harvey Miller, 1997). 26 Leslie Colchester, Misericords of Wells Cathedral (Wells: Wells Cathedral Publications, 1975; repr. 1998), pp. 1–2.

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prebendary was expected to pay for the cost of his own stall and may have had some part to play in choosing the designs though common practice left the choice to the individual carvers, in turn governed by the master carpenter who took inspiration from pattern books or sheets.27 The Guy episode seems to show Felice meeting her unrecognized husband while distributing alms to the needy.28 A wimpled Felice holds a cup meant for the weary pilgrim, while the hooded, bearded Guy sits cross-legged, his left hand raised with two fingers extended in a Christ-like gesture of blessing. The example at Gloucester, one of a set of forty-four in the Quire stalls, is dated to c. 1350–60.29 Generally described as ‘knight slaying giant’ this scene is framed by a stylized tree on the right and Guy’s horse on the left, set behind and slightly upwards to signify depth in the field of vision. Within this frame the combatants, in three-quarter profile that lends a sense of vigorous movement, are locked in battle. The fully armed Guy strikes a mortal blow across the neck of Colbrond who has fatally turned his back to wield his enormous murderous club. With Guy’s popularity bridging spiritual and chivalric endeavour the image of the penitent at Wells may well represent a renunciation of worldly pride,30 but the giant’s demise may not be freighted with moral significance. Inspiration for the subjects of misericord carvings did not remain static but it is well established that craftsmen sourced their designs in model books. There also appears to have been direct borrowing of detail and compositional elements from manuscript art, as can be seen in the relation between the carvings at Ely and the marginalia of manuscripts such as the Taymouth Hours.31 Carvings depicting the legend of Guy may not be as popular as those drawn from the Reynard stories, which undoubtedly lent themselves to overt moral interpretation, but the appearance of discrete episodes at separate sites speaks of an affection outstripping that of other romance heroes. Certainly by the middle of the fourteenth century the Colbrond episode had become a defining feature not only of Guy’s career but of early English history and it is one to which English chroniclers and poets of the period regularly turned. Guy’s fight with Colbrond, the Goliath of the Pagans, features in the apologia that opens Henry Knighton’s chronicle,32 and is prominent in the Narratio de Guidone Warwicensi by Gerald of Cornwall (fl. 1360),33 which acted as a source for the better 27 28 29

30 31

32

33

Grössinger, The World Upside-Down, p. 76. Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords, p. 136, describes it as a ‘man holding a cup sitting on the ground, disputing with another man holding a pouch’. See David Wellander, The History, Art, and Architecture of Gloucester Cathedral (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991), pp. 549–52. A full photographic record is given by Jack Farley, The Misericords of Gloucester Cathedral (Gloucester: [n. pub.], 1981). Legend, p. 105. Christa Grössinger, ‘English Misericords of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries and their Relationship to Manuscript Illuminations’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 38 (1975), 97–108. Chronicon Henrici Knighton, vel Cnitthon, Monachi Leycestrensis, ed. by J. R. Lumby, 2 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1889–95), II, 19–27; and Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. and trans. by G. H. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. i–li. See Chronicon sive annals prioratus de Dunstaple, una cum excerptis e chartulario ejusdem prio-

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known fifteenth-century versions of the legend by Thomas Rudbourne,34 and John Lydgate.35 Information disseminated from these kinds of sources is as likely to be the inspiration of the Gloucester (and Wells) carvings as any putative romances held in cathedral libraries, or circulating in the vicinity.36 Inspired by Guy’s continued textual vitality, late-eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians looked to identify tangible records of the medieval legend. Chief among these were the supposed remains of a wall painting of Guy fighting Colbrond in the north transept of Winchester cathedral. Some ‘imperfect traces’ of this image were recorded in 1760 by Thomas Warton,37 though his identification was considered by many to be spurious. John Milner, the first close observer of the cathedral’s wall paintings and a more credible witness, took it to be St Christopher carrying the Christ Child.38 Though Guy’s legend has some affinity with that of St George this does not appear to have been sufficient inspiration for large-scale mural painting in religious spaces and Winchester’s only paintings of an English subject were those of the patronal saint Swithin.39 This does not, however, diminish Guy’s significance for the city. Whether based upon local folklore or inspired by the writings of chroniclers and romancers, the legend bolstered civic pride and fostered the sense that Winchester was at the centre of national history and events. Hyde meadow, the site of the encounter, was popularly called Danemark, and the king was supposed to have watched the combat from a turret in the north wall called Athelstan’s Chair. A stone carving of the battle commemorating the English victory, also said to have been placed in this same wall, has been lost.40 Nor were the church authorities averse to using the legend to promote the cathedral. Numerous sources record that its treasury housed the celebrated ‘Colbrandes Ax’, which must have been a notable extra attraction for pilgrims to Swithin’s shrine.41 Owning this kind of secular relic provided part-ownership of the legend and an opportunity to benefit from association

34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41

ratus, ed. by Thomas Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1733), II, 825–30. This text is preserved only in a fifteenth-century copy (Oxford, Magdalen College MS 147). For Rudborne’s history of Winchester cathedral, Historia Major Ecclesia Wintoniensis, see Anglia Sacra, ed. by Henry Wharton, 2 vols (London: Richard Chiswel, 1691), I, 179–286. ‘Guy of Warwick’, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. by H. N. MacCracken, Part II, EETS os 192 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 516–38. Legend, p. 104. Thomas Warton, A description of the city, college, and cathedral of Winchester (London: Baldwin, 1760), p. 97. Only a decade later Warton noted that they had faded almost to the point of invisibility, The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London: Dodsley and Co., 1774–81), I, 89n. A further record is given in Anon., The History and Antiquities of Winchester, 2 vols (London: Crowder and Baldwin, 1773), I, 47–48. John Milner, The history civil and ecclesiastical, & survey of the antiquities, of Winchester, 2 vols (London: Cadell and Davies, 1798–1801), II, 74. Milner and the recently identified Swithin paintings are discussed by David Park and Peter Welford, ‘The Medieval Polychromy of Winchester Cathedral’, in Winchester Cathedral. Nine Hundred Years 1093–1993, ed. by John Crook (Chichester: Phillimore, 1993), pp. 97–122. Milner, The history civil and ecclesiastical, I, 145. The axe was said to have been destroyed in the seventeenth century: Milner, The history civil and ecclesiastical, I, 147. See further Robert Allen Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), pp. 142–45.

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with a national hero. Elsewhere the boar so vividly imagined by the illustrators of the Taymouth Hours helped to establish Coventry’s credentials as a site of Guy’s heroic activities: a massive bone said to be from the ferocious animal was displayed for generations in St George’s Chapel at Gosford Gate in the city.42 As with the royal patronage of Winchester’s Arthurian connections, the archaeology of the legend of Guy, supported by explicit commemoration in art and literature, became a means of fashioning and asserting not only civic identity but also a powerful sense of Englishness. The associative power of the legend comes into sharpest focus in relation to its exploitation by successive Beauchamp generations. The Beauchamps, who had assumed the title of Earls of Warwick through marriage into the Newburgh and Maduit families in the thirteenth century well understood the importance of an unbroken family history.43 Such an inheritance conferred legitimacy, authority, and honour and they enthusiastically embraced their heritage. A programme of architectural, artistic, literary, and ecclesiastical patronage created the sense that the family enjoyed a direct lineage back to the historical founder of the dynasty. Moreover, that all of the surviving images of Guy produced from c. 1360 have an explicit Beauchamp connection indicates an aggressive promotion of the cult by the family as it emerged fully onto the national stage. As the inheritance grew and the Earls exerted ever greater political and economic power – made possible through the rewards of military service in the French wars, continued success in marriage, and strategic land purchases – Guy increasingly became a means of personal and political assertion. By the middle of the fifteenth century Guy had effectively become the property of the Earls of Warwick, just as Warwick itself has become their town.44 Ancestor worship made sound political sense. Emma Mason dates the creation of the romance of Guy to the WarwickOilly marriage of 1205, and it is probable that members of the Beauchamp family continued to be involved in the promotion of textual versions of the legend in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. For instance, Earl Guy de Beauchamp’s presentation in 1305 of a library of forty volumes to the monks of Bordesley abbey included a ‘romaunce de Gwy’,45 and the prominence of Guy in the Auchinleck manuscript makes a member of the Beauchamp family or its retainers a possible owner.46 More substantial evidence of the promotion of the legend at this time comes in the re-imagining of the 42

43

44 45 46

‘The City of Coventry: The Legend of Lady Godiva’, in A History of the County of Warwick, Volume 8: The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick, ed. by W. B. Stephens (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 242–47. Emma Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamp’s Ancestors: The Use of Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 25–40; and Michael Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998; repr. 2002), pp. 53–63. For the earls’ improvement of Warwick and their pride in their lineage see Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, pp. 54–58. Madelaine Blaess, ‘L’Abbeye de Bordesley et les livres de Guy de Beauchamp’, Romania, 78 (1957), 511–18. Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity 1290– 1349 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 136.

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Beauchamp genealogy and physical environment. Earl William Beauchamp’s close identification with the legend led to him naming his heir Guy in 1271 or 1272;47 for his grandson Thomas, the eleventh Earl (1313/14–1369), Guy seems to have had an almost talismanic role, acting as a kind of secular saint looking over members of his household. Such devotion may in part explain the names Guy and Reinbroun given to two of his own sons in whom, presumably, he hoped Guy’s heroic qualities would be reborn. Earl Thomas also probably instigated a policy of creating a tangible presence that would reflect the prestige of the earldom and deliver spiritual and financial benefits – a shrine to focus Guy’s cult at the Guy’s Cliffe hermitage on the banks of the Avon where Guy had settled upon his return from the Holy Land. The symbolic importance of the legend can also be seen in the development of the earls’ residential spaces. Guy’s Tower, a huge twelve-sided battlemented construction, was a major part of the late-fourteenth-century expansion of the family’s stronghold at Warwick castle undertaken by his second son and heir, another Thomas, who became the twelfth Earl in 1369.48 This was luxury on a scale commensurate with the status of a leading baronial family. The outlay bought large rooms with fireplaces and vaulted ceilings on every level and two spiral staircases. Such surroundings required appropriate adornment and domestic furnishings and the Beauchamp earls of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries increasingly responded to their newly acquired family history in terms inspired by Guy’s legendary status and his various fictional lives.49 By his will, given at Chelsea on 6 September 1369, the elder Earl Thomas bequeathed personal relics of his legendary ancestor: To Thomas, my son and heir; a ring and cup with a cover, the best next to that which my daughter Stafford may choose, also the coat of mail sometime belonging to that famous Guy of Warwick.50

As his own father’s will makes no mention of these items it can be assumed that they were part of Thomas’s invention of his ancestral history, a tradition passed on to his son whose will, dated 1 April 1400, gave: to Richard, my son and heir […] a […] wrought with the arms and story of Guy of Warwick, and the sword and coat of mail, which was that worthy Knight’s, likewise the harness and ragged staves; also I will that the said sword and coat of mail, with the cup of the swan.51 47 48

Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, p. 58. R. K. Morris, ‘The Architecture of the Earls of Warwick in the Fourteenth Century’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 161–74. 49 For a recent response to the paraphernalia of Guy’s cult see Yin Lui, ‘Richard Beauchamp and the Uses of Romance’, Medium Ævum, 74 (2005), 271–87. 50 Nicholas Harris Nicholas, Testamenta Vetusta: Being Illustrations from Wills, 2 vols (London: Nicholas and Son, 1826), II, 79–80. 51 Nicholas, Testamenta Vetusta, I, 153–55 (p. 154).

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As one of the Lords Appellant this Thomas was exiled to the Isle of Man by Richard II in 1397 ‘by reasons of judgement in Parliament against him’.52 An inventory of the Earl’s goods forfeited to the Crown reveals how Guy’s exemplary and originary functions were fashioned by a visual presence in the domestic interior. Among the Earl’s possessions were extensive curtains and hangings of ‘aras’, including a number displaying the Warwick arms of the bear and ragged staff and ‘a dorser and 4 costers of aras with the story of Guy de Warrewyk’.53 If ownership of high-status objects befits baronial wealth and position the bespoke Guy tapestries declare a unique inheritance and an assertion of the absolute right to the Guy ‘franchise’. By granting the Earl’s possessions to Thomas, Duke of Surrey, Richard attempted to reassign the cultural capital of the Guy legend. By restoring them, Henry IV reauthorized the Earl’s rightful position in the Warwick dynasty. The swan cup mentioned in Thomas’s will of 1400 shows how, as well as proclaiming ancestral ties with Guy of Warwick, the Beauchamps also exerted rights over the history of the Knight of the Swan through marriage into the Tosny family, its traditional inheritors.54 Further evidence of such precious goods operating as markers of relationships and means of brokering transactions is found in the early-fourteenth-century maple wood bowl with silver and silver-gilt mounts owned by St Nicholas’s Hospital, Harbledown, near Canterbury. This item was probably given by a member of the Beauchamp family soon after its manufacture.55 The print or medallion riveted to the inside of the bowl’s foot depicts the episode where Guy saves the lion from the dragon’s jaws (Plate 2). Dominating the composition, the figure of Guy on horseback spears the dragon, which is further downtrodden under his horse’s hooves, while the lion, its body arched round the inner circle of the medallion, adopts a position of deference to his saviour. Guy is identified by the Beauchamp arms – a fess between six crosses crosslet or – and an encircling legend in Lombardic capitals that reads ‘+ GY DE WARWYC : AD A NOVN : KE CI OCCIS : LE DRAGOVN :’ (Guy of Warwick is his name who here kills the dragon). His armour is contemporary with designs from around 1340 and the Anglo-Norman text would seem to confirm the print’s mid-century date. As shown by their seals the Beauchamp family used two coats of arms in the early fourteenth century: for Beauchamp gules, a fess, and six crosses crosslet, and for Newburgh, the old Earls of Warwick, chequy or and azure, 52

Calendar of Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office. Vol 6. AD 1396–1399 (London: HMSO, 1909), p. 315. 53 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. VI 1392–1399 (London: HMSO, 1963), pp. 164–73 (items 306–07). 54 See Anthony R. Wagner, ‘The Swan Badge and the Swan Knight’, Archaeologia, 97 (1959), 127– 38. This may link to livery badges found in London: see Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges (London: The Stationery Office, 1998), pp. 287–89. 55 A detailed description is given by Marian Campbell in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, ed. by Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (London: Weidenfeld and Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), pp. 256–57; see also W. H. St John Hope, ‘On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls Called Mazers’, Archaeologia, 50 (1887), 129–93 (pp. 139–42).

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a chevron ermine.56 Guy’s relation to the contemporary earls is made explicit through the visual language of heraldry and an image celebrating the historical reality of Guy’s feats. This elaborate mazer is only one of an important collection donated to the hospital in the later medieval period. Given the prominence of the heraldry in the design it is likely to have been given to the house by a local member of the Beauchamp family.57 Similar gifts could be presented to mark benefaction or patronage and denote the family’s desire to enjoy the benefits of some spiritual economy, and also perhaps the hospital’s support in local ecclesiastical matters. Memoranda and letters from the first half of 1368 reveal how John de Beauchamp proposed to enfeoff the manor of Esole to the Prior and Chapter of Holy Trinity, Canterbury, so as to establish a chantry at the crypt altar of Our Lady in the Undercroft. Here one of the priory monks, wearing vestments decorated with the Beauchamp arms, would perform perpetual commemoration of Sir John’s soul and those of his ancestors.58 To the family this must have seemed a generous endowment but, in spite of a further intervention by the Earl on his late uncle’s behalf, the Prior deemed the manor to be of insufficient worth and excused the Chapter from further involvement in the scheme. It is also possible that the gift of the mazer represents an earlier route by which Sir John looked to establish the chantry, though this would also appear to have fallen on barren ground. Alternatively, it may have formed part of a later ‘gift exchange’, this time between the hospital and Thomas, the twelfth Earl, who became involved in plans to found a chantry for his forebears.59 While it is difficult to trace the precise reasons for the gift it is most unlikely to be simply the result of the pious stirrings of a devout pilgrim to Becket’s shrine. Notwithstanding Guy’s own remarkable reputation for piety, in these circumstances he is more likely to bear familial rather than literary significance. Expensive items enhanced the value and power of the legend and each ceremonial use of this grace cup would have reminded the prior and brothers of the hospital of the status, presence, and wealth of the Beauchamp family. Guy’s continued prominence in the visual histories associated with the Warwick earls in the fifteenth century signifies their political power and inevitably their sudden precipitous fall. As for previous generations the thin line between dynastic success and failure lent itself to distinctive forms of self-promotion. By the mid-1420s rewards for service to three successive Lancastrian monarchs, combined with careful expansion of his own lands and interests, had given Richard Beauchamp, the thirteenth Earl (1389–1439), a position of unrivalled strength in the Midlands and raised the earldom to a 56

C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘Armorials upon English Seals from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century’, Archaeologia, 89 (1943), 1–26. 57 The following discussion follows the lead given by Sheila Sweetinburgh, The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift-giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), p. 84n. I must thank Dr Sweetinburgh for the generous help given in personal correspondence. 58 Literae Cantuarienses. The Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. by J. Brigstocke Sheppard, 3 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1887–89), II, 484–87 and 489. 59 Sheppard, Literae Cantuarienses, pp. 487–89.

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position of unparalleled national influence.60 The legend may not have been one of Richard’s primary political tools but it certainly afforded an opportunity to affirm the earldom’s present glories through its unique heritage. In refounding the chapel of Mary Magdalene within the Guy’s Cliffe foundation he probably commissioned a giant-sized sculpted figure of Guy of Warwick. The engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–77) for Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) shows it bearing the arms of the Newburgh earls (Plate 3).61 This device, ‘Gyes armes’, also marked the mausoleum of the earls in the collegiate church of St Mary’s, Warwick, where Richard’s will provided for the construction of a magnificent chantry chapel to house his tomb, one of the grandest of the later medieval period.62 Richard’s death in 1439 heralded a decade of quick successions during which the earldom passed from his only son and heir, Henry (1425–46), to his granddaughter Anne (1444–49), and finally to his son-in-law Richard Neville (1428–71), the ‘Kingmaker’, who claimed the title in 1449 through his marriage to Henry’s sister, Anne. Neville played an even more prominent role on the political scene than his father-in-law had done and through to his death at the Battle of Barnet in 1471 he was keenly aware of the honour and traditions of the earldom.63 Where Richard Beauchamp had employed the learned John Shirley as his secretary, Neville’s patronage of the scholar-priest John Rous (c. 1420–91) indicates a desire to promote his new Warwick identity through textual means. After graduation from Oxford in the mid-1440s Rous was appointed to the position of chantry priest at Guy’s Cliffe, probably around the same time that Neville assumed the Warwick title. His significant writings all date from the latter part of his career, after Neville’s death and the Beauchamp’s loss of the earldom, but Leland’s description of his now lost works indicates a strong identification with Guy the hermit and a pronounced solicitude towards his patron.64 The visual histories of the Warwick earls almost certainly made under Rous’s guidance, and at the instigation of Neville’s widow, provide retrospective evidence for the active promotion of Guy’s cult by the fifteenth-century earls. The Beauchamp Pageant (British Library, Cotton MSS, Julius E IV, art. 6), a chivalric biography of Earl Richard, and two armorial chronicles now known as the Middle English and Latin Rous Rolls (British Library, Additional MS 48976 and London, College of Arms, MS Warwick Roll) date from after the family had been deprived of the earldom following Neville’s death fighting for Henry VI. The function and target audience of these three items 60

61 62 63 64

See C. D. Ross, The Estates and Finances of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Dugdale Society, 12 (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1956); and Christine Carpenter, ‘Beauchamp, Richard, Thirteenth Earl of Warwick (1382–1439)’, ODNB, IV, 592–95. Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 184. Ministers’ Accounts of the Collegiate Church of St Mary Warwick, 1432–85, ed. by Dorothy Styles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. li. Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, pp. 53–63. Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, auctore Joanne Lelando Londinate, ed. by Anthony Hall, 2 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1709), I, 474–75.

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is not entirely clear though it seems likely that they are calculated pieces of ‘family propaganda’,65 in which the legendary Guy functions both as national redeemer and archetypal knight. In seeking to reclaim the inheritance, Neville’s widow, Countess Anne (1426–92), petitioned both Richard III and Henry VII, and it is probable that these histories of the illustrious earls of Warwick from ancient times were intended as evidence of Beauchamp loyalty to the Crown over successive generations, indeed stretching back into legendary history. The Beauchamp Pageant probably dates from c. 1485–90. Lives of other secular figures were written at this time – William Worcester wrote a now lost chivalric biography of his master, Acta domini Johannis Fastolf – but the Pageant offers a unique combination of verbal and pictorial elements, which is in itself a demonstration of the importance given to visual signification by the Warwick earls.66 The manuscript presents a sequence of fifty-three line drawings, each accompanied by a short caption in English, charting Richard’s birth, life, and death. Unsurprisingly the legendary warrior provides a chivalric model. Richard’s brilliance in the lists and his all round chivalric prowess had won him an exalted reputation amongst his contemporaries and later generations. He is the likeliest candidate for the chivalric exemplar referred to in John Paston’s ‘Grete Boke’ of c. 1468–69 (British Library, Lansdowne MS 285), and his career as councillor, diplomat, and warrior gave his propagandists ample opportunity to give fictional inflections to his personal narrative. Indeed Yin Lui argues that he did much the same during his own lifetime, inviting others to read exploits such as those of the pas d’armes at Guînes near Calais in terms of the structure and spectacle of romance narrative.67 In the Pageant he is acclaimed the most noble of his contemporaries, the ‘fadre of curteisy’ as Emperor Sigismund titles him (Pageant XXXV, fol. 18). But he is also a scion of more famous stock. When in Jerusalem he is revered because ‘he was lynyally of blode descended of noble Sir Gy of Warrewik, whose lif they hadde there in bokes of their langage’ (Pageant XVIII, fol. 9v). Guy is never actually depicted in the Pageant but his inspiration propels Richard’s entire career. The earldom’s pre-eminent device of the bear and ragged staff is naturally displayed throughout, but at critical moments the artist portrays Richard wearing his own arms and those of Guy of Warwick. Thus at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 Richard bears the Beauchamp arms quartered with those of Guy (Pageant VII, fol. 4), as he does in his defeat of the French knights at Guînes. Here his horse’s trapper and harness display the arms of ‘Tony and Hamslape’ (de Tosny and Mauduit of Hanslope, families related to Beauchamp by marriage) but he reveals his true identity by uncovering his face and by wearing ‘Gy ys armes and Beauchamps quarterly’ (Pageant 65

Martin Lowry, ‘John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle’, Viator, 19 (1988), 327–83 (pp. 337–38). 66 The Beauchamp Pageant, ed. by Alexandra Sinclair (Donington: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust in association with Paul Watkins, 2003). See also Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, 355–59, plates 455–59. 67 Yin Lui, ‘Richard Beauchamp’, pp. 275–82.

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XXXI, fol. 16). The sequence of events thus becomes not only a literary event but a heraldic and genealogical narrative as well.68 The Pageant closes with two ‘arboreal’ pedigrees that place the Earl and his two wives in line with his illustrious ancestors (Pageant LIV, fol. 27v). A portrait of Richard sits above roundels in which his arms are displayed, again quarterly Beauchamp and Sir Guy of Warwick. In the Rous Rolls the legendary history assumes greater topicality and urgency than in the Pageant where Guy serves to define Earl Richard’s achievements.69 The references to Richard III’s son, Edward, as Prince of Wales allow the original composition of the Rolls to be set between his inauguration on 9 September 1483 and his death in April 1484. Rous’s primary objective was to serve the ambitions of his Warwick patrons in a record of their illustrious history that also recognized contemporary political realities. It is a feature of pictorial narrative that visual echo and the repetition of motifs – arms, heraldic devices, royal insignia – create a strong sense of natural progression. By consistently emphasizing royal patronage of Warwick the Rolls align the monarch with the interests of the earldom and, as with the visual allusions to Guy of Warwick in the Pageant, also proclaim the proud history of independent earls. This negotiation of political change is manifested in a series of emendations to the Latin Roll. While the English version honours Richard – he is ‘a speciall gode lord to the town & lordship of Warrewyk wher yn the castel he did gret cost off byldyng’70 – these pro-Yorkist sentiments were expunged from the Latin Roll after Bosworth Field to give the narrative ‘a more acceptably Lancastrian flavour’.71 Both the Latin and English versions offer complete histories of the Earls of Warwick and the Benefactors of the town of Warwick. These appear in sequences that start with the legendary founders of the town, Guthelinus and Gwiderius, pass through various English sovereigns and the Newburgh and Beauchamp lords, and close with the Yorkist holders of the title, Richard III, his son Edward, and his brother George, Duke of Clarence.72 The English Roll opens in recto with a ‘frontispiece’ displaying the Warwick arms suspended from a tree beneath which lies the earldom’s heraldic bear. There follow sixty68 69

Yin Lui, ‘Richard Beauchamp’, p. 278. The only workable edition is This rol was laburd & finishid by Maistre John Rows of Warrewyk, ed. by William Courthope (London: Henry Bohn, 1859); reprinted with an historical introduction on John Rous and the Warwick Roll, The Rous Roll, ed. by Charles Ross (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1980). Descriptions of the English Roll are given by Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 359–62, plates 500–01; and C. Wright, ‘The Rous Roll: The English Version’, British Library Quarterly, 20 (1956), 77–80. The Latin text is given by Courthope as notes to his description of the plates (unpaginated). For a description of the Latin Roll see P. R. Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888–1600 in London Libraries, 2 vols (London: The British Library, 2003), II, 31. 70 According to Courthope’s reckoning Richard III is number 17. 71 Ann Payne, ‘The Rous Roll’, in Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547, ed. by Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (London: V&A Publications, 2003), p. 232. For details of the alterations see Ross, The Rous Roll, pp. v–xviii. 72 The numbering system here follows Courthope’s facsimile, which in the absence of folios gives item numbers starting with Guthelinus (1) and closing with Edward, Prince of Wales (64).

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four pen-and-ink figures of the Earls and the patrons of Warwick. These drawings form the central of three rows. Above is a frieze of individual coats of arms painted on shields or hatchments; beneath are textual descriptions giving individual genealogies and salient details of the individual’s relationship to the earldom. In most cases figures are identified by heraldic device or personalized attribute or object as well as by a textual account. Thus, Guy and Reinbroun each stand on a defeated giant while their respective arms are displayed in the upper register. This format is also used for the Latin Roll, though one of the margins on its dorse features a series of coats of arms and a portrait of Rous sitting at a desk. Guy’s life forms the dominant thread in both versions. He appears twice, in consecutive ‘frames’ (Plate 4), flanked by his wife Felice (19) and son Reinbroun (23). First, he stands in martial garb as the ‘flour and honour of knyghthode’, holding Colbrond’s axe and standing over three defeated enemies, while the lion offers fealty (21). Then as a pilgrim holding a staff, again treading down the defeated Colbrond (22). As one might expect Rous’s interest lies in his later career as pilgrim and holy man and the importance of Guy’s Cliffe: And un to thys day God for hys sake to tho that deuoutly seke hym for her syknes with other greuis ar by miracle soen remedyed and in remembrans of hys habit hyt were ful conuenient, youe that hit plesyd, sum good lord or lady to fynd in the same place ij pore men that cowd help a prest to syng on of them to be there continually present weryng hys pilgrime habit and too show the place and theyr habitacion myght be ful wel set over hys caue in the roke.  (English Rous Roll, 22; Plate 4)

Whereas in the Pageant Guy’s military prowess offers the link to contemporary events, for Rous the earls honour their heritage and title by protecting this foundation. Roger de Newburgh is an early benefactor of Guy’s Cliffe (32), Thomas Beauchamp the younger buys the land from the Priory of Warwick and builds anew the chapel naming it ‘Gyclif in remembrans of sir Gy’ (48), Earl Richard extends this by endowing chantry priests ‘that God wold send hym Eyre male’ to continue Guy’s line (50), and Richard Neville supports the foundation with more priests (Rous himself no doubt), restores Guy’s cave, ‘let peynt Sir Gyes Image’, and in remembrance of ‘seynt Gy’ provides for an almshouse for ‘pore gentylmen’ (57). For all three visual signification of their right to Guy’s legacy is provided by the presence of Guy’s arms in their own heraldic devices. For the Beauchamp Earls Thomas and Richard further recognition is given by the building each carries as his attribute. If the Rous Rolls and the Pageant were intended to sway royal favour to restoring the Beauchamp inheritance after Neville’s death, the decorative images in the mid-fifteenth-century Shrewsbury Talbot Book of Romances (British Library, Royal MS 15. E. VI) reveal, albeit obliquely, a competing interest to the earldom during the Kingmaker’s lifetime. These illustrations accompany a version of Le Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne, 127



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one of only two surviving redactions into French prose of the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic.73 Produced in Rouen in the early 1440s, the large and densely illustrated manuscript Shrewsbury Book contains an extensive, disparate, and entirely French collection of texts. It was probably in Rouen in March 1445 that John Talbot, Marshall of France, presented it to Margaret of Anjou to celebrate her marriage to Henry VI before he escorted her to England.74 Of manuscripts of the period commissioned by English patrons the Shrewsbury Book is one of the most lavish and the range of writings covered in its 440 leaves are in effect a chivalric library in parvo. Chansons de geste and traditional verse romances (Le Roman d’Alexandre, Le Chevalier au Cygne, and various Charlemagne romances) sit alongside late medieval prose romances (Pontus et Sidoine and Renaut de Montauban), political, chivalric, and military treaties (a French translation of De Regime Principium, Honoré Bonet’s Livre de l’Arbre de Batailes, and Christine de Pisan’s Le Livre des Fais d’Armes et de Chevalerie), and chronicle (a version of La Chronique de Normandie apparently based on Wace’s Roman de Rou). Few of these would have been out of place in a contemporary French aristocratic collection but the pronounced chivalric orientation and occasional English perspective point towards Talbot’s controlling influence in the composition of the volume. The copy of Les Statuts de l’Ordre du Gartir with which the manuscript closes is a natural choice for a man who had been a garter knight since 1424, who had blamed John Fastolf ’s cowardice at Patay in 1429 for his capture and subsequent four-year imprisonment,75 and whose exploits had won him the sobriquets the ‘English Achilles’ and the ‘The Terror of the French’. So too La Chronique de Normandie signals his lengthy military and diplomatic career in France in service of the Lancastrian regime – he had been lieutenant-general in the eastern provinces since 1434 and had been promoted to Marshall in consequence of his bold defence of Normandy in the campaigns of 1435–36 after the fall of Paris.76 However strong Talbot’s personal stamp on the collection, it appears to have been intended for Margaret once her marriage to Henry had been formally agreed.77 Prominent among the 143 fully painted miniatures, almost certainly 73

74

75

76

77

A detailed description of the manuscript and the circumstances of its production are given in D. J. Conlon’s edition, ‘Le Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt D’Ardenne’, Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 102 (1971), 13–401 (pp. 13–41). Diana Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou, Chivalry and the Order of the Garter’, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Colin Richmond and Eileen Scarff (Windsor: Dean and Canons of Windsor, 2001), pp. 39–56, plates 1–2. Hugh Collins, ‘Sir John Fastolf, John Lord Talbot and the Dispute over Patay: Ambition and Chivalry in the Fifteenth Century’, in War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain, ed. by Diana Dunn (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), pp. 114–40. For Talbot’s military career see A. J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1453, Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 35 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983); and C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). C. Reynolds, ‘The Shrewsbury Book, British Library, Royal MS 15 E. vi’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rouen, ed. by Jenny Stratford (Leeds: Maney and Sons, 1993), pp. 106–16 (p. 111).

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by followers of the Bedford Master, are a presentation scene in which Talbot offers the volume to Margaret and her husband (fol. 2v), a sumptuous genealogy of Henry VI in the shape of a fleur-de-lys tabling his descent from St Louis (fol. 3), and Talbot as Marshall of France receiving his sword from his king (fol. 405).78 In simple terms this is what has been called ‘a nicely calculated gift’ for the daughter of one of the greatest bibliophiles of the age, René of Anjou, offering ‘a suitable pastime for a young noblewoman’.79 But the marriage may well have inspired Talbot to consider future dynastic developments that are implicit in the composition of the Shrewsbury Book. A ‘mirror for princes’ replete with moral and practical guidance would be a suitable present to the prospective mother of an heir to the Dual monarchy.80 And with Henry’s disinterest in chivalric matters revealed even at this early stage Talbot may even have seen Margaret as a means of furthering his own political desires – renewed support for a strong English presence in France – at a time when the war effort was faltering and calls for strategic withdrawal were growing more insistent. For Henry V to live again through a warrior grandson the prospective mother would have to have appropriate educational materials.81 Of the four artists responsible for the illustrations the predominant hand is that of the Talbot Master, named from his work on this and other manuscripts associated with the patron. He was almost certainly from a French, probably Rouen, workshop responsible for a group of manuscripts made for other patrons among the English forces.82 As with other romances in the volume the opening folio of Le Rommant de Guy (fol. 227r) displays a deep decorated floral border and a large miniature in the upper third of the page. Against a bespangled background two armed forces stand in opposition before a hill on which stands a windmill (the artist’s favourite device rather than a textual detail). A knight carrying a large mace or sceptre stands at the head of the group of riders on the right; the force on the left is led by a king carrying a blank shield and a man with a cockleshell on his hat, while a burgess rides in the rear. This image has been taken as a distillation of the entire legend, a visual ‘epitome of Guy’s life as knight and pilgrim’.83 In these terms the foremost figure in the party on the right represents the ambitious, worldly, earlycareer Guy; that on the left the pilgrim who ‘carries only the sword needed 78

79 80 81 82

83

The genealogy is a copy of an image commissioned around 1423 by John, Duke of Bedford, and posted in Notre-Dame in Paris. For discussion of these illustrations see F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscripts à peintures en France 1440–1520: catalogue de l’exposition à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), pp. 168–72; and Anne Payne, ‘The Shrewsbury Book’ in Gothic, ed. by Marks and Williamson, pp. 182–83, plate 10. John Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage in Late Medieval England as Reflected in Versions of Guy of Warwick’, Medium Ævum, 66 (1997), 80–93 (p. 81). A. de Mandach, ‘A Royal Wedding-Present in the Making’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 18 (1974), 56–59. Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou’, pp. 39–40. Kate Harris, ‘Patrons, Buyers and Owners: The Rôle of Book Owners in Book Production and the Book Trade’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 163–99 (pp. 180–81). Legend, pp. 122–23.

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to fight in God’s service’. This identification certainly fits the general scope of the prose text which follows the same crusading and pilgrim paths of its Anglo-Norman source, but it fails to recognize a series of distinctive changes. Most notably there is a toning down of Guy’s penitent role and a renewed emphasis upon chivalric rather than spiritual achievements. This development is reinforced by the prominence of the deeds of his mentor Herolt d’Ardenne, who is considered significant enough to warrant the only other illustration. In such a large volume there is good reason to believe that the illustrators, unable to rely on an existing pictorial cycle, had a significant role in the design of the illustration. With an extensive and expanding iconographic base, even wellknown details need not have featured. Rather than a conceptual representation this is likely to be a loose interpretation of the confrontation between King Athelstan and the Danes. The likelihood is that Le Rommant de Guy was composed during the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Both surviving versions are in standard Continental literary French (the other is now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds français, 1476) but the Shrewsbury version need not have been composed in France. The topographical knowledge of Guy’s hermitage and discernably English point of view in the prologue implies an author with English origins or at least with strong English affiliations.84 With such local colour there are grounds to tie the production to Warwick and specifically to a member of the Beauchamp household or someone of the Warwick affinity. John Frankis reasonably dates the composition to 1420s at the time that Earl Richard was rebuilding Guy’s hermitage and actively promoting his ancestor’s cult.85 He further speculates that it was either commissioned by the Earl himself to celebrate Talbot’s marriage to his daughter Margaret, the eldest by his first wife Elizabeth, in September 1425, or that Talbot himself commissioned it for Margaret at about this time. In either scenario the likely source is a copy of the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic held at Warwick. Neither of the existing versions are taken directly from the other but it seems credible that the text in the Shrewsbury Book was copied from a version held in the personal collection of Talbot and his wife.86 Though Talbot had married into the Beauchamp family some twenty years before the creation of the Shrewsbury Book the continued celebration of the union offers visual clues to the significance of the Le Rommant de Guy illustrations. Talbot’s ownership of the Guy legend is indicated by the arms displayed on a short-handled standard in the bottom margin of the opening folio beneath the miniature of the two armies; at the foot of the right-hand margin a herald wearing Talbot’s arms and holding Margaret of Anjou’s standard envisages an alignment between the French house and the Talbot and Beauchamp fami84 85 86

Conlon, ‘Le Rommant’, pp. 22–26; Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage’, pp. 84–90. Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage’, pp. 85–86. The Paris manuscript, which contains only Le Rommant de Guy, also has English associations in that it bears the heraldry of Jean d’Orléans who like his elder brother Charles spent much of his adult life after 1415 as an English prisoner.

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lies. The inclusion of the Guy story in the Shrewsbury collection thus offered a small but not insignificant means by which he might celebrate his Beauchamp credentials; the visual dimension of the text created a triangulation of Warwick, Shrewsbury, and Anjou that should not be lost on the new queen. Roughly contemporary with the Shrewsbury Book are two companion Books of Hours commissioned by Talbot and his countess in France, again probably in Rouen which by the 1440s was the English stronghold in the north (Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum, MSS 40–1950 and 41–1950). In both, dedication miniatures depict the Earl, dressed in a tabard of the Talbot arms, and his wife being presented to the Virgin and Child by their patronal saints.87 In the larger volume (MS 40–1950), illuminated by the Talbot Master, the scene sits above the armorial banners of Talbot and Beauchamp; in the smaller book, by a follower of the Bedford master who also contributed to the Shrewsbury Book, parts of the lower register have been scraped away but the ghost of the former design shows that it too once bore the arms of the two families.88 The precise reasons for the commissioning of these two books are obscure but it is worth remembering that in 1442 Talbot had been elevated to first Earl of Shrewsbury, and that the Treaty of Tours of 1444 had given him, as chief of staff of the occupying force, some respite after several years of constant warfare. Further, the odds on inheriting at least some part of the Warwick inheritance had shortened since Earl Richard’s death in 1439. Though it was not until the death of Anne Beauchamp in 1449 that the land and power of the earldom diverted away from the direct line to Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, it is clear that throughout the 1440s the inheritance increasingly concerned Talbot, who could lay claim to the earldom through his wife. It is no coincidence that at roughly the same time that the Rouen manuscripts were commissioned the countess asked John Lydgate to write a history of ‘þat moste worþy knight Guy of Warwick, of whos bloode shee is lyneally descendid’.89 The Talbot and Beauchamp arms and devices displayed so prominently in the devotional books constitute this union in essentially personal terms. The Shrewsbury volume is more likely to have been conceived as an appropriate vehicle to further Talbot’s ambitions. Guy of Warwick enjoyed enormous symbolic capital in the later medieval period and in large part the iconographic diversity of the legend was generated by the shifting demands placed upon it by generations of artists and patrons. The earliest surviving illustrations demonstrate Guy’s manifold appeal to a cross-section of English society and the text’s capacity for complex visualiza87

See Janet Backhouse and Anne Payne, ‘Books of Hours of John Talbot and Margaret Beauchamp, Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury’, in Gothic, ed. by Marks and Williamson, pp. 230–31, plates 94a and 94b. 88 The same design is used in a third Book of Hours owned by Talbot, now owned by Blairs College, Aberdeen (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Deposit MS 221/1); Backhouse and Payne, ‘Books of Hours of John Talbot and Margaret Beauchamp’, p. 231. 89 MacCracken, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, p. 516n.

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tion, factors undoubtedly enhanced by Guy’s powerful hold over the popular imagination. The refashioning of the legend by the Earls of Warwick – the production of artefacts and a legendary archaeology to justify and sustain their emergence on the national scene – was largely responsible for the loosening of the ties between the visual and textual aspects of the legend. This sharp political turn taken by patrons and image-makers from the late fourteenth century is exemplified by the production of personalized images as competing parties looked to appropriate or align themselves with their heroic ancestor for individual and familial gain. Only with the demise of the earldom in the Tudor period did the popular imagination fully reclaim both the textual and visual components of Guy’s story.

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9 ‘In her owne persone semly and bewteus’: Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick MARTHA W. DRIVER

T

he romances about Guy of Warwick focus mainly on his derring-do and heroic battles, while his wife, Felice, is described rather conventionally, as by John Lydgate: ‘In alle her tyme was holden noon so ffayre, Called ensaumple of truthe & womanhed’ (179–80). In Lydgate’s poem, produced about 1442, Felice spends her time ‘wepyng nyght & day’ (176) after her son is kidnapped, and she dies promptly after Guy is buried, as she also does in the other Middle English versions of the tale, which typically portray the mature Felice as beautiful, passive, virtuous, and religious. Such a model might have been particularly appropriate for (and flattering to) Lydgate’s patron, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Richard Beauchamp (1382–1439), Earl of Warwick, from his first marriage, for whom Lydgate composed ‘the lyffe of that moste / worthy knyght of Guy of Warrewyk of whos blode she is / lenyally descendid’. This chapter examines the exemplary character of Felice as she appears in the fifteenth-century legends of Guy against the often difficult and demanding realities of the lives of women readers and patrons for whom these later legends were reshaped and retold. In its analysis of fifteenth-century texts made for or associated with members of the Beauchamp family, this chapter considers the later reception and appropriation of the Guy romances in order to explore more generally the influences of fiction, in this case romance, upon the larger historical record. Among the primary sources to be discussed are texts commissioned by 

F. N. Robinson, ‘On Two Manuscripts of Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology, 5 (1897), 177–220 (p. 197). I am grateful to the editors for their comments during the preparation of this chapter.  Robinson, ‘On Two Manuscripts of Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick’, p. 197. Subsequent references to Lydgate’s poem are to the Robinson edition but are cited only by lines.  In addition to the Lydgate text, the following editions of various versions of the Guy of Warwick romance were consulted for this chapter: The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. by David Burnley and Alison Wiggins, National Library of Scotland Digital Library (July 2003) [accessed October 2005]; Gui, ed. by Ewert; Fragments of an Early FourteenthCentury Guy of Warwick, ed. by Maldwyn Mills and Daniel Huws, Medium Ævum Monographs, n.s. 4 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974); The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, ed. by Alison Wiggins (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004). All quotations are from: Guy, ed. by Zupitza.

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or written specifically for the Beauchamp family circle, including Lydgate’s poem, the Irish Life of Sir Guy, composed before 1449, and the Rommant de Guy de Warwik of c. 1445, along with the undated ‘second or fifteenthcentury version’ of Guy of Warwick (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38), which I argue contains previously unnoticed internal evidence of a Beauchamp connection. Stories of Guy and Felice are told as well in two of the most famous illustrated heraldic manuscripts of the fifteenth century. These are British Library, Additional MS 48976, ‘Chronicle and Armorial of the Benefactors of Warwick and of the Earls of Warwick’, in Middle English (known as the ‘Rous Roll’), copied between 1483 and 1485, and London, College of Arms, MS Warwick Roll, a Latin version of the Rous Roll usually dated between 1477 and 1485. Both were most likely made in Warwickshire. The related Beauchamp Pageants, British Library, Cotton MSS, Julius E.IV, art. 6 (dated, like the Rous Rolls, from the mid-1480s), portray Richard Beauchamp in a series of vivid drawings and brief texts as a ‘second Guy’. Both Rous Rolls are attributed to the historian and antiquary John Rous (1411–91), and both may have been copied and illustrated, as the Beauchamp Pageants manuscript certainly was, for Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, widow of the ‘Kingmaker’ Richard Neville (1428–71) and half-sister of Margaret, Lydgate’s patron. These three fifteenth-century illustrated manuscripts emphasizing the noble family’s descent from Guy of Warwick were very likely made to restore Anne to royal favour. Female figures of particular interest to this chapter are both fictional and historical. They include Felice, wife of Guy, and the nameless wife of her son, Reinbroun (of whom there is a previously unnoticed drawing in the College of Arms Roll), along with Margaret, the eldest daughter of Earl Richard Beauchamp, who, with her husband, was a well-known patron of manuscripts, and her half-sister, Anne Beauchamp. Portraits of all of these women appear in the Rous Rolls, in which Felice provides one model for appropriate female behavior under adverse circumstances. Let us turn now to a brief profile of Felice as she appears in the medieval romances.

Felice in the romance The catalyst for Guy’s initial exploits, the young Felice will not be satisfied by a succession of masculine accomplishments. Haughty and demanding of her lover, the Earl’s daughter will only marry Guy when he has proved to be, as the early-fourteenth-century Auchinleck manuscript explains, the ‘best doinde In armes þat animan mai finde, Þat vnder heuen þi beter no be’ (1157–59). In his analysis of the role of Felice in the Anglo-Norman and early Middle English versions of the story, Maldwyn Mills comments that at the 

Lydgate’s text has been edited from Harvard MS 530 by Robinson, ‘On Two Manuscripts of Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick’, pp. 197–214.

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beginning of the story, Felice causes Guy to suffer through his love for her; after their marriage, Guy suddenly realizes that ‘he has a past which must be atoned for, as well as a future that is to be wholly devoted to the service of God. And Felice is deeply implicated in it.’ At this point Guy begins his life as a pilgrim, as Felice, pregnant with their son, Reinbroun, remains ‘firmly fixed at home’. After their marriage, Felice becomes merciful and generous, the mother of Guy’s son. She patiently awaits the return of her husband and is reunited with him only at the moment of his death. The Anglo-Norman and Middle English romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries provide the essential archetype of Felice on which subsequent renderings of her character are built. In the fifteenth-century versions, however, the focus is shifted slightly from the haughty demanding young noblewoman to the worthy wife, her character recontextualized and selectively edited perhaps to suit an audience of noble female readers. The portrait of Felice in the CUL manuscript draws mainly from these earlier romance models. Felice is well educated and beautiful beyond description (‘Ther myght no man telle hur feyrenes’, 52). When Guy first proclaims his love for her, she grimly regards him and then threatens Guy with drawing and hanging (227–28). After Guy’s love causes his deathly illness and a maidservant intervenes, Felice says she cannot love Guy until he becomes a knight; then after he proves his valor through jousting and fighting; then after his successes on the Continent; then after he becomes the best knight in the world. After their marriage, the two are happy for fifty days; the first night after the wedding, Felice becomes pregnant with their son. Guy then has his epiphany – he regrets that he has burned abbeys, killed many men and seized lands and towers not for the glory of God but for love of his lady. Now that Felice is his wife (following the downward transition in status from lady to wife so aptly described by C. S. Lewis in The Allegory of Love), Guy decides to serve God, telling Felice she will receive half of the heavenly merit arising from his decision (7183–84). The feisty young Felice at first accuses Guy of having a lover in another land, then swoons with sorrow. Comforting her, Guy predicts the birth of their son. At first, Felice contemplates suicide but decides to live and raise their son in the ways that Guy has prescribed. When next we see Felice, she is a rather different character, a pious mother known for her good works. In most details, then, the CUL text follows earlier versions, though there are some interesting additions to be explored below. Rous in his description of Felice in the English Roll certainly knows the ‘merciless beauty’ element of the story, commenting in his caption for Felice in the English chronicle Roll that during Sir Guy’s ‘wowyng tyme she made

 

For a summary of the story see ‘Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative’, below. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (London: Oxford University Press, 1936; repr. 1953, 1972), pp. 36–37, 40–41. On Guy’s conversion to an ‘increased awareness of Christianity’, see Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge: Brewer, 1987), pp. 85–89.

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grete strangnes and causyd hym for her sake to put hym self in many grete dystres dangers and periles’, but that is not the main emphasis of Rous’s text, as we shall see. Lydgate’s poem begins near the end of the story, with the Danes besieging King Athelstan at Winchester. In it, Felice is portrayed only as a mature woman who mourns the kidnapping of her son and her lost husband; she is reunited with Guy only at his death. In several of the fifteenth-century versions, then, Felice is portrayed not primarily as a cruel young beauty but as a mourning mother and pious mature widow. Her patience and generous almsgiving, which are developed in the later stories, might further be seen as suitable modes of behaviour, as well as positive responses to events outside one’s own control, perhaps especially by the aristocratic women of the Beauchamp family.

Felice and the half-ring The fifteenth-century texts all describe the reunion of Guy and Felice in some detail. Both Rous Rolls show Felice receiving a half ring, or broken ring, from the messenger sent by Guy just before his death at the hermitage (Plate 4, drawing at left; Plate 5). According to Velma Bourgeois Richmond, ‘Half rings are not typical; the most likely source is the story associated with Wroxhall Priory, six miles from Warwick. Half rings are used in the reunion of Hugh, Lord of Hatton and Wroxhall, with his wife when St. Leonard translated him home from the Holy Land. Half rings in the Irish Life of Sir Guy suggest the influence of the Beauchamps.’ As Richmond notes briefly, half rings appear in a story that is associated with Warwick early on and that may have been influential even in the earlier composition of the romances of Guy. William Dugdale, in The Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), recounts the foundation story of the Benedictine nunnery at Wroxhall, citing as his source ‘an historicall Manuscript, penned about King Edward 4. time by some Priest or Officer belonging to the said Nunnery’. The tale concerns one Hugh Fitz Richard, ‘a person of great stature’ and son of the steward of Henry, Earl of 

This text and subsequent Roll texts in English have been transcribed directly from British Library, Additional MS 48976. See also Thys rol was laburd & finished by Master John Rows of Warrewyk, ed. by W. Courthope (London: Henry Bohn, 1859), reprinted with intro. by Charles Ross (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1980), item 20. Additional MS 48976 may have been made as a presentation copy to commemorate the visit made by Richard III, his wife, Anne Neville, and their young son, to Warwick Castle from 8 to 13 August 1483. See Rhoda Edwards, The Itinerary of King Richard III 1483–1485 (London: Richard III Society, 1983), pp. 5–6.  In both Rolls, Felice is the twentieth figure. The drawing appears to be unfinished in the College of Arms Roll, while that in Additional is more accomplished. Le Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt D’Ardenne, ed. by D. J. Conlon, University of North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, 102 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), p. 43, remarks that ‘Felice is the only character in the romance who has any claim to be derived from an historical personage’. She may be drawn from Felicia, ‘a grand-daughter of Thurkill of Warwick, who was a known concubine of Henry I’ (p. 43).  Legend, p. 130.

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Warwick (d. 1119), who is taken prisoner in the Holy Land and there held for seven years. Praying to St Leonard, his parish saint, for deliverance, Hugh is told in a vision by the saint, who appears ‘in the habit of a black Monk’, to establish ‘at his Church a House of Nuns of S. Benet’s Order’. When Hugh vows to do so, he finds himself miraculously transported ‘with his Fetters, and set in Wroxhall woods, not far distant from his own House’. A passing shepherd, though ‘not a little affrighted, in respect he saw a person so overgrown with hair’, reunites Hugh with his wife and children, though his wife recognizes Hugh only after ‘he shewed her a piece of a Ring, that had been broken betwixt them; which so soon as she applied to the other part in her custody, closed therewith’.10 The ‘Fetters’ and ring are then kept by the nuns at Wroxhall as their foundation relics. Several of the story elements found in Dugdale’s account are also found in the Guy romances, just slightly altered, including miraculous rescues, travel to distant lands, the disguise of the hero and lack of recognition by his family, and the ring representing reunion. The foundation relics of Wroxhall further seem to suggest the relics of Guy (who was, of course, a fictional character) that were housed in Warwick Castle by the thirteenth century.11 The half ring occurs again in the Irish Life of Sir Guy of Warwick, a vellum folio composed in Middle Irish in the fifteenth century, very probably by a person in the circle of Margaret, the patron of Lydgate, and her husband, John

10

William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated; from Records, Leiger-books [sic], Manuscripts, Charters, Evidences, Tombes, and Armes (London: Thomas Warren, 1656), p. 489. I have retained the italics and bolding in quotations from Dugdale’s text. The story is also briefly told by Emma Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors: The Use of Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 25–40 (p. 30). Dugdale is cited in Legend, p. 475, note 62. Another story often associated with the romances of Guy is the popular legend of Alexis of Rome that reached England in the twelfth century. Alexis marries, leaves his wife on their wedding night for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and then returns secretly to Rome, where he lives unrecognized in abject poverty in his father’s house for seventeen years. David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 11– 12. Mills, ‘Structure and Meaning in Guy of Warwick’, p. 64, points out that ‘the framing structure and pietistic tone’ of the Guy texts ‘owe much to the popular life of Saint Alexis’. Mills further cites La Vie de Saint Alexis, ed. by G. Paris, CFMA, 4 (Paris: Champion, 1917). 11 According to Richmond, Legend, p. 450, among these relics are a sword and horse armour, the armour dated to c. 1340; she says the sword is late thirteenth century, ‘over five feet long and designed for two hands; in Queen Elizabeth I’s time there was an official “Keeper of Guy of Warwick’s Sword” who was paid £3 a year’. Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, however doubted the provenance of some of these items in the seventeenth century. He describes, p. 343, items said to have belonged to Guy: ‘a large two-handed Sword, with a Helmet, and certain Plate-Armour for Horse service; which, as the tradition is, were part of the accoutrements sometime belonging to the famous Guy; but I rather think that they are of a much later time’. Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors’, says that in the thirteenth century, ‘Guy’s Tower was added to Warwick Castle, and fusion with the alleged heroic past was completed when the relics of Earl Guy (1298–1315) were proudly displayed as those of a legendary hero’ (p. 33). Fewster, Traditionality, p. 124, comments more generally, ‘Acts such as the bequeathing of Guy’s armour associate story with genealogy’. See also The Beauchamp Pageant, ed. by Alexandra Sinclair (Donington: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust in association with Paul Watkins, 2003), pp. 14–15, who cites ‘the sword, harness, ragged staves and the coat of mail’ which were housed in Warwick Castle and well known to Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick.

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Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was (from 1414 to 1419, in 1425, and again from 1445 to 1447) Lieutenant or Justiciar of Ireland.12 Conlon points out that Talbot’s ‘younger brother, Richard, was Archbishop of Dublin for a period of thirty-two years (1417–49). It seems a remarkable coincidence that during these years Guy of Warwick was translated into Irish.’13 In the Irish text, the Earl of Warwick, Guy’s father-in-law, is called ‘Richard of Warwick’, perhaps a nod to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and father of Margaret.14 The Irish Life describes the parting scene between Felice and Guy after their brief marriage, when Guy breaks the ring in two: ‘Art thou surely pleased to go?’ said she. ‘I am in truth’, said he. ‘Take half of this ring with thee’, said she; and Guy took the ring, and broke it, and left half of the ring with her and took the other half himself. And Guy said: ‘Do not believe that I have met death until thou get my half of the ring.’ Thus did Guy put away from himself the world.15

Later, just before he dies, Guy sends the half ring to Felice: at that time he sent his lad to Felice, and said to him: ‘Bear my nine blessings to the lady, and give her this half-ring as a token, and tell her that I shall meet death in this hour; and ask her to pray to God for me, and let her come if she would visit me alive.’ The lad went quickly to Felice, and told her Guy’s message, and gave her the half-ring; and she recognised it and knew 12

Dublin, Trinity College Library MS H.2.7. For a brief description, see T. K. Abbott and E. J. Gwynn, Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1921), item 1298, pp. 318–20. This catalogue entitles the manuscript ‘Genealogical and Historical Collections’ and says further that the first sixty-nine folios contain pedigrees of ‘sundry ancient Irish families’ (p. 318). The tale of Guy, Earl of Warwick, ‘and Bocigam’ (Buckingham?) appears on pp. 300–47, while pp. 348–63 contain the ‘Romantic tale about Bibus, son of Guy’ (p. 319). This text has been translated and edited by F. N. Robinson, ‘The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hantoune’, in Zeitschrift für Celtisches Philologie, 6 (1908) pp. 9–180; 273–338. Available online at . 13 Conlon, Le Rommant, p. 24. Talbot also presented London, British Library, Old Royal 15. E. VI, which contains a prose romance of Guy of Warwick in French (on fols 227r-72v), to Marguerite of Anjou on the occasion of her marriage to Henry VI of England; the manuscript ‘bears the arms of England, of France, of Anjou, of Marguerite of Anjou, and of the Earl of Shrewsbury’ (p. 19). The French prose text, however, only mentions a ring that is exchanged and then returned to Felice just before Guy’s death. Guy asks that the ring be taken and presented to Felice, ‘Et vous luy presenterez de ma part cest annel’ (‘and present her with this ring for my sake’), with his greetings. Felice is then described as taking the ring into her hand, recognising it, ‘Lors le prent de sa main, si le congnoist tantost’ (‘When she took it in her hand, she recognized it immediately’), and joyfully embracing the messenger (pp. 310–11). 14 Robinson, ‘Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick’, p. 105. See also Conlon, Le Rommant, p. 22. 15 Robinson, ‘Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick’, pp. 161–62. In this version of the story, Felice is described as beautiful and learned, surpassing even her teacher, who ‘was set to instruct her in the gentle arts […] so that the master gave her the rod of his instruction after being outstripped by her in every kind of knowledge even at the end of her seventeenth year. Her fair fame spread throughout all the world for knowledge, dignity and honor, for piety, gentleness and discretion, for purity, wisdom and prudence, until the princes and nobles of the whole earth were filled with love and longing for her’ (p. 105). The early-fourteenth-century Auchinleck manuscript (79–92) and the fifteenth-century CUL version (64–71) also both describe Felice as learned in the seven arts.

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Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick that it was Guy who was in the oratory in the guise of a poor man.16

In the Irish text, Felice immediately recognizes the broken ring and rushes to the side of the dying Guy. In his depiction of Felice in the chronicle Rolls composed for the Beauchamp family, Rous also chooses to represent this central moment of recognition. In the CUL version of the Guy romance, the half rings again appear, though no one, to my knowledge, has recognized this. In this version, Guy sends a groom or servant to Felice, asking the groom to bring her ‘Thys halfe rynge’. Zupitza, the editor of the fifteenth-century version, explains in a footnote that ‘Thys halfe rynge’ is the phrase as it appears in the manuscript. He, however, has edited this line and the following to read: ‘Thys rynge, þou hyt not forZete And on my behalfe þou hur grete.’17 Zupitza then notes that ‘halfe evidently has crept in from the next line’ (from ‘behalfe’, presumably), and he refers the reader to the French source text.18 But the detail of the half ring seems to occur only in texts associated with the Beauchamp family, not in the earlier sources. That the reference was originally intended in the fifteenth-century text may be supported by a later comment about the breaking of the ring by Guy made by Felice as she mourns over his body in the hermitage, kissing his mouth and face: ‘ “Thes be þe hondys”, sche seyde thoo, “That the rynges breke atwoo” ’.19 That is, these are the hands that broke the rings in two. Citing Havelok, the editor Zupitza glosses ‘rynges’ in this line as rings of mail, a reference to battle armour that in this context seems out of place.20 The scene poignantly recounts the brief reunion of Guy and Felice before his death, as his soul leaves his body in the shape of a dove and his body becomes fragrant with the odour of sanctity, its very scent able to heal the sick. It would seem more fitting for Felice to refer to the restoration of the ring broken on their parting than to rings of mail. If Richmond’s surmise is correct, that is, if the detail of the half ring serves as a marker associating texts with the Beauchamp family, this would further suggest that the CUL text was produced within the Beauchamp circle.21 16 17 18 19 20

Robinson, ‘Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick’, p. 178. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 10,583–84. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. 446. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 10,679–80. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. 447. According to Richmond, Legend, reading the stories of Guy and Havelock together was fairly unusual, though not unheard of; see her analysis of Henry Knighton’s Chronica de Eventibus Angliae, composed in the fourteenth century, pp. 72–74. In the CUL text, Felice gives Guy a ring, which is apparently whole, before he leaves for his pilgrimage. But there is another broken ring mentioned earlier in the CUL text. Just after Guy abandons Felice, she wrings her hands to soreness, swoons, tears her clothing and her hair, and ‘On hur handys brake the rynge: Sche was tho a sory thyng’ (7283–84). In this scene the ring is not broken and exchanged but indicates the extent of Felice’s mourning. The mention of the half ring at Guy’s deathbed in the CUL text might suggest that the detail was added later, perhaps by a scribe or translator in the Beauchamp circle. 21 Scholars who have argued for a Beauchamp connection based on a later reference in the CUL manuscript (see note 47, below) are Fewster, Traditionality, pp. 82, 114, 125, 127–28, and John Frankis,

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Lydgate’s version, however, like the majority of other versions of this story, uses the more conventional image of the wedding ring as a sign of the return of the hero. After he learns of the day of his death through an angel, Guy sends ‘his weddyng rynge Vn-to his wyffe of truwe affeccyoun’ (505–06), imploring her to be by his side ‘at his endyng’ (507). She arrives to find Guy ‘dedly pale of fface’ and embraces his dead body (513, 515). The prophecy that she too is to die, within fifteen days, is conveyed to her, along with the wedding ring, by the messenger. As in the other stories of Guy, the ring identifies the long-lost hero, but it is rather surprising, given Lydgate’s close connections with the Beauchamp family, that he does not employ the very effective image of the broken ring. However, when compared with the CUL text and the Irish story, Lydgate’s version is very brief indeed, and the ring may serve in his text as a readily recognizable signifier that does not require further explanation.

Felice’s piety and lineage While Lydgate devotes just a few brief lines to Guy’s life in the hermitage, the angel’s prophecy of his coming death, and the sending of the ring, he does stress the value of the competent and economically minded housewife in all household matters, including the arranging of her husband’s burial. Through his messenger, Guy instructs Felice: That she should done ther hir besy cure, As by a maner of wyffly dilygence, In hast for to ordeyne ffor his cepulture With no gret coste nor no gret reuerence.  [l508–11]

The sewing of funerary shrouds, public mourning at funerals of the deceased, and often the making of arrangements for burial were ‘women’s work’ in the Middle Ages. In this version of the story, Felice undertakes to bury her husband expeditiously and with ‘wifely diligence’ in a modest grave without spending too much money.22 In his text, Lydgate takes some time to develop this idea, ‘Taste and Patronage in Late Medieval England as Reflected in Versions of Guy of Warwick’, Medium Ævum, 66 (1997), 80–93 (pp. 85–89). Alison Wiggins, ‘Guy of Warwick: Study and Transcription’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, 2000), pp. 46–47, comments on the expanded entourage that accompanies Felice to the hermitage in CUL including ‘Erlys barons & abbottys tho / Archebyschopes & byschoppes also’ (10,653–54) as a transformation ‘from a private moment between husband and wife to a moment of public significance’, another detail that occurs only in the CUL manuscript. 22 See A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. by Georges Duby (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 249–50. C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), cites the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, the father of Lydgate’s patron, as comparatively moderately priced during a period when ‘Elaboration in ceremonial accounted for a vast increase in funeral expenses’, and comments further that ‘The tomb of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (d. 1439), was contracted in 1453 to be made for a little under £180’ (p. 110). Linda Monckton, ‘The Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary’s Church, Warwick (1443–63)’, in Gothic Art for England 1400–1547, ed. by Richard Marks

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devoting an entire stanza to his description of the exemplary housewifery of Felice even as she plans the details of Guy’s and her own burial: His holy wyffe of alle this toke goode hede, Lyke as he bade, & list noon lenger tarye To acquyte hir-selfe of wyffely womanhed, Ffor she was lothe ffro his desyre to varye.  [525–27]

The stanza concludes by explaining that the obedient Felice follows Guy’s directions to the letter: ‘She was not ffounde in oon poynte contrarye Eche thynge to accomplysshe’ (530–31). In performing these tasks, Felice is an exemplar of both ‘wyffly dilygence’ and ‘wyffely womanhed’ – a model wife, in fact. In the fifteenth-century texts, Felice is disclosed mainly as a mourning mother who performs pious acts. The CUL text comments that after Guy’s departure Felice does not ever laugh again and then describes her charity at some length: ‘Abbeyse, churchys sche dud make At that tyme for Gyes sake And pore men bothe clothe and fede’ (8403–05). In the English Roll, Rous says that after Guy departs on his pilgrimage, Felice ‘kep her clen and trew lady and wyf to hym deuout to Godward and by wey of almys gretly helpyng them that were in pore astate’. According to Rous’s version of the story, Felice retains her ‘cleanness’, or wifely chastity, and remains faithful to her lord while also helping the poor. Lydgate also calls her ‘Ffelice clene of womanhed’, remarking on her practice of feeding thirteen poor people daily in return for their prayers: Wher day be day Ffelyce, his trwe wyffe, Ffedde poure ffolke of great devocyoun To pray ffor her & ffor his lordes lyffe, Xiij in noumbre.  [472–74]

The disguised Guy joins this number within three days of his homecoming: ‘Be thre days space he was oon of thoo That toke almesse with humble & lowe courage’ (476–77).23 In the CUL text, Felice daily feeds twelve ‘pore men […] and moo’ (10,488) with the same food that she herself eats and asks them in return to pray for the protection of Guy: ‘That god schulde saue hur lorde Gye’ (10,490). In this version of the tale, Felice notices Guy the pilgrim (though

and Paul Williamson (London: V&A Publications, 2003), p. 223, item 86, however, clarifies this point further by explaining that ‘the elaborately conceived burial place for Richard Beauchamp’, constructed according to his will, was ‘finished 20 years later after a total expenditure of £2,481 4s. 7d., a spectacular sum’. See also Woolgar for the role of women as mourners, in his description of the scene of the funeral and burial of Richard Beauchamp from the Beauchamp Pageants (p. 109, plate 42), ‘In the right background are hooded mourners, with cloaks and torches, and three weeping women’. 23 Dugdale repeats this story, Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, p. 301.

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without recognition) and specially sends him the best bread, wine, and meat, inviting him to dine with her daily in the hall. Like many narrative elements, the descriptions of the performance of good works by Guy and Felice are drawn from earlier story versions. In the CUL text, for example, when, soon after their marriage, Guy proposes his pilgrimage to atone for his having loved Felice more than Jesus, Felice suggests that Guy build ‘Abbeyes’ at home instead and fill them with holy men that ‘schall for the pray Wyth þer myght bothe nyght and day’ (7213–16), a proposal that also appears in the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, among other earlier sources.24 Later in the story, by her feeding the poor men each day and asking for their prayers, Felice is, in effect, fulfilling this pious duty herself. While Guy completes his spiritual goals through further adventures on his pilgrimage, Felice opts for works of faith and charity at home. The CUL text expands upon earlier descriptions of Felice as feeding poor men. She also builds abbeys, bridges, and causeways: ‘sche […] makyþ abbeyse And makyth brygges and cawsayse’.25 The performance of charitable works and, for wealthier aristocratic women, the foundation of churches and abbeys were religious obligations in the later Middle Ages. Richard Beauchamp provided in his will for the building of a Lady Chapel to house his tomb and for masses to be sung daily for his soul, a goal fulfilled, in part, by the women of the Beauchamp family, who further continued the family sponsorship of the collegiate church of St Mary’s.26 In other fifteenth-century texts, emphasis is also placed on the primary importance of Felice’s noble lineage. Guy holds the Warwick title through his marriage to Felice, not in his own right. In his caption, Rous explains that Felice is the ‘dowhter and eyr to Erl Rohand’ who ‘by trew enheritans was countes of warrewike and lady and wife to the most victorius knyght Syr Gy’. Writing for his female patron, Margaret, herself a supposed descendant of Guy, Lydgate is perhaps most emphatic in his descriptions of the Warwick inheritance. When he first mentions Reinbroun, Lydgate explains that he has been ‘Borne be descent to ben his ffader heyere’ (177); and then, in the next two lines, his mother Felice is described: ‘In alle her tyme was holden noon so ffayre, Called ensaumple of truthe & womanhed’ (179–80). It is clear from this initial passage that Felice is important as the mother to such a son, but the descent is not at first fully explained. However, when Guy lands once more in England, he is informed that his faithful friend Herauld is seeking the

24 25 26

Guy, ed. by Zupitza, Auchinleck 28:7–8. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 9989–90, 9994. For more on the tomb and Lady Chapel, see Gothic, ed. by Marks and Williamson, pp. 224–25; Anne M. Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. 133–41. Dugdale, in Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, p. 328, illustrates and describes the tomb sculpture of Earl Richard, the ‘Statues in Copper gilt standing on the ends and sides of this Monument’, which include figures of his two surviving daughters ‘Margaret, one of the daughters to Ric. Beauch: Earl of Warw.: Wife to Iohn Talbot E. of Shrewsbury’ and ‘Anne, daugter [sic] to Ric. Beauchamp, E. of Warw: Wife to Ric. Nevill E. of Salisbury’.

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kidnapped Reinbroun, who is the heir to the Warwick inheritance through his mother’s line: Which be discent was borne of verry ryght Be cleyme of Ffelice clene of womanhed, At his repeyre with grace of Crystes myght Theorldame of Warrewik ioustly to possede.  [285–88]

In this passage, the moral virtue of Felice is emphasized (‘clene of womanhed’) along with her hereditary ability to pass the earldom of Warwick to the male heir. Presumably she is also passing her moral virtue, along with the title, to her son. Still later in his text, Lydgate describes Felice’s preparations for her own burial. In her last ‘testament’ (544), Felice provides for Reinbroun, as heir, ‘The eorlldame of Warrewik ioustely to possede’ (547), a line repeated from the earlier stanza. Lydgate then spends another stanza outlining Reinbroun’s pedigree, the ‘stocke’ that passes from Felice to Guy through their marriage – ‘The stocke discendyng downe be the pedugree To Guy his ffader be tytle of maryage’ (548–49) – which then will move to Reinbroun with the death of his father: ‘Affter whos deeth of lawe & equytee / Reynebroune to entre in-to his heritage / Claymyng his right’ (550–52). The passing down of inheritance through the maternal line is not altogether unusual in the Middle Ages, nor is it the stuff of fiction. As Maurice Keen reminds us, ‘Good blood – the best blood – is centre stage’ even by the ‘twelfth-century phase of heraldic history, and it comes often, perhaps most often, through women’; the Warwick lineage, in fact, originates with a woman, Countess Gundreda of Warwick.27 In all of the stories, Felice brings the Warwick estates and title, the ‘stock descending through the pedigree’ to Guy through their marriage, which are then left to their son. The life of Guy is renewed and continued through his son, who will carry on his line. For whatever reason, however, Reinbroun is not given a wife by Lydgate or in the romances, though he seems to have acquired one, along with progeny, by the time Rous composed his Rolls.

27

Maurice Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman: Heraldry, Chivalry and Gentility in Medieval England, c. 1300 – c. 1500 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2002), p. 150. See also David Crouch, ‘The Historian, Lineage and Heraldry 1050–1250’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. by Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 17–37 (p. 31), who points out that the noble line of the earls of Warwick is through a woman, Countess Gundreda of Warwick. Fewster, Traditionality, p. 115, notes that the description of Felice’s ‘testament’ in Lydgate’s poem ‘makes a statement about inheritance in legalistic terms, and at some length’.

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The stories of Reinbroun are seen as a continuation of the adventures of his famous father and are usually appended to the main Guy romance. They occur in the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic, in the Auchinleck manuscript (though the last few lines have been lost), in the French prose Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne, in the CUL romance and even in the Irish version. None of these texts mentions a wife, though Reinbroun does have a young female companion. After his kidnapping by merchants and his presentation at the court of King Argus of Africa, the king’s daughter befriends Reinbroun. In the CUL manuscript, she is only briefly described as being the same age as Reinbroun and as persuading her parents to educate him as a fellow pupil (‘The chylde myZt in hur chaumber be To norysche hym wyth hur own mayne, Yf þat he myght serue hur wele’).28 Her character is more developed in the early-fourteenth-century Auchinleck manuscript where she is said to be the heiress of all Africa (‘Of al Aufrik Zhe was air’), and like the young Felice, a beautiful young girl (‘A swiþe fair Zonling’) who is literate and musically gifted, knowing ‘of menstralcie, Of harpe, of fiþele, of sautri, [and] Of romaunce reding’.29 In this version of the story, she invites Reinbroun into her nursery and undertakes to tutor him, though he does not marry her. An illustration in the Smithfield Decretals (London, British Library, Royal MS 10. E. IV), copied c. 1340 and illuminated in England, shows a young man and woman seated on a bench and clasping hands beneath a tent or canopy, and may be (very tentatively) identified as a representation of Reinbroun with the African princess.30 The last few lines of the Auchinleck manuscript are missing, and are supplied in the modern edition by Zupitza by lines from the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic: essentially, the text says that after all of their adventures, Reinbroun, the loyal Heralt and Heralt’s son, Aselac, return to England and to London to the court of Athelstan, who honours them for several days. Reinbroun then 28 29

Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 8493–95. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, Auchinleck 12:8–12. See also Burnley and Wiggins, 10,646, 10,647, 10,648– 50. For the education of Felice, see note 15 above. 30 Richmond, Legend, p. 103, describes the miniature on fol. 311 of the Smithfield Decretals as ‘a young man and woman hold hands before a tent: Reinbroun befriended by the daughter of King Argus after he landed in Africa’. The scene may refer to any number of stories. The illustrations preceding this one are of a woman with a sword or staff before two seated men (fol. 309), a veiled woman dictating a letter to a scribe (fol. 309v), a man kneeling before another (fol. 310), and two men embracing, their horses held by attendants (fol. 310v). Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), refers generally to a whole range of stories illustrated in the lower margins of this manuscript: ‘In the illustrations of the miracles of the Virgin, the lives of the saints, well-known romances such as Beves of Hampton and Guy of Warwick, and stories about tricks of a blind beggar’s boy, we have a record of oral narrative that has otherwise been lost’ (pp. 190–91), but he does not consider this particular grouping of images. For a catalogue description, see Alixe Bovey, ‘Didactic Distractions Framing the Law: The Smithfield Decretals (London, BL Royal MS 10. E. IV)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2000). See also David Griffith’s chapter in this volume (pp. 110–32).

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returns to Warwick, and Heralt is reunited with his wife in Wallingford.31 In the CUL Guy of Warwick, the three return, receive their title and lands from the king, and are honoured by all the ‘best’ of London (‘They honowred þem on all manere And made þem ryche and of grete powere And gaf þem all ther own lande And well more into ther hande’), before Reinbroun and Heralt and his son, ‘Asslake’, go their separate ways.32 The ending is similar in the fifteenthcentury French prose Rommant de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne, in which ‘Rambion’ (Reinbroun), ‘Herolt’, and ‘Alac’ (Aselac) return to London to the court of Athelstan, where they receive honours and titles. Rambion then returns to Warwick, where he is honoured by his men, and Heralt and son return to ‘sa ville de Walingforthd’, where Heralt’s wife awaits them.33 Even in the Irish version, ‘Roighnebron’, ‘Heront’, and his son, ‘Aslog’, return after many adventures to England, where Roighnebron finds that his mother has died, and ‘he took possession of the heritage of his ancestors, namely the earldom of Warwick and the earldom of Buckingham’.34 There is no mention in any of these texts of Reinbroun’s future marriage, wife, or progeny. Lydgate remains silent about a wife and mentions no further descendants from Guy (beyond Margaret, the patron for whom he is writing). In the English Rous Roll, ‘Raynbrowne erl of Warrwick’ is shown, like his father, with a beheaded giant (see Plate 4, fourth drawing). His descendants, Wegeatus, Ufa, Wolgeatus, and Wygodus, are then shown standing beside him. Rous’s caption recounts the story of Reinbroun’s kidnapping in childhood by Russian sailors and then tells us that on his return to England, Reinbroun ‘was ful cherfully receyuid of kyng Athelstan and receyvid his landeis with tho kyngis dowghter to his wyfe but she did not inherit the crown for hit went tho dayes by Eyr male’. The Latin roll made by Rous in the College of Arms further includes a portrait of Athelstan’s daughter, the noble wife of Reinbroun (Plate 6), showing her with the same coat of arms as Reinbroun. The text beneath has been unfortunately nearly erased by efforts, usually attributed 31

In Ewert’s edition, ‘A Lundres sunt tut dreit alé, U le rei Adelstan unt trové’ (12,893–94). Reinbroun is given his lands and title and returns to Warwick, where he is honoured and offered fealty by his men: ‘Rainbrun prent de ses homes feltez, Mult par est entr’els amez’ (12,905–06). Zupitza’s text is similar, Guy, pp. 673–74. 32 Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 11,953, 11,955–58. 33 In Le Rommant de Guy de Warwik, the three men are described as travelling ‘en Angleterre et prirent port a Senduch [Sandwich]. La leur fut il dit que le roy Athelstam estoit a Londres, mais quant le roy fut seur de leur venue il ala a l’encontre / d’eulz et moult les honnoura et donna de grans dons tant comme ilz sejournerent avec lui. Sy rendi a Rambion sa conté de Warwik et toutes ses aultres seigneuries, et moult les lui acrut’. Then after four days, they depart, ‘qu’ilz vindrent a Warwik, la ou Rambion fut recepu aussi haultement que seigneur doit ester, et si receput les hommaiges et feaultés de tous ses homes. Et Herolt s’en retourna en sa ville de Walinforthd devers sa bonne femme qui moult fut joyeuse de sa venue’ (Conlon, Le Rommant, pp. 344–45) (‘in England and they docked at Sandwich. They were told there that King Athelstan was in London. When the king learned of their arrival, he honored them and offered them much treasure if they would stay with him. The king made Rambion Count of Warwick and gave him his manor and lands, and all that he was owed of his inheritance. Then, after four days, they departed for Warwick where Rambion received the homage and fealty of all of his people. And Herolt returned to Walingford to his good wife who joyfully welcomed him home’). 34 Robinson, ‘Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick’, pp. 179–80.

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to William Dugdale, who also made a copy of this manuscript in the seventeenth century, to bring up illegible text by the application of oxgall, which has created brown patches and caused the text to become unreadable.35 In history, Athelstan (d. 939), the eldest son of King Edward the Elder (d. 924), was not married nor did he have children. His life is discussed in some detail by William of Malmesbury in the twelfth-century Gesta Regum Anglorum: Athelstan was notable for his learning, for his victory at the Battle of Brunanburh, and for styling himself, ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘king of the whole of Britain’ – a particularly notable historical king to associate with the heroic fictional Guy. The twelfth-century Liber Eliensis does refer to a daughter of Athelstan, an ‘Aeðida filia regis Aeðelstani’, who is otherwise unattested.36 The drawing of Reinbroun’s wife does not appear in Rous’s English Roll nor is she mentioned in any published catalogue or description of the Latin Rous Roll.37 Roughly drawn, she wears what look to be coronation robes with an ermine bodice and ermine-lined cape. Like the other captions in the Latin Roll, her inscription has been damaged, though the partial word ‘abilis[?]’ may refer to her name. Dugdale, who had the most immediate access to this Roll before its text was damaged, reports further on Reinbroun and his progeny in The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, explaining that after his return to England, Reinbroun ‘wedded the beautifull Lady Leonetta daughter to K. Athelstan; but afterwards dying beyond the Seas, was buried in a certain Island near unto Uenice, and left for his successor Wegeat, alias Weyth the humed, a person of great courage, and much honoured for his skill in martial affairs’.38 ‘Leonetta’ seems an unlikely name for an Anglo-Saxon princess, though later genealogists have picked up the reference and used it to form genealogical tables.39 35

36 37

38 39

Anthony Richard Wagner, Aspilogia, Being Materials of Heraldry: A Catalogue of English Mediaeval Rolls of Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 117. According to Wagner, Dugdale’s copy of the Latin Roll, made in 1636, is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 839, fols 8–31, but this is incorrect. Ashmole MS 839 actually contains a transcription of the English Rous Roll made by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald in the reign of Elizabeth I, along with copies of other historical documents pertaining to the Beauchamp family. Liber Eliensis, ed. by E. O. Blake, Camden Third Series, 92 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962), p. 292. Sarah Foot, ‘Æthelstan (893/4–939)’, ODNB , I, 420–28. The English Roll, British Library, Additional MS 48976, ‘Chronicle and Armorial of the Benefactors of Warwick and of the Earls of Warwick’, is much better known than the College of Arms, MS Warwick Roll. Additional MS 48976 is the main focus of discussion and description in, for example, Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, 359–62 (no. 138); Scott briefly discusses the Latin Roll (II, 360–61) but relies mainly on Courthope’s description and omits mention of Reinbroun’s wife. Courthope, Thys rol was laburd, does not cite or list the figure of Reinbroun’s wife. Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors’, considers the English Rous Roll at some length but seems not know about the Latin Roll. She refers only to the Additional MS in her essay. After the death of Richard III, Rous censored the Latin Roll. There are other indications that it was a working copy that was never entirely finished. Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, p. 301. ‘Leonetta’ further appears as the daughter of Athelstan and wife of Reinbroun in Henry Drummond’s Histories of noble British families with biographical notices of the most distinguished individuals in each. Illustrated by their armorial bearings, portraits, monuments, seals (London:

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The emphasis in most surviving early sources is on Reinbroun’s sons, not on his wife, though Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 839, a manuscript dating from the sixteenth century, does include a genealogy of the Beauchamp family that mentions both Reinbroun and his wife, ‘Leonetta filiae Regis Ethelstani’.40 In New York, Pierpont Morgan MS M. 956 (Plate 7), formerly a roll that was most likely copied in the College of Heralds at the time of Queen Elizabeth, no named wife appears, though Reinbroun is given a death date (948), and the son mentioned by Rous is again cited: ‘wegeatus Erle of warwyke the sonne of Reynburne gaue the manores of wygelford and Lytyll grafton to the abbey of Eusham’.41 As Richmond points out, the Morgan manuscript is ‘reminiscent of the Rous Roll, and entries repeat information in Rous, with additions of specific dates’.42 Copied some one hundred years after the Rous Rolls, the de luxe Morgan manuscript demonstrates the vitality of the legend of Guy of Warwick as the noble ancestor of the Beauchamp family as well as the continuity of such tales well after the Reformation.43 Guy of Warwick and the Beauchamp Pageants The appropriation of Guy’s story to popularize and promote Warwick family interests begins early on. Emma Mason says that the first Guy romance was composed in the early thirteenth century to celebrate the nuptials of Henry (fifth Earl of Warwick), son of Earl Waleran (d. 1204), with Margery d’Oilly sometime before 1205, when the countess died leaving two infants and her fourteen-year-old widower, who was promptly remarried to the daughter of his guardian.44 She furthers observes that ‘Many of the adventures of Guy and his son Reinbroun are based on the actual achievements of Brian Fitz Count during the civil war of Stephen’s reign, although others are taken from the youthful adventures of William Marshall, and from various chan-

40

41

42 43

44

Pickering, 1846), [no page nos] Part I, genealogical table I. A survey of the name ‘Leonetta’ with ‘Athelstan’ or ‘Reinbroun’ (and variant spellings of same) on the Internet turned up several sites constructed by members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints tracing various fictional forebears, including Leonetta, Reinbroun, and Guy, and converting and baptizing them posthumously, a modern intersection of fiction and history. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 839, fol. 36r. A note at the top of the genealogy in this manuscript states ‘This Braunche is fournished before in the roll of Warwyke’, which may refer to a roll now lost as the Beauchamp line set out simply as a one-page family tree does not appear to the best of my observation either in the Additional or the College of Arms Roll. See M. Driver, ‘Morgan MS M. 956 and an Important Early Collector’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. by Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill (Cambridge and Tokyo: Brewer and Yushodo Press, 2004), pp. 381–404 (p. 387, note 9, p. 384, and p. 384, note 5). Legend, pp. 189–90. M. Driver, ‘Inventing Visual History: Re-presenting the Legends of Warwickshire’, in Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Wendy Scase, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2007). Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors’, p. 31.

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sons de geste’.45 According to Ewert, the Anglo-Norman Gui de Warewic was composed in the early thirteenth century to honour the families of Warwick and Wallingford, especially the d’Oilly family of Wallingford. The work may have been written for Thomas, Earl of Warwick (d. 1242), heir through his mother of the d’Oilly family.46 Whatever the stories’ earliest origin, the romances of Guy begin in Warwickshire and are told and recorded to connect noble families in that region with heroic local ancestors. Among the surviving Guy romances, only the CUL manuscript specifically mentions ‘Gybbeclyf ’ (10,530) as the hermitage to which Guy repairs on his final return to England, another indication of Beauchamp influence in this text. According to Rous, both Guy and Felice are buried at ‘Gibclif ’, or Guy’s Cliff, where Rous was chaplain of the chantry that was founded in 1423 by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and father of Margaret and Anne. Guy, the legendary hero, is buried in a real place, linking the family with its feudal holdings.47 In retelling the life of Richard Beauchamp, the Beauchamp Pageants recount many events that mirror those in Guy’s narrative. Like Guy, Beauchamp is shown as a champion in battle and at tournaments across the Continent. Like Guy, he goes on pilgrimage to the Holy Land (though Beauchamp seems to travel in considerably more style). The Pageants recount a dinner invitation given Beauchamp by Sir Baltirdam, the Sultan’s lieutenant in Jerusalem, because of his familial connection with Guy: ‘heryng that Erle Richard was there and that he was lynyally of blode descended of nole [sic] Sir Gy of Warrewik, whoes lif they hadde there in bokes of their langage, he was ioyful of hym and with greet honoure resceived hym, and desired hym and his mayny to dyne with hym in his owene place’.48 The text notably proclaims the fame 45

Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors’, p. 32. See also Fewster, Traditionality, pp. 104– 12, for early connections between stories of Guy and the earls of Warwick. 46 Gui, ed. by Ewert, I, pp. iv–vi, xxvii. Conlon, Le Rommant, pp. 23, 42–43. Douglas Gray, ‘Guy of Warwick (supp. fl. c. 930)’, ODNB, XXIV, 328–29. 47 Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. 302. Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage’, p. 85, notes that ‘by the end of the fifteenth century the association [of Gibcliff] with Guy became so strong that the name was changed from Gibcliff to Guy’s Cliffe, which is still its name today’, citing further the reference to ‘Gye clif’ that appears in the Beauchamp Pageants (p. 88). See also Fewster, Traditionality, pp. 112–14. Frankis, pp. 86–87, suggests that Le Rommant ‘also reflects the new attention to Guy’s hermitage’, and speculates that ‘Earl Richard himself commissioned [Le Rommant] about the same time as his daughter commissioned Lydgate’s poem’. See Driver, ‘Morgan MS M. 956’, pp. 384–85. 48 Sinclair, The Beauchamp Pageant, pp. 86–87, Pageant XVIII (fol. 9v). The story of Earl Richard’s meeting with Sir Baltirdam is told by Dugdale in Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated, p. 325: ‘At the time of his being thus at Hierusalem a noble person called Baltredam, the Souldan’s Lieutenant, hearing that he was descended from the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, whose story they had in books of their own language, invited him to his Palace, and Royally feasting him, presented him with three pretious stones of great value, besides divers clothes of silk and gold’. Dugdale repeats the story again in The Baronage of England or An Historial Account of the Lives and most Memorable Actions of Our English Nobility In the Saxons time, to the Norman Conquest; And from thence, of those who had their rise before the end of King Henry the Third’s Reign. Deduced from Publick Records, Antient Historians, and other Authorities (London: Tho. Newcomb for Abel Roper, John Martin, and Henry Herringman, 1675), p. 243: ‘hearing that he was descended from the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, whose Story they had in Books of their own Language, invited

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of Guy of Warwick, whose story has even spread to the Muslim world through ‘bokes of their langage’. This compliment was surely gratifying to Richard’s daughter Anne who herself seemed to value books for their cultural currency and for whom this manuscript was most probably made.49 Women in the Beauchamp Pageants are shown as active and engaged in the narrative, rather like some of the minor female characters in the Guy romances. In the Pageants, in addition to more conventional scenes (women in childbed, for example), there are drawings of women in procession, avidly observing tournaments, in a coronation, and even a woman bound with her son and husband to a mast (Plate 8).50 As in the Beauchamp Pageants, in the Guy romances, an emperor’s daughter is described as attending a tournament; Blancheflowre, as she is named in the CUL text, eagerly observes the field and enthusiastically comments upon the action: ‘Blancheflowre, þat swete þyng, Let crye and make a grete justynge, That sche myght see in the felde, Who cowde beste welde spere and schylde And whych was the feyrest knight And in batell beste cowde fyght’ (729–36). And in many versions of the Guy romance, before the fight with the Duke Berrard, Guy is committed to the care of yet another emperor’s daughter, who acts as his squire, arming him before battle.51 The disappointment of the Greek Emperor’s daughter whom Guy almost marries before he is reminded of Felice is also described in several versions of the story. In the early-fourteenth-century Auchinleck manuscript, the abandoned girl is shown weeping and tearing her hair as well as cursing (‘& curssed þe time þat moder hir ber’, 4230). In the fifteenth-century CUL text, him to his Palace’, citing as his source ‘Hist, MS. de gestis ejus in Bibl. Cotton’, presumably the Beauchamp Pageants. See also Fewster, Traditionality, pp. 121–22. 49 The dinner with Sir Baltirdam is shown in two subsequent scenes, Sinclair, The Beauchamp Pageant, pp. 88–89, Pageant XIX (fol. 10); pp. 90–91, Pageant XX (fol. 10v). Sinclair notes that in 1410, when Beauchamp made his pilgrimage, the Holy Land ‘was under the suzerainty of the Mameluke sultans in Cairo’ (p. 87 note 81), and further (p. 87 note 83) that ‘Despite a general mistrust, Christians and Muslims did meet on occasion, and sometimes struck up genuine friendships’. Woolgar, The Great Household, p. 23 (plate 6), p. 71 (plate 28), reproduces the dining scenes to illustrate actual diplomatic protocol of the period. 50 Sinclair, The Beauchamp Pageant, pp. 120–21, Pageant XXXV (fol. 18); pp. 60–61, Pageant V (fol. 3); pp. 118–19, Pageant XXXIV (fol. 17v); pp. 58–59, Pageant IV (fol. 2v); pp. 150–51, Pageant L (fol. 25v). Pageant L shows Warwick, his wife Isobel and their son and heir, Henry (at age twelve), tied to a mast during a storm at sea, an historical occurrence that is further described by the Brut chronicler (Sinclair, p. 151). A later real-life parallel, with tragic consequences, occurred in the life of Richard’s daughter, Anne Beauchamp. Sinclair describes (p. 19) that after Warwick began once more to support Henry VI and became ‘embroiled with the king’s brother, the duke of Clarence, in open rebellion […] the pair were proclaimed traitors in March 1470 and forced to take flight with a price on their heads. At this time, Anne was at Warwick Castle with her two daughters; the duchess of Clarence was eight months pregnant and not in a state to travel but, despite their obvious anxieties, the ladies were bundled off and the party hurried south to Exeter where they took ship for Calais. Although Warwick was captain of the town, it was in royal hands and they were warned not to enter for their own safety. […] Anne’s first grandchild was born dead and she had the miserable task of preparing the little body for burial at sea. The ships then headed further south, only to be attacked by an English royal fleet’. 51 Guy, ed. by Zupitza, p. 21. Compare CUL 9279–86, 9301–04, 9311–13, with Auchinleck 9566–75, 9590–9595, 9600–02.

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the would-be bride is more restrained; she is sorrowful and faints (‘The mayde for Gye sorowed faste: Sche þoght, hur herte wolde tobraste. Ther myZt no man brynge hur away : Sche swownyd soo that ylke day’, 3983–86), a telling emendation that seems to suggest a subtle change in perception about appropriate female conduct.52

The Beauchamp women as patrons and readers While the young Felice is still represented as a demanding ‘belle dame sans merci’ in the fifteenth-century Guy stories, this begins to seem like a necessary plot device that must remain in place in order to motivate the hero in his first adventures. In the later stories, the emphasis seems more strongly placed on Felice as a pious, grieving, mature woman, the embodiment of patient endurance who daily performs charitable acts. This shift is most apparent in the non-romance versions of her story in which authors like Lydgate and Rous select aspects of Felice’s character in order to present a figure acceptable to their patrons. How might such a stoic female figure have provided consolation and solace as well as models of behaviour for the women of the Beauchamp family? Margaret, for whom Lydgate composed his poem, seems to have been a formidable lady from all surviving accounts. In the English Roll, Rous comments on her severity, as well as on her piety, remarking that ‘This lady to the honour of God made a decre in her hows not her own childre owt set. that what euer persoun blasphamyd owr lord by vnlawfull sweryng he shuld lak that day ale wyn and chochyne and only haue but bred and watre’. If, as a strict disciplinarian, Margaret particularly disapproved of swearing, placing even her own children on a diet of bread and water for such infractions, one wonders what Margaret would have made of the frustrated princess in the Auchinleck manuscript who swears and curses the day she was born? About 1424, Margaret married John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1453), himself described as having ‘a violent and quarrelsome reputation’.53 Margaret was twenty and Talbot almost forty; and they subsequently had five living children. Lydgate’s poem seems to have been written around the time of their marriage, possibly before Margaret’s father, Richard Beauchamp, and his second wife, Isobel, produced Henry (b. 1425), who then became the heir to the Warwick fortunes. The poem’s emphasis on the Warwick earldom passing through Felice and on the importance of Margaret’s lineage through her noble forebears seems to reflect Talbot’s hope to inherit (by his wife’s right) the earldom of Warwick. Conlon notes that like Richard Beauchamp, his wife’s father, Talbot represented himself as a ‘second Guy’, and aspects of Talbot’s 52 53

Compare to Guy, ed. by Zupitza, Auchinleck 4221–32. A. J. Pollard, ‘Talbot, John, First Earl of Shrewsbury and First Earl of Waterford (c. 1387–1453)’, ODNB, LIII, 701–04.

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historical narrative echoed events in the life of his wife’s fictional ancestor. Though Talbot did not achieve it (the earldom of Warwick passed to Richard Neville, the Kingmaker, husband of Anne Beauchamp, the younger half-sister of Margaret), Talbot never gave up his claim. Henry Beauchamp, Anne’s brother, died suddenly in 1446, and in Talbot’s will: made at Portsmouth on the 1st September, 1452, he still claims his rights: ‘els to be beried in the Colege of Warewik in the Newe Chapelle there, the whiche Richarde, late Erle of Warewik, my fader in lawe, late let make and ordeyn, in case that eny time hereaftre y may actayne to the name and lordeship of Warewik as right wolle’.54

Several surviving manuscripts show that Talbot was adept at manipulating contemporary book culture, both to please his patrons and to increase his own prestige, perhaps most importantly demonstrated in his commissioning and presentation of the French prose translation of the romance of Guy of Warwick to Margaret of Anjou.55 If Talbot’s advancement in rank through the line of his wife was part of the intention behind Lydgate’s poem, it did not succeed. However, as a work of consolation, Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick is suitably serious, being translated and drawn, as he says, from the Latin prose chronicle of ‘Gerard Cornubyence’ (559), or the Historia Guidonis de Warewyke composed by Gerard of Cornwall (fl. 1350).56 The stoic fortitude shown by Felice in Lydgate’s story may have further provided a good model for Margaret when Talbot and their eldest son, John, Viscount Lisle, were killed together on the battlefield at Castillon in 1453. The figure of Felice may have functioned similarly for Margaret’s half-sister Anne Beauchamp, whose fortunes were even more variable. After the death of Anne’s full brother, Henry, at the age of twenty-one, the title and much of the Beauchamp and Despenser estates (their income valued at about £5000 per year during the 1430s) descended to Anne Beauchamp and to her husband, Richard Neville, ‘the Kingmaker’, as the husband 54 55

Conlon, Le Rommant, pp. 24–25, p. 22 note 24. For descriptions of books associated with Talbot, see Conlon, Le Rommant, pp. 13, 16–26; Frankis, ‘Taste and Patronage’, pp. 80–82, 84; and Ann Payne, ‘The Beauchamps and the Nevilles’, in Gothic, ed. by Marks and Williamson, pp. 220–21, 230–31 item 94. 56 Margaret Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), p. 173, notes that the Harvard manuscript in which the Lydgate poem appears also contains a copy of the prose Brut with copies of headings by John Shirley, who served early in his career as secretary to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. There is a reference in the Brut to the death of Beauchamp and the memorial chapel built to house his body, ‘wher he lyethe worshipfully yn a new chapel of the south syde of the quere’. Connolly has suggested that this may ‘fix the date of the manuscript, since the construction of the Beauchamp memorial chapel at St Mary’s was begun in 1443 and not completed until 1464’. Fewster, Traditionality, pp. 116–17, cites Lydgate’s poem and its prologue as ‘of interest to the events of the late 1440s and ’50s, when there was a dispute over the Warwick inheritance. The prologue may be a pointed reminder, with precise relevance to Margaret Talbot’s own situation, at a particularly troubled time in her fortunes’.

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of ­Beauchamp’s only full sister. Anne (Plate 9) was created Countess of Warwick and her husband Earl of Warwick by royal patent. Their daughter Anne Neville was married twice, first to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI (d. 1471), and secondly to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III (d. 1485), who had been raised for a while in the Beauchamp household. Through a number of political twists and turns, Anne Beauchamp’s husband, Richard Neville, supported first one king, then another, ultimately choosing Henry VI and driving Edward IV briefly into exile. On his return, Edward IV then killed both the ‘Kingmaker’ and his brother at Barnet Field in 1471. The forces of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, were also defeated, and her son, the new husband of Neville’s daughter, Anne, was killed at the battle of Tewkesbury. Subsequently, the restored Edward IV seized all the property of Anne Beauchamp, who was virtually imprisoned at Beaulieu Abbey. Her property was later divided between Anne’s son and son-in-law, ‘by an Act of Parliament of May 1474, “as yf the seid Countes were nowe naturally dede”. It was an outrageous act of unbridled greed which threatened every landowner in the country’.57 Later events record the rise of Richard III and the death of Anne’s daughter, Anne Neville, in mysterious circumstances the same year (1485) as Richard’s overthrow at Bosworth field.58 Anne Beauchamp lived through all of this and engaged in several protracted lawsuits, which culminated ‘in the vortex of publicity that gripped England after 1485 as the ultimate fate of the Warwick inheritance came before a deeply embarrassed royal council’.59 She eventually regained some measure of prosperity upon receiving life interest in twenty-four manors that had formerly belonged to her parents. As a member of her extended household, Rous knew Anne Beauchamp well, and unlike some of his other captions in the English Roll, which are rather pedantic, in his description of Anne he speaks feelingly and with affection.60 And in Rous’s history, perhaps not so oddly, Anne shares many characteristics with Felice. Both figures precede those of their noble husbands in Rous’s Roll, showing their importance in the Warwick lineage.61 ‘Dam Anne Beauchamp’ 57

58

59 60 61

Sinclair, The Beauchamp Pageant, pp. 16, 21. Sinclair points out that though Neville had died a traitor to the king, ‘he was never attainted, so his estates should have passed to his heirs in the normal way; certainly there should have been no question of confiscating the property of the dowager countess’ (p. 20). This episode is also noted by Dugdale, Baronage of England, p. 307. In the Latin Rous Roll, the figure of Anne Neville, the wife of Richard III, was subsequently divested of its royal insignia after Bosworth, probably by Rous himself. See also Courthope, Thys rol was laburd, ‘Description of the Plates’, item 62. Examination of the Roll shows Queen Anne as a picture by itself on a separate strip of vellum pasted over the original image, with palpable edges on both sides, a method Rous uses elsewhere in the Latin Roll to correct and emend the copy. Martin Lowry, ‘John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle’, Viator, 19 (1988), 327–38 (p. 336). Several observers have noted Rous’s affection for Anne: see Lowry, ‘John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle’, p. 337; Payne, Gothic, p. 220. In both Rous Rolls, precedence of place is almost always given the Beauchamp women: Felice precedes and faces Guy; Anne Beauchamp precedes and faces her husband, Richard Neville; their daughter Isabell precedes and faces her husband, George, Duke of Clarence; their daughter Queen Anne Neville precedes and faces her husband Richard III. In the Latin Roll, a frontal portrait of Edward (son of Henry VI), Anne’s first husband, has been inserted between Anne and Richard III.

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is described by Rous as ‘by trew enheritans countas of Warrewik’, wording very similar to his description of the status of Felice, who ‘by trew enheritans was countes of warrewike’. Felice causes her lord to suffer ‘for her sake to put hym self in many grete dystres dangers and periles’, a brief allusion to her persona as a haughty beauty in the Guy romances, while Anne has endured ‘grete tribulacoun for her lordis sake Syr Rychard Neeuel’. This parallel is interesting, given the descriptions that follow; the characters of both women seem to have become refined through endurance of suffering. Like Felice, who is described as devout and loyal, Anne is characterized as ‘a full deuout lady’; while Felice offers alms to the poor, Anne aids women in childbed. Like Felice, Anne provides a good example to others and is patient in her tribulations. Rous adds that Anne was gracious and good to all who met her and ‘was also gladly euer companable and liberal’. Finally, like the beautiful Felice, Anne is ‘in her own persone semly and bewteus’, an exemplary model of the virtuous wife and pious widow.62 Pictorial and literary representation is a social process, as Margaret and Anne Beauchamp, along with John Lydgate and John Rous, surely recognized, in which the cultural self becomes manifested and displayed through visible symbols. While ‘it can hardly be accidental that three important works on the history of Warwick and its earls were produced in the mid-1480s, just as the issue of Anne [Beauchamp] and her inheritance came into the public eye’,63 the Rous Rolls and the Beauchamp Pageants, as well as Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick, further suggest the important activity of women as readers and patrons of manuscripts. When read in their historical context, these texts, like the romances of Guy that become subtly revised in the fifteenth-century versions, provide a window into the interests and concerns of Warwickshire noblewomen who claimed Guy as their noble ancestor. Reading the romances and Lydgate’s poem alongside the heraldic manuscripts informs and enriches each sort of text. The visual and descriptive material in the Rous Rolls and the Beauchamp Pageants was inspired in part by the legends of Guy of Warwick and, in several specific instances, their content seems to come directly from the romance texts. These include representations of the half ring and of Felice as a model of ‘wyfflely womanhed’. The figure of Reinbroun’s wife, a story element omitted in the romances, begins to appear in the fifteenth century, created by historians and antiquaries engaged in constructing and promoting the noble lineage of the Beauchamp and Neville families. The boundaries between genres in this range of texts are permeable: romance merges with history which in turn influences heraldry; the politics of gender are reshaped to reflect the actual concerns of real noblewomen in the larger political arena of the English court. In the Latin Roll, however, Reinbroun precedes his wife as he is the heir, not she. Reinbroun’s wife turns toward Reinbroun, but he faces toward his father, Guy. 62 See also Courthope, Thys rol was laburd, items 20, 56. 63 Lowry, ‘John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle’, p. 337.

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10 Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration SIâN ECHARD Men speken of romances of prys, Of Horn child and of Ypotys, Of Beves and sir Gy, Of sir Lybeux and Pleyndamour – But sir Thopas, he bereth the flour Of roial chivalry!

S

hortly before Harry Bailey’s protest puts an end to his ‘drasty speche’, the Chaucer-pilgrim lists the heroes of romance to whom his Thopas should be (favourably) compared. While the list includes the obscure and possibly the non-existent, it also invokes such well-known figures as King Horn and Bevis of Hampton, and it is often argued that, in the structure and form of Thopas, Chaucer was particularly targeting Guy of Warwick. This attention to Guy and his fellow romance-heroes is hardly intended to be flattering, but what is more important – what serves as the point of departure for this chapter – is the yoking together of Bevis and Guy. In this practice Chaucer of course reflects the manuscript history of these romances, but he also anticipates what would become a critical norm in later assessments of the nature (and value) of these texts. Thomas Warton may be said to originate this trend in literary criticism in his History of English Poetry (1774). He links Bevis and Guy in his asser 

Riverside, Sir Thopas 897–902. The story of Ypotis survives in one manuscript, British Library, Cotton MSS, Caligula A.ii, while Pleyndamour seems to have no tradition and might well be an invented name; J. A. Burrow in Riverside, p. 922, notes to lines 898 and 900.  Burrow, Riverside, p. 917; Joanne A. Charbonneau, ‘Sir Thopas’, in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, ed. by Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, 2 vols (Cambridge: Brewer, 2005), II, pp. 649–74.  I refer here to the manuscript collections in which Bevis, Guy, and other Middle English romances survive. Bevis and Guy both occur in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.1 (the Auchinleck MS) and in Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38, for example, while Bevis occurs with Kyng Richard (and many other romances) in London, British Library, Egerton MS 2862. It is also important to note that Chaucer is not the only medieval writer to make the link between Bevis and Guy: in the introduction to his edition of Bevis, for example, Eugen Kölbing lists several other cases; The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun, ed. by Eugen Kölbing, EETS es 46, 48, 65 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1885, 1886, 1894), p. xxxvii.

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tion that ‘monks often wrote for the minstrels’, and he treats them together in a section on English romances received from the French. Joseph Ritson also joins the two in his ‘Dissertation on Romance and Mintrelsy’, noting that ‘Bevis and Guy were no more “English heroes” than Amadis de Gaule or Perceforest: they are mere creatures of the imagination, and onely obtain an establishment in history because (like mister Wartons) it is usually writen upon the authority of romance’. And many of the first modern anthologizers and critics of romance follow this early lead, both categorizing the romances together and then – and this is the significant point – allowing one to stand as definitive of both. I cite Ritson here not merely as an early example of this persistent trend; for despite his linking of the two romances, Ritson also shows an unusual awareness of the complex (and different) manuscript and print histories of Bevis and Guy, observing that all ‘are extant in MSS. above 300 years old’; and he also recognizes that there are two distinct versions of Guy in the manuscript tradition while Bevis shows few differences between the print and manuscript tradition. Ritson does not fully recognize the complexities of the Bevis print tradition, but he is important in suggesting, early on, that we should focus on difference, as well as on similarity, in dealing with these two romances. 

 





Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, 3 vols (London: Dodsley, 1774–81), I, 87. Warton goes on to argue that before the Crusades, romancers concentrated on the doings of Arthur and Charlemagne, but that afterwards, both new heroes such as Guy and Bevis, and a new style, characterized by ‘a taste for hyperbolical description’ and ‘an infinity of marvellous tales’ became the new fashion; I, 110. Joseph Ritson, Ancient Engleish Metrical Romanceës, 3 vols (London: Bulmer for Nicol, 1802), I, p. xciv. The source and analogue studies popular in the first part of the twentieth century did make a contribution to countering the conflationary tendencies which had been underlined in the nineteenth by the appearance of the works in romance collections – Laura Hibbard Loomis’s discussions in Mediaeval Romance in England (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1924) are, for example, very detailed. But studies emphasizing the more explicitly literary qualities of the works followed the trail laid down by Warton in taking the romances as instances of broader types and tendencies. Dieter Mehl’s descriptive study of the Middle English romances put Guy and Bevis into a chapter called ‘Novels in Verse’, and takes Bevis as the type of which Guy is merely another instance; Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 207–51. More recently, W. R. J. Barron’s very useful study of the romances classifies Guy and Bevis as ‘ancestral romances’, and then takes Guy as the index type; English Medieval Romance (London: Longman, 1987), p. 75. Joseph Ritson, Observations on the three first volumes of the History of English Poetry. In a familiar letter to the author (London: Stockdale, 1782), p. 35. Ritson is also writing at this point of Richard Cuer de Lion, and it will become clear below that there are links, through the illustrations, between these three romances. Albert C. Baugh, ‘The Making of Beves of Hampton’, The Library Chronicle of the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, 40 (1976), 15–37, traces all the surviving manuscript copies and one early print to a ‘fairly faithful’ adaptation of the Anglo-Norman original (p. 34). See Jennifer Fellows, ‘Bevis redivivus: The Printed Editions of Sir Bevis of Hampton’, in Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills, ed. by Jennifer Fellows, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 251–68 (pp. 252–54), on the textual relationships between the versions produced by the early printers. Fellows goes on to note, however, that the later sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury print history is very stable, right up to the last metrical edition, which was printed in 1711 (p. 254).

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The usefulness of such an exercise for a contribution to a volume on Guy of Warwick is that it is possible to demonstrate, through the material history of the two romances, how each was from an early period targeted at slightly different, albeit complementary, readerly desires. This chapter will examine the woodcuts used to illustrate printings of the two romances from the beginnings of print up to the seventeenth century, but it must be acknowledged at the outset that the vagaries of transmission will inevitably have an effect on what can be said about these two romances. While both were printed by England’s earliest printers, only Bevis survives in an early-sixteenth-century copy.10 Furthermore, all of the printings to be examined here are marked by the common practices of using generic cuts, of taking cuts from one work to illustrate another, and of copying cuts from the work of other printers, both English and continental.11 It may seem dangerous, then, to imagine that there is any deliberate attempt to address an audience in any of these printings. I will argue, however, that enough evidence survives to suggest that, whether by accident or by design, Bevis acquired its particular visual identity as early as Richard Pynson’s printing of 150312 and retained it for a remarkably long time. Guy, on the other hand, acquired its ‘standard’ set of images much later in its print history, even when one allows for the uneven survival of the early prints. If we look at the visual stories being told about these two knights, then Guy becomes a monster-killer, his medieval poetic role as a Christian champion being demoted to a matter of lesser interest, with his shift to eremitical status functioning as a memento mori coda. Bevis is and remains the supremely precocious boy-hero who specializes in killing Saracens, an identity in keeping with his medieval roots and underlined by illustration from his earliest appearances in print. By the end of the early modern period, Guy and Bevis each had an iconography, and these iconographies tell subtly different stories, despite the tendencies of commentators, from Chaucer onwards, to put these medieval heroes into a single line of speech, whether ‘drasty’ or learned. Plate 10 encapsulates the early print situation of these two romances very neatly. This image is drawn from William Copland’s 1565 printing of Guy,13 10

There are fragments of Guy by Richard Pynson (STC 12540, c. 1500) and by Wynkyn de Worde (STC 12541, c. 1497). For Bevis, there are three surviving fragments by de Worde (STC 1987 and 1987.5, dated to c. 1500, and STC 1988.6, dated to 1533); as well as fragments by Julian Notary (STC 1988.2, 1510; STC 1988.4, 1515), and the complete Pynson edition of 1503 to be discussed below. The earliest complete printed copy of Guy is William Copland’s 1565 printing (STC 12542). The date is supplied by STC, however Velma Bourgeois Richmond gives the broader range of 1562–1569; see Legend, p. 171. 11 Edward Hodnett, English Woodcuts 1480–1535 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), often refers to the French and Low Countries sources for many of the cuts catalogued; for a recent assessment of the practices of English printers with respect to illustration, see Martha Driver, The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: The British Library, 2004). 12 [Beuve de Hanstone], London: Richard Pynson, 1503; STC 1988. Copy survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library. 13 [Guy of Warwick], Lothbury: William Copland, 1565; STC 12542. Copy survives in Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Library.

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the first complete printed text. Copland seems to have had a particular interest in romances, and as will be discussed further below, printed Bevis as well as Guy.14 This plate is the last cut in Copland’s Guy, and illustrates Guy’s climactic fight with Colbrond. The illustration gives an emphasis to the fight which is entirely appropriate: Velma Bourgeois Richmond argues that ‘In the Renaissance Guy’s legend became more exclusively an expression of English nationalism’, and certainly Guy’s role as the English champion against the Danish giant looms large in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.15 Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612/13; 1622) concentrates on this contest when dealing with Guy. The twelfth song passes rapidly over the whole early part of his history, noting simply that he ‘Arriv’d from forraine parts, where he had held him long. / His honorable Armes devoutly having hong / In a Religious house, the offrings of his praise’,16 before lavishing considerable poetic hyperbole on the fight itself. Copland’s illustration, then, comes at a moment clearly identified by at least some readers as central to Guy’s story. But this is not a cut purpose-made for this printing. It occurs as early as Wynkyn de Worde’s 1502 printing of Raoul Lefèvre’s The recuyles … of ye hystoryes of Troye …, where it twice illustrates the exploits of Hercules: first in battling the centaurs, and then in fighting the giants of Cremona.17 If the cut was made for the Lefèvre, then it seems likely that the face we can see in the window is the imprisoned Hippodamia, from the first episode. Most important for our purposes is that this cut also appears twice in Thomas East’s 1585 printing of Bevis,18 illustrating Bevis’s fight with the brother of the giant Grander, and then the more significant fight with Ascopart. Bevis and Guy are thus not only represented visually as giant fighters, they actually fight the same giant, who is not always a giant at all. … Of course there is nothing unusual about printers reusing cuts, nor about them seizing whatever is to hand, even when it is less suited to the text than this cut is (it actually works quite well for both giant-fights). But the point here is that the Colbrond cut in the Copland Guy is the most specific of the few illustrations that printing contains. When we take account of the rest of the illustrations in this edition, it becomes clear 14

15 16

17

18

In ‘William Copland and the Identity of Printed Middle English Romance’, A. S. G. Edwards notes that Copland printed twenty-two separate surviving editions of thirteen romances, an unusual number: see The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. by Philippa Hardman (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 139–43 (p. 139). I am grateful to Tony Edwards for his advice early on in this project. Legend, p. 175. Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, in Works, ed. by J. William Hebel (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1933), IV: Song XII, lines 149–51. The rest of Guy’s exploits are dealt with summarily in Song XIII, with some twenty lines touching on his love for Phyllis, his fight with Othon and with Amoraunt, and his exploits against the dragon of Northumberland, the boar, and the Dun Cow; I will return to this list below. The image forms part of what Edward Hodnett calls the Hystoryes of Troye series, the illustrations done for Wynkyn de Worde’s 1502/03 printings; the cut is no. 1234 in his catalogue, and appears in reproduction in the supplemental illustrations as figure 9, an illustration to a 1510? de Worde print of Melusyne. Syr Bevis of Hampton, STC 1990; London: Thomas East, 1585.

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that whatever identity Guy may be developing in popular and national culture, there is as yet no clear visual correlative, at least not in print.19 Copland’s printing is sparsely illustrated: there are seven cuts distributed unevenly through the 274 pages of the text.20 These show Phelys asleep before her dream (C.iii.r), Guy and his knights at tournament (D.iiii.v), a couple in a garden, appearing when Guy reports his first successes (E.iiii.v) and then again when Phelys is finally won (Cc.iii.v), a ship (Cc.i.r) for Guy’s triumphant return to England, a couple kneeling to a crowned figure (Cc.iiii.v) at the point where the Earl grants Guy Phelys’s hand, and, as noted above, the cut to illustrate the fight with Colbrond (Ii.i.v). None of these is unique, and some are so ubiquitous as to be drained of any special significance. The cut used to illustrate the tournament, for example, is an encounter between two knights at a fountain. This is in fact another case where Guy and Bevis share an illustration, and in this case, the cut appears before this use, as well as after it. The 153321 fragment of de Worde’s printing of Bevis uses this cut to open the section of the text in which Josian gives birth in the forest; this section ends in a tournament. And the cut can in fact be traced back at least as early as 1507, and is used throughout the century, in a variety of contexts.22 The cut of the lovers in the garden appears on at least three of de Worde’s title pages, illustrating The iiii. leues of the trueloue, the obscure poem Vndo your Dore, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.23 Vndo your Dore opens with reference to a squire of low degree who loved a king’s daughter, so the story clearly has 19

20

21 22

23

Richmond, Legend, pp. 95–103, has argued that the image of a knight killing a brown cow in the fourteenth-century Smithfield Decretals (London, British Library, Royal MS 10. E. IV) is meant to represent Guy and the Dun Cow; the Dun Cow episode is not, of course, in the medieval poem as it survives to us. Both Bevis and Guy appear in the illustrations to the Smithfield Decretals and also to the Taymouth Hours of c. 1330 (British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13). For recent discussions of these images, see Jessica Brantley, ‘Images of the Vernacular in the Taymouth Hours’, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, 10 (2002), 83–113; and Linda Brownrigg, ‘The Taymouth Hours and the Romance of Beves of Hampton’, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, 1 (1989), 222–41; and the chapter by Griffith above in this volume, pp. 112–16. Richmond, Legend, p. 174, states that there are only four cuts, but this must simply be an error: even when one allows for the doubling of one cut, there are six unique figures and seven images in all. The date is suggested by STC, but Hodnett, English Woodcuts, p. 24, dates the fragment simply to after 1528. It appears in Wynkyn de Worde’s printing of Charles Suffolk’s Justes of the moneth of Maye (STC 3543) and in his Kynge Rycharde (1509; STC 21007); and twice in his Noble History of King Ponthus (1511; STC 20108). Copland himself makes free use of the cut: it appears in The right plesaunt and goodly historie of the foure sonnes of Aimon (1554; STC 1010); The hystory of the two valyaunte brethren Valentyne and Orson (1555; 24571.7); Arthur of Brytayn (1560; STC 807); and it is also found in Thomas East’s Arthur of little Britaine (1582; STC 808), where it appears four times. Wynkyn de Worde’s Troilus and Criseyde (1517; STC 5095) prints the image again at the end of the work. In Vndo your Dore (1520; STC 23111.5) there is one other illustration, another rendering of lovers in a garden. The iiii. leues of the trueloue (1510; STC 15345) has no other illustrations. As is the case with the knights at the fountain image discussed above, this cut also recurs elsewhere in Copland’s work, appearing in his 1555 printing of Stephen Hawes’s The history of graund Amoure [The pastime of pleasure], STC 12952, and in Arthur of Brytayn (1560; STC 807). Richmond, Legend, reproduces the similar cut used by Francoys Regnault on the title page for Guy de Warwich (1525).

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some resonance with that of Guy; still, it is clear that this is another case of a printer using what is to hand. Despite the stock nature of the images used in the Copland Guy, one can begin to discern some important trends which do point to a developing iconography – but these look forward rather than backward, to the ballad-sheets and the chapbook printings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than to the medieval romance. The cut which introduces Phelys’s prophetic dream highlights a section of the text which appears for the first time in this Copland printing: As Phelys laye and slept a nyght Her thought she sawe an Angell bryght In the fourme of a chylde, That to her sayde with wordes mylde Phelys dreade thee ryght nought That I thee tell holde in thy thought Bethynke thee for thou doest yll And art brought in a wicked wyll That thou wylt not that loue fonge That true is and lasteth long Neuerthelesse though it poore bee All thy desyre yet might thou see Despyse not Guy he sayde than That is thyne owne true loue and man.24

The cut in Copland in fact shows a man in bed: it appears first in Wynkyn de Worde’s 1515 printing of Ranulf Higden’s Cronycle of Englonde (STC 10000.5).25 The Copland image is unreadable at least in part because it has been rotated ninety degrees clockwise, but even were it printed in its original orientation, it could not, after serving to draw a reader’s eye to this moment in the text, offer much more to interpret that moment. The adaptations which follow after this printing expand the dream section and, tellingly, continue to illustrate it, using a cut much more closely suited to the text. Plate 11 shows the Copland cut next to the illustration which appears in E. Allde’s 1609 printing of Samuel Rowlands’s adaptation, The Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwicke.26 The text describes the moment:

24 25

Copland’s printing, C.iii.r. It also appears in the later printing of the same text (STC 10002; 1528 according to STC, but 1520 according to Hodnett, English Woodcuts), and in de Worde’s 1518 printing of Ye hystorye of Olyver of Castylle, and of the fayre Helayne (STC 18808). The image is no. 901 in Hodnett’s catalogue. 26 Richmond, Legend, p. 220, writes that the earliest known edition of this printing is Elizabeth Allde’s of 1632 (she does note the entry in the Stationer’s Register for 1608), but STC records copies in 1609 (21378), 1620 (21378.3), and 1625 (21378.7). The 1609 printing survives in a copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library. The image used here is taken from a 1625 printing (STC 21378.7) in the collection of the Harvard College Library: it is identical to that in the 1609 printing.

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Siân Echard By Morpheus possest of quiet sleepe, In dead of night when visions doe appeer, The heart tormenter, he that pierceth deepe, And maketh louers buy their bargaines deere, Sends from his bowe a shaft with golden head, And woundeth Phelis in her maiden bed. Before her he presents a martiall wight, Clad all in armor, for encounters fit, And saies, sweet Virgin loue this man of might, Giue him thy heart for he doth merit it.27

Here we see a woman in bed, along with Cupid and his bow, and the armoured figure of Guy. The image is also interpreted for a reader by the couplets which serve as captions – a practice of later printing which underlines this later development in Guy’s iconographic programme. The popularity and influence of Rowlands’s adaptation ensured that this dream and its accompanying image would develop as central to Guy’s story. The Colbrond cut, too, marks a point in the poem which will become ever more important, both visually and in terms of narrative emphasis, in the later adaptations of Guy. There are, for example, two separate cuts for the two giant fights in the 1609 printing of Rowlands. Like the 1609 dream cut, these illustrations feature textually specific details, with a ‘wild man’ version of Amoraunt, and an armoured version of the Danish champion – though it should be noted that in subsequent reprintings these two cuts are sometimes switched. Yet even when this confusion occurs there remain two cuts, rather than the single cut for the climactic fight with Colbrond in the Copland print: I will argue below that this doubling is part of the developing understanding of Guy as a monster-killer. Certainly the Guy we meet in medieval romance has such a function, but a greater emphasis on that role develops through the early modern period. It is here that I wish to turn to Bevis, for his identity, unlike Guy’s, is consonant with his Middle English roots, and remarkably consistent to the end of the Early Modern period. As has been noted above Bevis, unlike Guy, survives in a very early print, Richard Pynson’s 1503 copy. This is a more heavily illustrated work than Copland’s later Guy (and Copland’s 1565 Bevis, as we will see, also contains more cuts than the Guy). There are twelve cuts evenly distributed throughout the narrative. Some are certainly generic. The same cut is used to illustrate the weddings of Josian to King Jour, and of Bevis’s son to King Edgar’s daughter. Pynson used the cut as early as 1500 (The traduction and mariage of the princesse, STC 4814),28 and then later in Lydgate’s The hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye (1513; STC 5579), and it continues to be in use, in Bevis and elsewhere, at the end of the century.29 There are four wedding cuts which 27 28 29

Samuel Rowlands, The Famous Historie, of Guy, Earle of Warwick (London, 1609), C.2. Hodnett, English Woodcuts, 1623; note that Hodnett gives the date as 1501. Thomas East uses it in Arthur of little Britaine (1582; STC 808) and in his Bevis (1585; STC 1990), where it is again used twice.

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may appear in printings of Bevis up to the end of the sixteenth century, and each appears as well in copies of such works as the Gesta Romanorum, Syr Degore, Oliver of Castile, The history of […] Valentyne and Orson, and The Knight of the Swanne. The fact that the same cut used in East’s 1585 Bevis also appears as the titlepage for de Worde’s printings of both the Fyftene Joyes of Maryage (1509; STC 15258) and The Payne and sorowe of euyll maryage (1530; STC 19119), makes the generic nature of the cut extremely clear. Martha Driver points out that several of the marriage cuts ubiquitous in the works of the early English printers ultimately derive from books printed by the Parisian printer Antoine Vérard.30 Other cuts in the Pynson Bevis are also generic: while Pynson does not use the image of knights jousting at a fountain, discussed above with reference to both Copland’s Guy and the fragment of de Worde’s Bevis, he does use another generic jousting image at this point in the text – an image which appears in romances throughout the century.31 It is important for the argument which I will develop below to note, however, that this generic image also becomes ‘fixed’ as part of the pattern of Bevis illustration, continuing to appear into the seventeenth century. This fixing of patterns of illustration by the first print of Bevis is well demonstrated by the second woodcut in Pynson’s version, a cut of shepherds, used to illustrate the moment in the text when Bevis takes refuge from his father’s killer with the sheep. This is a brief interlude in the poem, and it seems curious at first blush that it should be chosen for illustration, if the purpose of illustration is to emphasize important moments in the text. If illustration is simply decorative, however, then one might observe that shepherds are a common enough subject, and that this could well be a case where a printer simply made use of a generic cut. The next opening in this printing is an illustration to accompany the moment in the text when Bevis abandons hiding in order to challenge his father’s murderer as he sits at banquet – a somewhat more specific moment, but still one that passes quickly enough in the poem. But while neither of these images is so closely matched to the text as to definitely represent cuts made for it,32 and while they do have the pragmatic effect of attracting a reader’s (and perhaps a buyer’s) eye early in the 30

Driver, The Image in Print, pp. 90–92. The cut discussed here is not pictured in Driver’s book, but two of her other examples both in fact appear in later printings of Bevis, into the seventeenth century. I would like to thank Martha Driver for her patience in answering my many questions about the often bewildering practices of early English printers. 31 These include Wynkyn de Worde’s Syr Degore (1513; STC 6470); de Worde’s Noble History of King Ponthus (1511; STC 20108), where it appears twice; William Copland’s The hystory of the two valyaunte brethren Valentyne and Orson (1555; STC 24571.7); Copland’s Arthur of Brytayn (1560; STC 807), where it appears twice; and in Thomas East’s Arthur of little Britaine (1582; STC 808). The image also appears in both of Copland’s printings of Bevis, and in Thomas East’s and T. Snodham’s, as discussed below. Hodnett reproduces it from Pynson’s Lyfe of saynt George and it appears in his catalogue as no. 1488. 32 Pynson used the shepherd cut at least once again, in his 1521 printing of Alexander Barclay’s The boke of Codrus and Mynalcas (STC 1384b), a translation of Baptista Mantuanus. I have not found this illustration earlier than 1503. Hodnett’s nos. 1933–44 make up what he calls the ‘series’ of Pynson’s Bevis illustrations.

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printing, they nevertheless also underscore the moment in the poem where, despite his youth, Bevis refuses to hide and attempts to avenge his father. The precocious ferocity of the medieval boy-hero then becomes permanent in the print tradition: this pair of cuts recurs in printings of Bevis up to 1626, and thereafter, although the illustrations are redrawn, the subject and composition remain the same as late as the prose adaptation of 1689.33 In both the original verse and the later prose, then, images which can be traced back to Pynson’s Bevis remain. Guy, too, has acquired a stable set of images by the end of the seventeenth century, but these develop out of later textual and visual adaptations of the medieval poem, rather than tracing their roots, as Bevis does, in a direct line back to the Middle English poem and its first printings. I noted above that Plate 10 had been used to illustrate both Guy’s fight with Colbrond, and Bevis’s with his most famous giant, Ascopart. The latter use appeared in Thomas East’s 1585 printing of Bevis. East’s printing has sixteen cuts in addition to its title page, nine of which are identical to those in Pynson: one of these is Plate 12, showing Ascopart carrying Josian, Bevis, and Arondel the horse aboard ship, from the 1503 print. Jennifer Fellows has suggested that Pynson must have had this cut made specifically for Bevis, and conjectures that two others, one illustrating the boar fight and the other also showing Ascopart, may also have been made to order.34 This seems to me a most likely suggestion, and I would like to look further at these and one other cut from the Pynson, not merely for their close relation to the text, but also for their emphasis on Bevis as the opponent of the eastern ‘other’. Plate 12 clearly emphasizes Ascopart’s size; he is also clearly wearing a turban, as he is in the cut on the previous opening in Pynson, showing his combat with Bevis. Plate 13 shows two more cuts from Pynson, the Christmas day combat and the boar hunt, and turbaned opponents are clear in both of these. A cut which is added to Pynson’s program (as it survives)35 in Thomas East’s 1585 printing underlines this visual emphasis on Bevis’s exile among pagans. East uses an illustration which appeared in Pynson’s 1513 printing of Lydgate’s The hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye (STC 5579) (in the story of Jason and Medea) to introduce the section headed ‘How Beauis was soulde vnto the Paynims and caryed ouer the Sea into Armeny’:36 the cut shows a turbaned figure emerging from a boat, delivering a small figure to a luxuriously dressed man. The cut fits well with the others, and the ensemble insists on Bevis’s eastern adventures. All of these cuts recur in printings of Bevis into the seventeenth century, and as was the case with the sheep cut discussed above, they 33

These dates are necessarily somewhat tentative; 1626 is the date conjectured by STC for Syr Beuis of Hampton, printed by G. Wood for W. Lee (STC 1993). The new cuts, based on the old programme, appear in William Stansby’s 1630(?) printing (STC 1994), and can still be found in the prose adaptation The famous and renowned history of Sir Bevis of Southampton … printed by William Thackeray in London in 1689 (Wing F359). 34 Fellows, p. 252. 35 The surviving copy of Pynson’s Bevis does not contain all of the cuts Hodnett lists as making up what he called the Bevis series. 36 Syr Bevis of Hampton, STC 1990, B.i.v.

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remain the inspiration for the programme of illustration even once the blocks are redrawn, and once the poem gives way to the prose adaptation at the end of that century. Particularly striking is the 1689 prose adaptation The Famous and Renowned History of Sir Bevis of Southampton, in which the redrawn version of the Pynson illustration for the Christmas combat appears three times. This adaptation adds extra episodes in Babylon, creating for example a romance for Bevis’s son Miles with the Sultan’s daughter.37 In this case, then, the existing emphasis of the programme of illustration is picked up and expanded in the prose text. Thus by the end of the seventeenth century, the story of Bevis as told in its pictures is largely about fighting pagans.38 What, in the meanwhile, is happening to Guy? As I have already remarked, it is not possible to trace the visual program for Guy back to the beginning of the century, as we can with Bevis, but I hope I have shown the extent to which the Bevis tradition is a continuous one, which extends well into the period for which we do have evidence for Guy. I argued in the discussion of Copland’s printing that the generic character of many of the cuts might suggest that Guy, unlike Bevis, was still a text in search of a visual identity, as the sixteenth century approached its close. That identity takes shape early in the seventeenth century, accompanying Samuel Rowlands’s Famous Historie. I have already noted the illustration of Phyllis’s prophetic dream – itself an interpolation in Copland’s print, and further elaborated in Rowlands’s adaptation. The 1609 copy has six cuts in all, three of which address the love story: in addition to the dream woodcut, there is a picture of Guy with the French princess Blanch, and, as the final illustration, Guy in his hermit’s cave with Phyllis. The latter image accompanies many broadside printings of the ballad based on Guy’s story, ‘A pleasant song of the valiant deeds of chivalry, atchieved by noble knight, Sir Guy of Warwick’, and is still in use at the end of the seventeenth century. There is normally a second image on the broadside, the mounted knight with a boar’s head on the end of his sword, an image found as well on the title page of the 1609 Rowlands printing. The boar’s head alludes to one of Guy’s monster-killing activities, and it is these activities, I would argue, which gain increasing prominence, and then permanence, as the seventeenth century progresses. I have already discussed above the giant cuts which appear from Rowlands on to illustrate the adaptations of Guy’s story. Plate 14 shows another cut 37

The famous and renowned history of Sir Bevis of Southampton giving an account of his birth, education, heroick exploits, and enterprises, his fights with giants, monsters, wild-beasts, and armies, his conquering kings and kingdoms, his love and marriage, fortunes and misfortunes, and many other famous and memorable things and actions, worthy of wonder: with the adventures of other knights, kings and princes, exceeding pleasant and delightful to read (London, 1689; Wing F359). Fellows, ‘Bevis redivivs’, notes that this adaptation has been ascribed to John Shurley; p. 262. 38 Several commentators have noted elements of confluence between the story of Bevis and the legend of St George; Fellows, ‘Bevis redivivs’, suggests that this association helped ensure Bevis’s survival (p. 261). The association is itself, of course, another element in linking Bevis firmly to the East.

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from the 1609 Rowlands,39 accompanying the story of Guy’s first dragonkilling. By 1680, prose chapbook version of Guy’s story typically included this cut, sometimes even doubling it to represent both the dragon that fought the lion, and the dragon of Northumberland.40 By the end of the century the chapbooks are both plentiful and haphazard, resisting most efforts one might make to demonstrate clear lines of influence, or deliberate attempts to guide reading.41 Nevertheless, the persistence of the dragon cut points towards a theme which can be discerned despite the multiplying visual confusion. The dragon cut and the giant cuts discussed above are often joined by one or two other graphic illustrations of Guy’s role as monster-killer – that is, by illustrations of his combat with the boar, and with the infamous Dun Cow. The cow is not mentioned in the surviving Middle English versions of Guy’s story, although the association may be a medieval one.42 Its story is first told in print in Richard Lloyd’s idiosyncratic representation of Guy as one of the Nine Worthies, in his Briefe discourse of the most renowned actes and right valiant conquests of those puissant Princes, called the Nine worthies (1584). Lloyd’s Guy is, like Bevis, a killer of ‘painims’; he is the lover of Phyllis and the English champion; but he is also and supremely a monster-killer: I slew the Giant Amerant, in battell hand to hand: And doughtie Barnard killed eke, and Duke of Painie land. And sithens came into England, and there with Colbrand fought: An vglie Giant whom the Danes, had for their champion sought, And ouercame him in the field, and slue him valiantlie: And thereby did release the land from tribute vtterlie. And afterwards did offer vp the weapon solemnlie In Winchester, wherewith I fought in sight of manis an eie. In Windsor forest I did kill a Bore of passing strength, Whose like in England neuer was for highnes, breadth, and length. Some of his bones in Warwicke yet, within the castle lie: One of his shields vnto this daie doth hang in Couentrie. I slew also in Dunsmore heath a monsterous wild beast, Cald the Dun cow of Dunsmore, which manie men opprest: 39 40

The plate is again taken from the 1625 copy, and is identical to the image found in the 1609 copy. For example, see The Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwick. Written by Samuel Rowland [sic] (London, 1680), Wing R2086. 41 Richmond, Legend, pp. 237–312, traces the development of the adaptations in her chapter ‘Penny Histories and Antiquarians’. The main texts are Humphrey Crouch’s The Heroick History of Guy Earl of Warwick (the surviving copy, Wing C7282, dates to 1673, but Richmond, p. 242, describes a fragment which would push the date back to 1655); Samuel Smithson’s The Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwick (c. 1680), a prose version of Rowlands’s adaptation; abridgement of Smithson; John Shurley’s Renowned History, or the Life and Death of Guy Earl of Warwick (1681), and its abridgement. 42 See note 18 above, regarding Richmond’s argument concerning the image of a knight killing a cow in the Smithfield Decretals. She goes on to point out that the fifteenth-century Rous Roll (London, British Library, Additional MS 48976) includes a drawing of George, Duke of Clarence, with the cow at his feet, perhaps as a reference to the story of the Dun Cow (pp. 127–34). David Griffith notes above in this volume, p. 116, that the cow appears in pictorial illustration from the mid-­fourteenth century, perhaps having circulated in oral form.

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Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration Hir bones also in Warwicke lie yet, for a monument, Which vnto euerie looker on a woonder may present. And in Northumberland I did a Dragon fell destroie, Which did both men and beasts oppresse and countrey sore annoie.43

Michael Drayton also links the giant-fights to the monsters in Song XIII of Poly-Olbion: Thou in the Soldans blood thy worthy sword imbrud’st; And then in single fight, great Amerant subdu’dst. T’was thy Herculian hand, which happily destroy’d That Dragon, which so long Northumberland annoy’d; And slew that cruell Bore, which waste our wood-lands layd, Whose tusks turn’d up our Tilths, and Dens in Medowes made: Whose shoulder-blade remaines at Coventry till now; And, at our humble sute, did quell that monstrous Cow The passengers that us’d from Dunsmore to affright. Of all our English (yet) ô most renowned Knight, That Colebrond overcam’st: …44

For Drayton Colbrand comes last in the list, and as noted above, the poet devotes significant space in Song XII to an account of that battle. Nevertheless, the other exploits do appear here, underlined by the summary format. Lloyd’s version makes the emphasis even more stark, for Colbrand is not the climax; instead, the list of feats moves on to boar, cow, and dragon, before Guy’s story closes with a brief account of his death. Drayton and Lloyd offer textual versions of what will become the most popular illustrative sequence; however abridged or garbled the story becomes in the bewildering variety of seventeenth-century printings, the cuts of the giants, dragons, and, from 1680 onwards, the boar and the Dun Cow, consolidate Guy’s main role as monsterkiller. Plate 15 shows the boar and the cow as they appear in The history of the famous exploits of Guy Earl of Warwick, an abridged version of John Shurley’s prose adaptation of Guy’s story.45 The title page announces Guy’s exploits in ‘encountring and overcoming of monstrous gyants and champions, and his killing the dun cow of Dunsmore-heath, with many other gallant atchievements’, a subtitle in keeping with the emphasis of the design programme. Richmond points out that the textual condensation typical of the adaptations and abridgements has the effect of heightening the impact of the woodcuts,46

43

Richard Lloyd, Briefe discourse of the most renowned actes and right valiant conquests of those puissant Princes, called the Nine worthies (London: R. Warde, 1584; STC 16634), G.v. 44 Drayton, Poly-Olbion, Song XIII, lines 337–47. 45 The history of the famous exploits of Guy Earl of Warwick. His encountring and overcoming of monstrous gyants and champions, and his killing the dun cow of Dunsmore-heath, with many other gallant atchievements performed by him in his life, and the manner of his death (London, 1680; Wing H2160B). 46 Legend, p. 275.

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and this is true for Bevis as well, once that poem moves into prose adaptation. In the case of Bevis, however, the illustrations are for the most part, as has been discussed above, direct descendants of the very first cuts used to illustrate the poem, and when there are additions, as in the case of the cut of Bevis being delivered to the King of Armenia, they match the emphasis on Bevis’s encounters with turbaned strangers. There are aspects of the Bevis tradition which narrow somewhat the gap I have been trying to open between the visual histories of Guy and Bevis. The cut of Guy and Phyllis in the cave is remarkably persistent, so that at the end, the hero’s adventures are brought visually back to the story of love and religious renunciation which motivates the medieval tellings – and indeed, early modern elaborations of the farewell scene between Guy and Phyllis, including for example Guy’s will, suggest that this aspect of the story continues to hold the interest of the same audience which is presumably attracted as well by the monster cuts. For his part, Bevis also has his monsters, a fact the woodcuts make clear: while I have suggested above that the most important thing about Ascopart, visually, is his turban, I have also noted that through the cuts of Ascopart, both Guy and Bevis are shown to be giant-fighters. Finally, while it is true that many of the illustrations in seventeenth-century printings of Bevis can be linked directly to Pynson, there is a significant late development in the tradition. This is a woodcut in Thomas East’s 1585 printing, accompanying Bevis’s fight with the dragon of Cologne, showing a dragon with a human face, a peculiar armoured body, and a second face on its tail. This cut appears as well in 1610 and 1626, is redrawn for 1630 and thence used again in 1639, and is redrawn once more, to appear in printings of the prose version from 1691 and 1700.47 The peculiarities of the dragon all suggest a purposemade cut, and indeed it was purpose-made, but not for Bevis. Instead, it seems likely to have been made for Wynkyn de Worde’s printing of Stephen Hawes’s The Pastime of pleasure.48 Hawes’s dragon is a fantastic mixture of metals,

47

Thomas East, Bevis of Hampton (London, 1585; STC 1990), F.ii.r; [The historie of Beuis of Hampton], ([London: T. Snodham?, 1610; STC 1992); Syr Beuis of Hampton (London: G. Wood for W. Lee, 1626; STC 1993); Syr Beuis of Hampton (London: William Stansby, 1630; STC 1994); Sir Beuis of Hampton (London: Richard Bishop, 1639; STC 1996); The gallant history of the life and death of that most noble knight, Sir Bevis of Southampton Wherein is contained much variety of pleasant and delightful reading (printed by A. M. for J. Deacon at the Angel in Guiltspur-street without Newgate, 1691; Wing G170); and The gallant history of the life and death of that most noble knight Sir Bevis of Southampton Wherein is contained much variety of pleasant and delightful reading (printed by A. M. for B. Deacon, at the Angel in Guilt-spur-street without Newgate, 1700; Wing G171). 48 And it is part of Copland’s repertoire: see The history of graund Amoure and la bel Pucel, called the Pastime of pleasure conteynyng the knowledge of the seuen sciences, [and] the course of mans lyfe in this worlde. Inuented by Stephen Hawes, grome of kyng Henry the seuenth, his chamber ([Imprinted at London: In forster lane, by [W. Copland for] Ihon Waley], 1555; STC 12952); and The history of graund amoure and la bel pucell, called the pastime of pleasure conteynyng the knowledge of the seuen sciences, and the course of mans lyfe in this worlde. Inuented by Stephen Hawes, grome of kyng Henry the seuenth, his chamber ([Imprinted at London : In Fletestreate, at the signe of the hande and starre, by [W. Copland for] Rychard Tottell], 1555; STC 12951).

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feathers, and bristles, with a face ‘lyke a mayden’ and another head on its tail. Edward Hodnett suggests that the de Worde image of Graunde Amoure fighting the seven-metalled dragon is ‘conceivably […] a synthetic design with adaptations of detail to fit the dragon’s unusual anatomy’,49 and A. S. G. Edwards remarks on de Worde’s unusually close relationship to Hawes, noting that ‘He seems to have executed woodcuts specifically for his editions of The Example of Virtue and The Pastime of Pleasure.’50 This is a special illustration, then, but it was not originally intended to be Bevis’s dragon of Cologne. A dragon was felt to be necessary, and one was provided. Does this addition begin to bring Bevis closer, in visual terms, to Guy? The inclusion and then the persistence of this dragon cut suggests a development in printings of Bevis towards the same trend I have described in the printings of Guy – both medieval knights seem gradually to be transforming into superheroes whose adventures are frankly fantastical. But because later printings of Bevis maintain the framework and influence of the decorative program established in Pynson, the dragon never acquires the same visually definitive force as do Guy’s multiple monsters. I would argue that this is the case even despite the growing tendency to associate Bevis with St George; that is, with a figure for whom the dragon-fight is clearly definitive. The link to St George seems rather to arise from, and contribute to, the exotic flavour of the story. If Pynson did indeed have several of the cuts in his edition specially made, then it seems reasonable to argue that this flavour is part of a deliberate appeal to anticipated audience taste. And while I have been suggesting that Pynson’s Bevis and the prints that follow from it link more directly to the medieval version of the narrative than do the later printings of Guy, this emphasis on the East nevertheless mutes another undeniable element of the Middle English narrative; the strong local, English associations with Bevis.51 In other words, Pynson’s printing, even if more closely tied to its source than is the Copland Guy, is not a completely transparent rendering of the medieval Bevis. The heroic Arondel, for instance, appears in Pynson’s cut ignominiously tucked under Ascopart’s arm, and indeed the first illustration I have encountered to draw pictorial attention to the horse on his own comes from a 1750 chapbook that is otherwise almost completely unrelated to the traditional cycle of illustration.52 This chapbook also features the boar fight on the title page, and a subtitle refers to Bevis’s ‘Acts of Chivalry in various Battles, and in slaying Giants, Monsters, Wild Beasts, & c.’ The similarity with the subtitle of the 1680 printing of Guy in which the Dun Cow first appears is clear. Whatever combination of canny salesmanship and slapdash printing practices might have combined to produce the two different print histories I 49 50 51

Hodnett, English Woodcuts, p. 24. He is describing the 1517 series of illustrations. A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Hawes, Stephen (b. c. 1474, d. before 1529)’, ODNB, XXV, 880–81. Jessica Brantley lists some of the places associated with Bevis in ‘Images of the Vernacular’, p. 90. Arundel of course is said to take its name from Bevis’s horse. 52 The history of the life and death of that most noble knight Sir Bevis, of Southampton ([London]: Printed and sold in Aldermary Church-Yard, London, [1750?]).

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have outlined above, then, it seems we are ending where we began. By the eighteenth century, as they were in Chaucer, Guy and Bevis are together again, and in (physical) forms which might well seem to justify parodic condemnation. It simply took Bevis a little longer to reach that state.

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11 Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages ANDREW KING

T

he 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, comprising Books I to III, offers an engagingly complex response to native medieval romance and its related mythopoeic historical traditions. Not surprisingly, given its popularity and numerous literary and iconographical manifestations by the late sixteenth century, Guy of Warwick is a key text in that response. Spenser’s engagement with Guy throughout Book II of The Faerie Queene seems to be part of a conscious programme in the 1590 text: signalling at various stages his roots in medieval English romance, he seeks to provoke his readers into recognition and consideration of the nature of his adaptations. The reader is encouraged to hold in mind a weighty native tradition in which providential worlds, pretensions to historicity, and topographical familiarity typically coincide. Like The Faerie Queene itself, this tradition could function rhetorically for both medieval and Early Modern readers as a ‘fayre mirrhour’ – a world both the same as and different from the viewer/reader’s surrounding context. Remembering that tradition in the act of reading The Faerie Queene positions the reader close to the narrator, who unfolds the story with a comparable sense of literary and historical depth – ‘matter of iust memory’ (II.Proem.1). Eumnestes’s chamber, or the room of ‘Good Memory’, visited in the Castle of Alma in Book II can be read as the library or bookish heritage out of which The Faerie Queene has been produced:



See in general: Paul R. Rovang, Refashioning ‘Knights and Ladies Gentle Deeds’: The Intertextuality of Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Malory’s Morte Darthur (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); Andrew King, The Faerie Queene and Middle English Romance: The Matter of Just Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).  See further, for example: Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); King, The Faerie Queene, 42–77.  Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. by A. C. Hamilton, Hiroshi Yamashita, and Toshiyuki Suzuki (Harlow: Longman, 2001), II.Proem.4.

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Andrew King His chamber all was hangd about with rolls, And old records from auncient times deriud, Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls.  [II.ix.57]

But this room could also be an image of the reader’s mind, the memory of literary tradition that must be brought to the task of reading The Faerie Queene. As Guyon the Knight of Temperance reads the book ‘Antiquitee of Faery lond’, he becomes an image of the reader, who should approach the poem with a similarly zealous commitment to memory and past literary traditions impinging on the present. Guyon reads ‘burning […] with feruent fire’ to gain understanding of his Elvish origins and his ‘countreys auncestry’ (II. ix.60). In the process, his reading becomes creative, almost authorial, since it produces in the following canto the text that we in turn read. Similarly, in reading Book II and the experiences of Guyon, the reader’s creative input comes from bringing knowledge of the earlier poem, Guy of Warwick, to bear. Guy is embedded deeply within Book II, like an antique monument that has become partly obscured or defaced through time. Recovering that monument as we read Book II, discerning it in the textual thicket of Guyon’s experience, involves a process of thought and response that is partially ‘outside of ’ or beyond the text itself. The intertextuality is signed in the poem, but its full implications can only be realized through the reader’s memory of the earlier romance text. In the process, The Faerie Queene achieves in the reader’s reception an historical and textual depth as if it had evolved through generations, like a constantly morphing and expanding literary-historical tradition. Like the Middle English prose Brut, for example, The Faerie Queene can appear to the reader to be the multi-layered artefact of time, seemingly representative of a cultural and communal construction. Simultaneously (and possibly paradoxically), its textual past, namely Middle English romance, is redefined in terms of its fulfilment in the present. Elizabethan readers might have encountered Guy not only in recent printed texts, such as William Copland’s print of c. 1565, but also through medieval manuscripts still in use and circulation, as Early Modern readers’ marks and annotations testify. The diversity of texts or versions available is worth emphasizing, and it accords with this chapter’s interest in the Early Modern reader’s role in bringing a knowledge of Guy to the experience of Spenser’s poem. That knowledge could be gleaned from not only a textual tradition continuously descending from the medieval period but also from Renaissance rewritings and dramatic and iconographical manifestations of the legend. Since this chapter seeks to emphasize the strength of the Guy legend in the 

On fol. 161r of Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38, a hand of c. 1600 has written ‘Guy Earl of Warwik’ at the head of that text, to enable a reader to locate the work easily; see further King, The Faerie Queene, 37, note 73. Another issue relating to the different versions is the form of characters’ names. I have generally used the ‘standard’ forms of names, most often based on the Auchinleck MS. So Guy’s wife appears here as ‘Felice’, even though the form ‘Phelis’ is used in Copland’s print.

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collective memories of Early Modern readers of The Faerie Queene (a notion reflected in Spenser’s strategy of inviting perception of intertextual links), it is reasonable to employ a range of different, concurrently available texts of Guy, from both medieval manuscripts as well as early printed books. In effect, this chapter seeks to establish the full intertextual response of an ideal sixteenthcentury reader. Most passages from Guy discussed here occur in a number of different versions, but the text that offers the most suggestive or demonstrative intertextual links has been selected. The key intertextual links that allow this complex relationship between Book II of The Faerie Queene and Guy of Warwick are their shared explorations of chivalry and pilgrimage. Guy of Warwick famously rejects his chivalric career as well as his happiness and success in marriage and society; he becomes an ascetic, anonymous pilgrim. Yet the second, penitential part of Guy invokes not so much a new set of experiences but rather the sense that the misguided secular chivalry of the first part is now being properly defined and enacted in terms of Christian knighthood. Pilgrimage in this second part is more spiritual and moral than physical. Guy’s anxiety concerning chivalry, as well as the text’s allowance for a higher kind of chivalric practice, achieved in the symbolic pilgrimage, resonates with the experience of Guyon, ­Spenser’s Knight of Temperance. That Spenser’s text contains the palimpsest of a romance that seems inextricably rooted in Catholic penitential theology may appear untenable. However, Spenser’s strategy is deliberately provocative: his text redefines Guy’s peregrinatory career and chivalry in ‘proper’ terms as thoroughly as the second part of Guy reworks and gives new or perfected meaning to the events of its first part. The above description of Guy embedded in The Faerie Queene like an old monument, ruinous and half-buried, resonates with an interest in antiquities and vestiges common to both Middle English romance texts themselves as well as The Faerie Queene and Early Modern antiquarianism. Middle English romance and related texts frequently direct the reader to seek out some monument or topographical feature that has resulted from the events of the narrative and that is ‘still there’ for readers to see. A late medieval instance comes from Caxton’s preface to Malory’s Morte Darthur, in which he itemizes vestiges of the Arthurian world that can still be seen – ‘proof ’ that the events really happened: And in dyvers places of Englond many remembraunces ben yet of hym [Arthur] and shall remayne perpetually, and also of his knyghtes: first, in the abbey of Westmestre, at Saynt Edwardes shryne, remayneth the prynte of his seal in reed waxe […]; item, in the castel of Dover ye may see Gauwayns

 

See further: Cooper, The English Romance, p. 92. On this topos, see: Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons (London: Batsford, 1980), pp. 80–90; King, The Faerie Queene, pp. 48–52, pp. 161–62, and passim; Cooper, The English Romance, p. 71.

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In Book I of The Faerie Queene, Spenser possibly has Caxton’s preface in mind when he playfully invokes this ‘still there’ topos: Arthur’s diamond shield has been brought by Gloriana ‘To Faerie lond, where yet it may be seene, if sought’ (I.vii.36). Faerie land is an elusive but not inaccessible location for the reader in the 1590 Faerie Queene. The Proem to Book II insists that the ‘happy land of Faery’ may ‘By certein signes here sett in sondrie place’ still be found (II.Proem.1, 4). So Arthur’s sword is a potentially verifiable ‘proof ’ that the narrative relates to events that happened and left vestigal marks – just as later in Book II Caesar’s sword, like Lancelot’s in Caxton’s Preface, is ‘yet to be seene this day’ (II.x.49). These happenings and their proofs must be conceived metaphorically rather than literally, of course, but the essential notion in both the medieval texts as well as The Faerie Queene is that a past, generally idealized narrative has value for the present – indeed has left its marks in the process of the formation of present identity. Just as Books I to III, in common with many native medieval romances, refer at various points to monuments or topography ‘still there’, seeking to confirm the value of their narrative worlds, so too in more subtle ways each Book of the 1590 Faerie Queene contains at its core the vestiges of a much older narrative, derived from Middle English romance and historiographical traditions. These embedded narratives act as the ‘certein signes’ that can create an historically and textually protracted image of the reader’s own context (England) as providentially sustained in the romance mode. In Book I, readers might be expected to recognize that one of the most popular of Middle English romances, Sir Bevis of Hampton, was ‘still there’ to be seen in the travails of the Redcrosse Knight. The Redcrosse Knight shares with Bevis the experience of being a displaced youth – removed in infancy from his proper place context and family, and forced to discover his identity and birthright through an arduous process of overcoming exile. For both the Redcrosse Knight (who is St George and one of the Protestant Elect) and Bevis (who has been raised in pagan lands, ignorant of much of his Christian heritage), the recovery is a quest towards Christian self-understanding. Spenser has reworked a medieval Christian narrative invoking the spirit of the Crusades into a Protestant experience of answering vocation. And at the climax of his tale, St George’s career

‘Caxton’s Preface’, in The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. by Eugène Vinaver, rev. P. J. C. Field, 3rd edn, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), I, p. cxliv.  Thomas Warton first noted Spenser’s use of Bevis: Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: Printed by C. Stower for R. Dutton and Thomas Ostell, 1807), I, 66–75. On Bevis’s influence on Spenser and its Early Modern fame, see further: Jennifer Fellows, ‘St George as Romance Hero’, Reading Medieval Studies, 19 (1993), 27–54; Jennifer Fellows, ‘Bevis redivivus: The Printed Editions of Sir Bevis of Hampton’, in Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills, ed. by Jennifer Fellows, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 251–68; King, The Faerie Queene, pp. 26–45; Cooper, The English Romance, pp. 31–32.

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defining battle with the dragon, Spenser draws ingeniously on the famous and influential dragon-fight in Bevis. A miraculous well in Bevis, which revives the hero when the dragon has almost killed him, becomes in Spenser’s text the Well of Life, emblematic of the Protestant emphasis on Christ’s sacrifice and grace for salvation (I.xi.29). Spenser’s Well accords with the Edwardian image of Christ in the Book of Homilies (1547): Christ ‘is that flowyng and moste plenteous fountain, of whose fulnesse all we have receivd’.10 The ‘Reformed’ definition that The Faerie Queene gives to the well in Bevis involves not so much a rejection of the old medieval text but a realization of its deepest possible meaning. The dragon-slaying St George synthesizes with the most famous episode in one of the most popular of Middle English romances. At this moment, the reader realizes what the earlier story always seemed to be trying to say. Middle English romance was condemned on both literary and moralistic grounds during the sixteenth century, especially after c. 1570; but in reading Book I, a romance like Bevis seems to be ‘justified’ (in all senses), like the story of the disbelieved prophet who is finally proven true. John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the most culture-informing work of the Elizabethan period, similarly interpreted medieval writers such as Chaucer and Langland as protoProtestant; thus Foxe’s work both salvaged medieval writers for post-Reformation readers and extended the authority of the Reformation back in time, making it putatively the fulfilment of prophecy.11 ­Spenser’s post-Reformation text similarly makes the earlier text the foreteller of his literary moment. And comparable to Book I, Book III of The Faerie Queene also has an embedded medieval core, contained in its dynastic and genealogical themes. Britomart stretches back to Brutus and Troy, and she is the ancestor of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is in effect ‘still there’ as proof that Britomart achieved her quest, even if that achievement is not realized in the second half of the poem published in 1596. Book II also has an embedded core of Middle English narrative, and it is Guy of Warwick. A basic supposition of this chapter is that Spenser reasonably expects his readers to recognize Guy of Warwick as a monument or antiquity ‘still there’ in The Faerie Queene. Helen Cooper’s contribution in this volume illustrates the Early Modern fame of Guy, the remarkable longevity of his story. Spenser’s strategy coincided with the increased sense in the Early Modern period of Guy as an antique legend. The story presented itself even to 

Other texts that borrow from the dragon-fight in Bevis are the Middle English romance Sir Degare, Richard Johnson’s The Seven Champions of Christendom (1596), and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. See further: Nicolas Jacobs, ‘Sir Degarre, Lay le Freine, Beues of Hamtoun and the “Auchinleck Bookshop” ’, Notes and Queries, 29 (1982), 294–301 (297–300); King, The Faerie Queene, p. 130, note 9; Cooper, The English Romance, pp. 90–91. 10 ‘Of the Miserie of Al Mankynd’, in Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and a Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570), ed. by Ronald B. Bond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 75. 11 See further: Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1975), pp. 42–51; John Foxe and the English Reformation, ed. by David Loades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997).

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its medieval readers as an old narrative, but the ‘whilom factor’ was intensified in the Renaissance, with the period’s antiquarian emphasis on the physical monuments left behind in the landscape, particularly in and around Warwick. William Copland’s print of c. 1565 adds an injunction to the reader to inspect in Warwick a tapestry depicting Guy’s battle with a dragon: ‘In Warwick the truth there ye shall see, / In arras wrought full craftily’.12 Warwick was – and in fact still is – replete with the vestiges of Guy’s presence.13 The fifteenthcentury Cambridge University Library MS has Guy towards the end of his life go to a hermitage ‘Besydes Warwykk […] / That Gybbeclyf clepyd ys’.14 The chantry at Guy’s Cliffe was in fact endowed by the Beauchamp family, holders of the earldom of Warwick, and still exists.15 The Cambridge MS text notes that masses and alms are performed there ‘That euyr lasteth vnto þys day’ (CUL, 10,711). And when Tyrry takes Guy’s body to Lorraine in the same version, an abbey is founded for Guy and Felice: The abbey standeth and euer schall For to preye for gode syr Gye.  [CUL, 10,778–79]

Richard Lloyd’s A Briefe Discourse of ... the Nine Worthies (1584) replaces Godfrey of Bouillon, one of the traditional nine, with Guy of Warwick. In Lloyd’s text, Guy himself tells what signs he has left behind: In Windsor forrest I did kill a Bore of passing strength, Whose like in England neuer was for highness, breadth, and length. Some of his bones in Warwicke yet, within the castle lie.16  [G.i.v]

Lloyd’s Guy also defeated a mad cow, whose ‘bones also in Warwicke lie yet, for a monument, / Which vnto euerie looker on a woonder may present’. And, in contradiction to the removal of Guy’s body to Lorraine, the Earl’s own remains in ‘Warwicke lieth yet, though now consumed to mould’ (G.i.v). Even the most cursory inspection of Book II of The Faerie Queene seems to offer ‘certein signes’ by which the reader can see that Guy is ‘still there’ – a narrative that has proved significant and ‘true’ after all, as it is revealed in Spenser’s ‘matter of iust memory’ (II.Proem.1). For instance, in both the medieval manuscripts and the Renaissance printed editions of Guy of Warwick, Guy’s name often appears as ‘Guyon’ for the purposes of rhyme. Furthermore, Guy’s transformation from knight to pilgrim is mirrored in Spenser’s text by 12

13 14

15 16

Guy of Warwick, printed by William Copland, 212. I am using the facsimile of the Harvard University Library copy, taken from Early English Books Online (STC 12542). The page references derive from the handwritten numbers on the top-right corner of each page. Legend, pp. 183–84, 455–56. Guy, ed. by Zupitza, CUL 10,529–30. In referring to this edition, I will put the references immediately following the quotation, using the form ‘CUL’ followed by line numbers referencing the edition. The Copland print of c. 1565 locates the hermitage in the forest of Arden (262). Legend, pp. 117, 120. See further in this volume Helen Cooper’s chapter, p. 185. I am using the facsimile on Early English Books Online of the Bodleian Library copy (STC 16634).

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Guyon’s being accompanied by a palmer, or pilgrim. Guy’s asceticism in the second part of the romance resonates with Guyon’s rejection of worldly riches in Mammon’s cave and his destruction of the Bower of Bliss, with its sexual temptations. In some versions of the romance, Guy of Warwick’s sword was made in elvish land, and the adventures of his son Reinbroun involve encounters with a faerie knight;17 the abduction of Amy de la Mountaine by an ‘Eluysh knight’ into ‘fayry’ appears not only in the Auchinleck MS (stanzas 74, 89) and CUL (11,315–580) but also in Copland’s Elizabethan print (271).18 Spenser’s Guyon is of course ‘Elfin borne’ (II.i.6). Furthermore, Guyon’s loss of his horse (when stolen by Braggadocchio) reflects Guy’s abandoning his horse as he sets out on foot on pilgrimage.19 Some of these points need to be developed, but the basis for recognizing Guy of Warwick as ‘still there’ in Book II of The Faerie Queene should be immediately apparent. At the same time, the original narrative has been profoundly shifted and reconceived. The medieval story involves a physical and spiritual pilgrimage from imperfect worldly models, which are at best signs, to true heavenly ideals. This narrative becomes in Spenser’s text a humanist and loosely Aristotelian and Protestant account of controlling appetites. The common ground for discussing both texts is chivalry, broadly conceived in both literary and metaphorical terms. Guy of Warwick explores two versions of knighthood: the pugnacious hero seeking to win the love of a lady: and the miles Christi, fighting battles for Christian causes rather than for personal fame. Spenser’s text is part of his enterprise ‘to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’ (714), with an expanded social and courtly, as well as psychological, sense of chivalry. Yet the texts are united in sharing a critical and interrogative attitude towards chivalry, and the context for chivalry in both texts is the notion of life as a pilgrimage.20 Guy of Warwick’s interrogation of chivalry is a verbally and intellectually sophisticated element in the text – one that easily confounds criticism of Middle English romance as merely episodic and thematically vacuous. Underpinning Guy’s diptych structure is an assimilation of Boethian and Augustinian theology, particularly Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana as well as Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae. Guy’s travels in the first part and his pilgrimage in the second are mirroring physical journeys, but both need to be considered in terms of the larger metaphorical journey or pilgrimage that is Guy’s entire life. The goal of that pilgrimage is beyond this world, and once that sense of the intensely symbolic nature of the physical world of Guy, even in the first part, is opened up we 17 18 19

Guy, ed. by Zupitza, Auchinleck 3861–62; Caius 3851–52. The quoted words in this sentence are from Copland’s print. See further: Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of the Faerie Queene (New York: Burt ­Franklin, 1960), p. 82; King, The Faerie Queene, p. 161, note 3; Cooper, The English Romance, pp. 31, 95–96. 20 Cooper, The English Romance, chapter one, ‘Quest and Pilgrimage’, pp. 45–105, offers the fullest consideration of these combined elements.

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are in a better position to do justice to the thematic richness of the text. Both Augustine and Boethius provide influential formulations of the fundamental element in Guy: the sense that this world and its social forms and language are fallen versions of divine archetypes, at best to be understood as signs or metaphors that need to be interpreted or realized in ultimate terms. Lady Philosophy tells Boethius that ‘the natural world did not take its origin from that which was impaired and incomplete but issues from that which is unimpaired and perfect and then degenerates into this fallen and worn out condition’.21 Like Boethius, Guy needs to become a skilful and critical reader of the ‘blessings’ that he achieves in the first half of the story, perceiving them to be false versions of a true reality. At best, human institutions such as political lordship or love are signs that point to heavenly archetypes. Such signs, Augustine writes, must not be read literally but rather should be seen figuratively, like a text that demands an allegorical reading to make sense: ‘For a sign is a thing which of itself makes some other thing come to mind’.22 What the signs of this world should bring to mind are the true heavenly archetypes, of which they are debased copies. To take the signs as ends in themselves would be to read life’s experience literally, rather than with a developed sense of its semiotics or allegory. Augustine writes: One must take care not to interpret figurative expression literally. What the apostle says is relevant here: ‘the letter kills but the spirit gives life’ [2 Cor. 3:6]. For when something meant figuratively is interpreted as if it were meant literally, it is understood in a carnal way  [72]

Guy offers patterned repetitions and conjunctions of experience that provoke awareness of both the literal or carnal levels (embodied in his first chivalric career) as well as the transfigured or spiritual level, where the true chivalry is attained. In the second half, for example, King Triamour notes that Guy is poorly dressed and assumes that he must serve an impecunious lord: Þe king asked him anon riZt, ‘Whi artow þus iuel y-diZt And in þus pouer wede? A feble lord þou seruest, so þenketh me, Or oway he haþ driuen þe For sum iuel dede.’ ‘Nay, sir, for god,’ quaþ Gij, ‘A wel gode lord [ar] þan serue[d] y: Wiþ him was no blame. Wel michel honour he me dede, 21

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans by V. E. Watts (Harmondworth: Penguin Books, 1969), III.x; p. 99. 22 St Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 30.

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Guy of Warwick and The Faerie Queene & gret worþschipe in eueri stede, & sore ich haue him grame[d], & þer-fore icham þus y-diZt, To cri him merci day & niZt, Til we ben frendes same. & mi lord & y frende be, Ichill wende hom to mi cuntre, & liue wiþ ioie & game.’  [Auchinleck, 84.7–85.12]

With the word ‘lord’ here Guy intends one meaning – God – and King Triamour another – a secular lord. The different understandings are not reconciled, and we are aware that Triamour is seeing, in Pauline terms, ‘through a glass darkly’, talking in terms of debased versions and literal understandings, whereas Guy is now seeing ‘face to face’. Interestingly, the scene survives intact in Copland’s Elizabethan print, with an additional explanation by the narrator: ‘But the Lord that guy ment tho, / it was our Lorde Iesu of myght’ (Copland, 229). The ‘cuntre’ or homeland that Guy speaks of returning to is not England but heaven; in Copland’s print, he says ‘Till that I haue my lordes peace / Home dare I not go agayne’ (229). The imagery of heavenly homecoming resonates with Lady Philosophy’s urgings to Boethius, that through the wings of philosophy he will transcend this world to reach his heavenly origin: ‘Then “I remember,” you will say, “My home, my source, my ending too.” ’  [IV.i; 118]

The gap between Triamour’s understanding of ‘lord’ and Guy’s perfectly illustrates Augustine’s notion that it is ‘a miserable kind of spiritual slavery to interpret signs as things, and to be incapable of raising the mind’s eye above the physical creation so as to absorb the eternal life’ (72). Guy’s physical and spiritual pilgrimage, crossing over from earthly chivalry to spiritual, becomes in Augustinian terms ‘a trek, or a voyage, to our homeland’. This journey is not made physically so much as ‘through integrity of purpose and character’ (12–13). ‘Integrity of purpose and character’ sound equally appropriate to the moral and spiritual journey or pilgrimage (he is, after all, accompanied by the Palmer) that Guyon makes, and Guyon’s landscape is if anything even more symbolic and signed than Guy’s. And like Guy of Warwick, Spenser’s text will demonstrate anxiety concerning chivalry as a purely literal or carnal narrative, where the participants are ‘incapable of raising the mind’s eye above the physical creation’. It may seem that Guy of Warwick attains ambivalence towards chivalry only in the second half, but in fact that ambivalence begins to build throughout the first part. An astute reader has the basis in the first part to accord with Guy’s rejection of earthly chivalry. From the start of the text chivalry seems fragile and ambivalent as an ideal. Guy’s early attempts and failures to understand it suggest a concept that is susceptible to misinterpretation and manipulation. 177



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Felice refuses to love any man who is not a good knight (CUL, 361–64). Guy is dubbed and immediately returns to her: ‘for thy sake / Knyghtys ordur haue y take’ (CUL, 431–32). Her response emphasizes that the ceremony alone does not make him worthy of ‘a gode knyghtys mystere’ (CUL, 437). Guy must ‘juste or […] fyght’ (CUL, 440). He must ‘do thy cheualrye’ (CUL, 441). Guy then resolves to earn or prove his knighthood through ‘Dedes of armes’ (CUL, 452) in other lands. This early presumption by Guy, reminiscent of Perceval’s naivity, reveals how a Braggadocchio might happen. Spenser’s horse thief is The scorne of knighthood and trew cheualrye, To thinke without desert of gentle deed, And noble worth to be aduanced hye.  [II.iii.10]

Guy of course aims to earn his knighthood through heroic adventures. But his early wooing of Felice allows a disturbing sense that the mere ceremonies and outwards forms of knighthood might be experienced and performed, but the inner core of knighthood – at the very least resilience in adventures and loyalty – could be absent. The text has begun an exploration of knighthood that simultaneously expresses anxiety about possible imitation or abuse and posits that there is a deeper sense of chivalry that can be achieved through discipline and time. Felice tells Guy that when ‘ther ys no bettur [knight] vnder hevyn’ (CUL, 816), then she will marry him. Unintentionally, her words indicate both the limit of one kind of chivalry and the threshold to the higher level: ‘vndur hevyn’. Ironically, Felice has foreseen and defined her own rejection. As the goal and emblem of earthly chivalry, she represents the highest ‘felicity’ under heaven. Earlier, Guy apostrophized a tower containing her – emblematic of his desire to rise to her but also by means of her. In Copland’s text, this passage reads: A Tower, then sayd syr Guy, In thee is that mayden bright […] Alas tower why doest not fall, Castell, stones, and chambers all, Then might I see that mayden bright, For whome I am in this plight.  [Copland, 15]

When he has that attained that felicity and is in fact on top of a tower (pehaps the same one – even ‘Guy’s Tower’ that is ‘still there’ for the modern tourist in Warwick Castle), then he quests for something not ‘vnder hevyn’, but in heaven. His move should not seem sudden if we look long and hard at the first part – not as readers made giddy by romance adventures, but from the Christian and faintly teleological perspective that the poem’s opening lines have in fact provided. The reader must ‘wexe wyse at the laste’ and ‘holde wysdome and leue folye’ (CUL 16, 18; cf. Copland, 1). In fact, Guy’s moral and spiritual 178



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progress could be described in exactly these terms. The cost of chivalry from the start of Guy has been horrific violence, and the text (and not just modern readers) is clear of the tragedy of that. Quite early in his chivalric career, Guy weeps for knights who have lost their lives indirectly because of his love for Felice: He sawe the bodyes lye in blode. When he sawe Þe bodyes colde Of Þe knyghtys, Þat were so bolde, ‘Allas,’ he seyde, ‘and wele away, That euer y wakenyd on Þys day. Iesu Cryste, what ys my redde? For my loue Þese men be dedde […] Felyce,’ he seyde, ‘for thy sake, To vs ys comen moche wrake, And all for the loue of the Dedde be here knyghtes thre.’  [CUL, 1148–60]

Guy’s scapegoating of Felice is even stronger in Copland’s version (50–51), and even as he realizes the implications of his chivalric ambition he lacks full insight regarding his responsibility. Since sexual temptation will be a large part of Guyon’s trial, the relationship between Guy’s chivalry and his quest for a woman could be described in Spenserian terms as intemperate. Later, Guy will recognize the logical necessity of rejecting Felice as he rejects chivalry, since she was the goal of his chivalric quest and is intrinsically related to earthly chivalry in his experience. The problematic nature of Guy’s chivalric career in the first part is especially evident in his slaying of King Florentyne’s son.23 Guy has hunted a boar in the king’s forest, and he refuses his horse to the king’s son as a tribute. When the boy, trying to take the horse, strikes Guy, Guy kills him. Guy had offered the boy his hunting horn, but his refusal to part with his horse – the essential equipment of a knight – brings the notion of chivalry to the fore. Guy is in all senses ‘on his high horse’ when he says to the dying boy ‘thus [...] I shall thee teache, / On a knight to take wreache’ (Copland, 206). His chivalric dignity becomes tenuous indeed when he subsequently seeks hospitality in Florentyne’s castle. The dead son is brought in whilst Guy is enjoying that hospitality, and the hypocrisy of Guy’s position is crisply defined by a squire in the court: ‘He sitteth here at thy meate now, / that thy doughty sonne slow’ (207). Guy kills fourteen of Florentyne’s men before escaping. In the Auchinleck MS version, Earl Florentin offers a moving lament for his dead son, further diminishing the sense of Guy’s chivalry as heroic or admirable:

23

Florentin (spelled thus) is an earl in the Auchinleck MS version, but the same character is King Florentyne in Copland’s print, which is the version chiefly followed for discussion of this scene.

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Andrew King At his hert gret sorwe sat, Þat he his sone seye ligge ded. Of him no worþ him non oþer red. ‘Sone,’ he seyd, ‘what schal y do, Whenne ich þe haue þus forgo? Who schal now weld after me Mine londes, þat brod be? A man icham swiþe in eld: Dye ichil, bi godes scheld. Opon þat bodi he fel anon.  [Auchinleck, 6932–41]24

The references to age and time here enforce the Boethian and Augustinian sense of the transient nature of human experience. The loss of continuity and the future political disruption reveal the dark consequences of Guy’s actions, as well as revealing ‘lordship’ itself as an aspect of chivalric society that is at best a sign pointing to an undisplaced reality. In the ‘conversion’ scene on the tower, Guy laments that he has killed many innocent men: Guy stoode and bethought him tho, how he had done many a man wo, and slayne many a man with his hande Brent and destroyed many a lande.  [Copland, 217]

In the Auchinleck MS version, Guy realizes more critically that ‘Mani man he hadde slayn wiþ wrong’ (21.10). Perhaps he is thinking of Florentin’s son. This interrogation of chivalry is the greatest contribution that Guy of Warwick makes to Book II of The Faerie Queene, which focuses on the problematic nature of chivalry, especially with respect to its titular virtue of Temperance. Pyrochles’s violent anger or Braggadocchio’s hollow chivalric posturings are resonant with episodes of Guy’s earlier career. Book I of The Faerie Queene, the quest of the Redcrosse Knight to achieve Holiness, has placed before Book II a subtle and devastating criticism of the chivalric ethos when conceived in terms of a self-aggrandizing militaristic career; Book I’s experience impacts on our perception of chivalry for the remainder of the poem. Whenever the Redcrosse Knight acts as a romance, chivalric hero, it is a manifestation of pride, of a presumed self-sufficiency. The form of the text as a romance is not so much the context to which the hero responds appropriately, but rather is a construct or projection of his subjective and fantastic perspective. Rafe, the Grocer’s boy in Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613) who yearns to be a chivalric hero in the context of mercantile and contemporary London, or Don Quixote are instructive figures for seeing Redcrosse in this way; the difference, though, is that the subjective 24

CUL clearly makes a deliberate effort to improve Guy’s stature in this scene, attributing to him more courtesy as well as more churlishness to the son. The need for such careful revisions only enforces the notion here that Guy appears negatively in the unrevised scene in the remaining versions.

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nature of Spenser’s allegory, focused on Redcrosse, means that we see the surrounding context not as it really is or as something at odds with the central character; rather we see Redcrosse’s naive and egotistical romance attitude projected all around him. It is as if we were to see Don Quixote’s story entirely from the Don’s point of view – and to a certain extent sharing his confusion or ignorance when his tactics and responses, moulded by chivalric romance, fail to achieve the desired results. The romance landscape of monsters and enchantment in Book I is Redcrosse’s jejeune perspective, as if he has been reading stories such as Bevis and Guy. Thomas Nashe’s critique of Middle English romance as ‘worne out absurdities’25 has a partial and deeply ironic aptness in relation to Book I: Redcrosse’s perspective is the chivalric romance mode, and that mode (at least in his conception of it, as a place for individual human victories) must be abandoned. In its place he needs to recognize that his strength proceeds not from himself, but from God. As he summarizes at the start of Book II, transferring the significance of his experience to Guyon and the Palmer: His [i.e. God’s] be the praise, that this atchieu’ment wrought, Who made my hand the organ of his might; More then goodwill to me attribute nought.  [II.i.33]

Not surprisingly, Book II is from the start playful with chivalric romance conventions, both self-conscious and astutely manipulative of them. Guyon’s separation from his horse brings the interrogation of chivalry to the fore. Malory’s Sir Lamerok notes: What is a knyght but whan he is on horsebacke? For I sette nat by a knyght whan he is on foote, for all batayles on foote ar but pyllours batayles, for there sholde no knyght fyghte on foote but yf hit were fore treson or ellys he were dryvyn by forse to fyght on foote.  [II.667]

Guyon’s horse is stolen from him near the start of his adventures, and by one who denigrates the value of chivalry by showing how easily its outward form can be impersonated. This ‘knight’, Guyon, will largely be tested on foot, denied the eponymous ‘cheval’ of chivalry. Guyon is only saved from being a ‘pyllour’, or pillager, by Lamerok’s last clause, since he is ‘dryvyn by forse to fyght on foote’. The loss of his horse, and the manner in which it happens, signals strongly a movement away from the chivalric hero as traditionally conceived. Guyon’s horse is a complex symbol or element from the outset of Book II. The horse is etymologically the essential element of chivalry, but it is also in Book II the image of Guyon’s appetites and passions, the animalistic energy that must be contained and controlled if the knight is to achieve Temperance. Guyon’s control of his horse is equivalent to the control of his 25

The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. by Ronald B. McKerrow, rev. F. P. Wilson. 2nd edn, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), I, 26.

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passions. As he rides alongside the Palmer, he ‘taught his trampling steed with equall steps to tread’ (II.i.7). Anger and intemperance, however, produce an unleashing of the animal’s speed: He stayd not lenger talke, but with fierce yre And zealous haste away is quickly gone, To seeke that knight.  [II.i.13]

From the outset, Guyon’s horse is both the means to chivalry and potentially the expression of his intemperance – which must lead to a failure of chivalry, in any higher ethical sense. This connection, through the horse, between chivalry and intemperate appetites renders chivalry ambivalent. When Guyon enters Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss in his climactic adventure, he is ‘Brydlying his will’ (II.xii.53). Equestrian imagery is used even as he walks into the Bower. This is true chivalry, redefined in terms of the knight or ‘rider’ rather than his trappings, and the adventure is of course moral rather than physical. Guyon’s pacing of his horse from the start is controlled by the walking pace of his Palmer. This accompanying figure is ‘Of ripest yeares, and [with] heares all hoarie gray’ (II.i.7). He has a ‘staffe’ to aid ‘his feeble steps’, ‘Least his long way his aged limbes should tire’ (II.i.7). Later the reader learns that his staff can withstand Hell (II.xii.41). Guy of Warwick is a strong palimpsest in this iconic opening image of Guyon and his Palmer. A pleasant song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry, atchieued by the Noble Knight, Sir Guy of Warwick (1592) was a highly popular broadside ballad, and its large page contains two woodcut images of Guy: as a young knight on horse with chivalric trophies such as a boar’s head on a pike and a tame lion; and as an old palmer in the hermitage at Guy’s Cliff near Warwick, barefoot and with the pilgrim’s staff before him.26 This double or diptych image of Guy, so famous to Elizabethan readers from the experience of the text itself, seems to be imaginatively recreated in Spenser’s opening to Book II, with both the young Guy and in the effect the older pilgrim Guy brought simultaneously before the reader. The playful sense in which the older Guy of Warwick, represented in Guyon’s accompanying Palmer, makes his appearance at the start of Book II provides for Spenser’s poem from the outset the moral and spiritual perspective attained only at the end of Guy of Warwick. Like Guy in the second part, Guyon’s greatest quality is self-denial – denial of appetite, of desire for riches, and of anger. But at the start Guyon’s motivations for seeking chivalric adventures are possibly suspect. Archimago says: Fayre sonne of Mars, that seeke with warlike spoyle, And great atchieu’ments great your selfe to make.  [II.i.8]

This enticing address could be a summary of the ambitions of the young Guy of Warwick at the outset of his career, as he seeks glory to win Felice. 26

Facsimile page in Legend, plate 21. See also pp. 195–97.

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Archimago seeks to entrap Guyon by presenting him with a romance ‘script’ that invites a rash and intemperate chivalric response, an impulsive release of the horse’s restraining bridle. Archimago manipulates Guyon’s expectations of his experience with the generic self-consciousness comparable to figures such as the Innkeeper in Don Quixote.27 Archimago tells Guyon of a ‘virgin’ (Duessa) who has been abused. Guyon’s response seems to have its origins in the experience of reading romances such as Guy (in its first part) and acting accordingly: he shows ‘fierce yre’ and ‘zealous haste’ (II.i.13). These are qualities that Guy of Warwick comes to regret and seeks to undo. Guyon here seems like the brash young Guy whose chivalric deeds could have violent implications not realized until later. Medina makes the ambivalence of chivalry, its potential for intemperate violence, clear: Is this the ioy of armes? be these the parts Of glorious knighthood, after blood to thrust […]?  [II.ii.29]

Thus Guyon is led by Archimago to charge against Redcrosse (II.i.25ff), reversing or undoing the achievements of Book I and the degree to which it has already exposed in Redcrosse’s early, hybristic failures the deficiencies of chivalry when conceived in terms of heroic self-sufficiency. Temperance charges against Holiness, which cannot be temperate at all. Guyon realizes before striking that it is rash to charge against a shield emblazoned with a cross, ‘The sacred badge of my Redeemers death’ (II.i.27). This moment seems to resonate with Guy of Warwick’s journey from naive and hasty young knight to self-denying Christian pilgrim and hermit. Initial simplistic chivalry gives way to Christian faith and self-denial in both narratives. After Guyon stops short of charging against the cross shield, the Palmer says ‘God guide thee, Guyon, well to end thy warke, / And to the wished hauen bring thy weary barke’ (II.i.32). It is as if the old Guy of Warwick were allowed to walk on and comment on events in the first part of his life’s narrative. Or, put another way, if Redcrosse has been reading ‘absurdities’ such as Bevis of Hampton, Guyon now seems to have benefited from reading the entirety of Guy of Warwick, with its movement away from literal chivalry to true Christian knighthood. As Helen Cooper has commented, it is remarkable that a tale of penitential asceticism, pilgrimage, and quasi-hagiographical details should survive beyond the Reformation and into Spenser’s epic.28 Even in Copland’s Elizabethan print, Guy’s corpse emits a scent ‘also sweete as any flower’ (264) – a well established hagiographical topos. But as a quintessentially English hero, Guy of Warwick is being redefined according to a new, ‘Reformed’ understanding. Guy’s experiences are personal, without the intervention of the Church. As such, they are not incompatible with the Protestant sense, developed throughout Book I, of the individual’s direct response to God’s 27

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Quixote, trans by J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1950), pp. 41–46. 28 Cooper, The English Romance, pp. 92–98.

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call and grace. Spenser reworks this most famous of native romances to fit his scheme. The paganism of Amoraunt and Colbrand becomes the paganism of Pyrochles and Cymochles, but the truly great ‘paganism’ is intemperance – the unbridled appetites that cause loss of respect to God and fellow humans. Book II rejects glorified combat (Guyon never kills anyone), and in doing so questions chivalry of a purely martial and physical nature. Temperance is a more ethical and pragmatic goal than the spiritual chivalry or perfection sought by the older, eremetical Guy of Warwick. However, both texts seek to define chivalry in terms that are separate from violence and dissent; and both texts build their sense of chivalry on the notion of pilgrimage – not so much as a physical journey but, in Augustinian terms, a moral and spiritual journey ‘home’. Medina’s words could easily be Guy of Warwick’s, as he stands on the tower lamenting the cost of his ambition: Sad be the sights, and bitter fruites of warre, And thousand furies wait on wrathfull sword.  [II.ii.30]

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12 Guy as Early Modern English Hero HELEN COOPER

G

uy of Warwick appears quintessentially a hero of medieval romance. Created in Anglo-Norman, translated into Middle English, with occasional appearances in the chronicle tradition, and an enthusiastic reception in early prints, his story follows a trajectory that is typical of a large number of early romances. He is unique, however, for the number and variety of further texts that he generated in the decades on either side of 1600, the period of the explosion of high Renaissance English writing when it might be thought that such a story was due for extinction. A handful of romances of medieval origin continued a vibrant life under the Stuarts at the popular chapbook level, and a number of others make a farewell appearance in the Percy Folio Manuscript of the 1640s; only Guy additionally makes a serious attempt to break into anything resembling high culture. His function as legendary ancestor of the Earls of Warwick kept the story active at the level of the high aristocracy, since the Dudleys, who held the title under Elizabeth, took an active interest in it – though that interest was pursued less by the Earl himself than by his more famous brother Robert, Earl of Leicester and the Queen’s favourite. In some of its many versions, Guy did indeed follow the downward trend in cultural level, appearing in broadside ballad form in the 1590s and in chapbooks from the later seventeenth century; but alongside those, a series of further redactions offered the story, if not to the humanist elite, then at least to the public who were thronging to the playhouses or to touring companies, and to a readership who had at least some acquaintance with the writing of epic and epyllion in English. This chapter concentrates on two such texts, the dramatic Tragical History of Guy of Warwick, and Samuel Rowlands’ twelvecanto Famous Historie of Guy of Warwick; but they are far from representing the whole story. The play is the only one surviving of what seems to have been a flourishing industry of Guy plays; and Rowlands’ text itself became 

This later history has been most extensively studied by Ronald S. Crane, ‘The Vogue of Guy of Warwick, from the close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival’, PMLA, 30 (1915), 125–94, and Richmond, Legend. The dates and relationships of the various texts are exceptionally complicated (a ?1680 reprint of Rowlands’ text, for instance, carries the date 1607 on an inauthentic title page: see Crane p. 153), and have never been fully studied.  The Howards also claimed descent from Guy; on the genealogies drawn up in support of both claims, see further Legend, pp. 189–91.

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the ancestral romance for a series of further narrative redactions in both verse and prose. Such widespread popularity of the Guy legend in the new world of Reformation England calls for some explanation. Its link with the earldom of Warwick unquestionably helped, but it does not seem sufficient to account for its longevity, since after Ambrose Dudley died without issue in 1590 the title reverted to the Crown, and few of the retellings make any mention of Guy’s having any son at all. The survival of various relics at or around Warwick – his sword; the statue erected to him by Richard Beauchamp at Guy’s Cliffe; the shoulder-bone of the boar of Caledon; the rib of the cow of Dunsmore Heath, the legend of which existed principally in oral tradition and was always something of an embarrassment to serious writers – helped to keep his memory alive, but would not account for his high cultural visibility. His Englishness was a major advantage. England was short of legendary heroes. There was King Arthur, but he was British rather than English, quite apart from his increasingly equivocal historical status; Robin Hood was making his way from oral into textual culture in the sixteenth century, but there is a limit to how much heroism an outlaw can be made to carry. Guy was accordingly recruited into the ranks of the Nine Worthies as an English member, sometimes as an extra, sometimes to replace the French Godfrey of Bulloigne as the third of the Christian Worthies. Despite his key role in repelling the pagan Danes, however, he was never used as a role model for English resistance to Catholicism. The course of his life, indeed, with his abandonment of the pursuit of arms and a happy and hard-won marriage in favour of a penitential life of celibacy, pilgrimage, and withdrawal from the world, scarcely seems designed to survive into a Protestant culture that classified all such things as evident papistry. Both the opportunities and the anxieties that the legend generated in this new world are evident in Richard Lloyd’s Briefe discourse of the most renowned actes and right valiant conquests of those puissant Princes, called the Nine worthies, printed in 1584, in which Guy does indeed displace Godfrey. The work seems never to have been reprinted, but its version of Guy’s legend, spoken by himself in the first person, was adapted into broadside ballad form in 1592, and remained one of the most popular of all the broadsides for a couple of centuries. The ballad adds a new opening stanza, but after that its only significant verbal differences from Lloyd’s text result from its expan-



It was licensed in 1592; see A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, ed. by Edward Arber, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1875–77), II, 601. Later copies survive in most of the major ballad collections, and it was also printed at the end of the prose Noble and Renowned History (1706) discussed below. The earliest text of the ballad to survive is in the Percy Folio Manuscript, though the first leaf has been torn out. It is printed, with the missing stanzas supplied from later copies, both in Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765), and in the edition of the manuscript by John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, 3 vols (London: Trübner, 1868), II, 608–09. The first stanza of the ballad (not found in Lloyd) begins ‘Was ever Knight, for Lady’s sake, / So tost in Love, as I, Sir Guy?’

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sion of the seven-stress lines of its original into tetrameter pairs, so that, for instance, Lloyd’s A ladys love did me constrain to travel in my youth  [sig. G1r]

becomes A ladys love did me constrain To seek strange ventures in my youth.

Guy’s ancestral function disappears from these versions, as both omit all mention of his son; instead, Lloyd appends to his narrative an ‘Example of this former Historie’ (omitted in the ballad) that sets limits to how far the story can be taken as exemplary: But see in him example rare, when he the ladie wedded had: With hir the storie doth declare, but fortie daies his life he lad, Till leauing all in poore araie, on pilgrimage he tooke the waie.  [sig. G2r]

Less admirable, however, is the form in which he chose to make amends, By punishing his bodie so, as then it was the wonted vse, Which of repentance plain doth sho a token, thogh through great abuse, For want of knowledge of the truth, of holie scriptures: the more ruth.

A Protestant Guy well trained in the Bible would, it would seem, be still more worthy. Other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers handled the distinctively Catholic slant of his repentance differently, most often by downplaying it, sometimes by appropriating it for different purposes. Lloyd’s main narrative, and the ballad deriving from it, give it a minimal mention. The Tragical History, on the other hand, turns him into a High Church hero with whom to bash the Puritans; Rowlands shrinks the explicitly religious side to almost nothing, but adds a lengthy meditation on death (discussed further below) of the kind that particularly appealed to Jacobean audiences, and not least to those familiar with Hamlet. In a humanist age, the reworking of anything so solidly medieval seems to have given rise to some anxiety among writers who liked to think of themselves as more up-to-the-minute. That, at least, seems to be the most likely explanation for a strange trope that appears in some of the Guy texts: the idea that all this attention is justified because the subject is threatened with, or already the victim of, oblivion. This does not seem to have been remotely true in Guy’s case, given how commonplace references were to him throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and the exploding market for the broadside. Yet the Tragical History has its Chorus, Time, explain the decision to mount the play on the grounds that 187



Helen Cooper I had almost drown’d in black oblivion, an honour’d History of an English Knight, as Famous once for deeds of Chivalry as any of the Worthies of the world.

The very compression of some elements of the story in the dramatization, however, indicates that the playwright in fact assumed that his audience already knew the story. Rowlands was clearly right in entitling his own work the ‘FAMOUS’ history of Guy of Warwick, however commonplace the epithet: the word is indeed not only capitalized on the title page but given much the largest font, and it appears again in the dedicatory epistle – ‘great Guy of Warwicke, our famous Contryman’. In his verse address ‘To the Noble English Nation’, by contrast, he writes rather differently, about how strange it is that in such a ‘poet-plentie age’ That stories should entomb’d with worthies lye, And fame, through age extinct, obscurely dye,

and that while poets praise the great of other nations, ‘we neglect the famousing our owne’. It is presumably a way of encouraging purchasers, it may well be designed to pre-empt criticism of his rewriting of such a familiar subject, but there does seem to be a concern too to emphasize that the medieval is not to be equated with the moribund. And just in case his subject might still seem too un-humanist for the age, he throws into the very first verse of his text allusions to Mars, Juno, Bellona, and Venus, before giving himself over to a quick summary of the giant-, boar-, and dragon-killing aspect of Guy’s career. For every writer as for every reader, it was the sheer narrative power of the legend that gave it its appeal, however it may have been dressed up for the sensibilities of the Protestants or of those with pretensions to a Classical education. Guy on stage: The Tragical History Although there is only one surviving text of a Guy play, it seems likely that one dramatic version or another could have been seen in every decade from the 1580s to the closing of the theatres in 1642. As early as 1582, Stephen Gosson was condemning the folly of the kind of play that presented ‘an amorous knight, passing from countrie to countrie for the love of his lady, encountring many a terible monster’, and recognizable on his return only by means of a ring: a play outline that has long been recognized as being a clone of Guy, and quite probably the real thing. Unequivocal references to plays of Guy appear 

The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick (London: Thomas Vere and William Gilbertson, 1661), opening chorus. The play has now also been edited for the Malone Society, Guy of Warwick, ed. by Helen Moore (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2007).  C. R. Baskervill, ‘Some Evidence for Early Romantic Plays in England’, Modern Philology, 14

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surprisingly late, given the fondness for dramatizing every available plot in the 1590s. ‘A play of the life and death of Guy of Warwicke’ was seen at the Maidenhead Inn at Islington by John Taylor the Water Poet in October 1618; and a play of the same name, but probably a different one, by John Day and Thomas Dekker, was licensed on 15 January 1620. In 1632, a character newly arrived from the country in Thomas Nabbes’ Covent Garden mentions a Guy play acted by a troupe of ‘ragged fellowes’ as provincial Christmas entertainment. In the same year, Ben Jonson described his idea of the badly made play in terms that draw unmistakably on Guy of Warwick (the dun cow in particular being his trademark) – a play that starts with the birth and upbringing of the hero, progresses to his squiredom and knighting, and that knight to travel between the acts, and do wonders i’the Holy Land, or elsewhere; kill Paynims, wild boars, dun cows, and other monsters; beget him a reputation, and marry an emperor’s daughter for his mistress; convert her father’s country; and at last come home, lame, and all-to-beladen with miracles.

Guy does not, in any version of the story, marry an emperor’s daughter, and in the narrative versions he does not convert a pagan country either; but in the one surviving text of a Guy play, he does at least do the latter. The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick is something of an enigma. It was not printed until 1661, and then by printers who specialized in broadside ballads (the Lloyd-derived Guy was another text on their list). They claim on the title page that it was ‘acted very Frequently with great Applause, By his late Majesties Servants’ – that is, the King’s Men under Charles I. Whether or not that is true (and such statements in plays published after the Restoration are notoriously unreliable), the play itself is a good deal earlier than that. On the basis of its densely Marlovian diction, its close linking with a play on the subject of Huon of Bordeaux, its Chorus’s attack on Puritan views of clerical vestments, and a possible allusion to Shakespeare, it seems to belong to the early 1590s, most likely from

 





(1916–17), 229-51, 467–512 (especially pp. 491, 497); quotation from Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Five Actions by Stephen Gosson, facsmile with a preface by Arthur Freeman, The English Stage: Attack and Defence 1577-1830 (New York and London: Garland, 1972), sig. C6r. At the end of his Pennyles Pilgrimage: see Travels through Stuart Britain: The Adventures of John Taylor, the Water Poet, ed. by John Chandler (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), p. 50. Stationers’ Registers, ed. by Arber, III, 662; the licence was transferred on 13 December of the same year, IV, 44. From what is known of them at this period, Derby’s men would not have been likely to perform recent plays by London playwrights; and Day and Dekker are not known to have been collaborating at this date. ‘Ragged fellowes that were at our house last Christmas that borrowed the red blanket off my bed to make their Major a gowne; and had the great Pot-lid for Guy of Warwicks Buckler’: in The Works of Thomas Nabbes, vol. 1, Act 1 scene 1; the volume forms vol. 3 of Old English Plays: New Series, ed. by A. H. Bullen (1882–89; reprinted New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964). The play was first printed in 1638. The Magnetic Lady, in Ben Jonson, ed. by C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (corrected edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), VI, Act I Chorus lines 16–24.

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1593–94.10 Wisely, not least in view of Gosson’s and Jonson’s strictures, it begins the story in its structural centre, with Guy’s decision to abandon the newly married Phillis (who is explicitly pregnant – rarely among late versions, this one emphasizes Guy’s progeny) and undertake a life of penance. The structural centre, however, is not the centre in length: in Copland’s print of the romance, which seems to have been the author’s immediate source,11 this incident is already four-fifths of the way through Guy’s biography, and as a consequence the play finds space for a sub-plot involving a clown (named Sparrow, born at Stratford-on-Avon) and for an entire act of material introducing Oberon and his fairies that has apparently been borrowed in from a play of Huon (probably from the dramatization, now lost, for which Henslowe recorded performances in 1593–9412), not to mention the growth to manhood of Guy’s son Rainborne (the Reinbroun of the romance), who reappears in time for the final recognition scene at Guy’s death. The new generic labelling is however not inappropriate, if the main defining feature of a tragedy is thought of as being the death of the hero. It is Guy’s wooing of Felice through many thousand lines of chivalric adventure that justifies its usual categorization as romance, and once that is removed, a focus on death underlies much of the remaining action. The Tragical History is notable too for the way it tackles the problem of religion. Copland had cut Guy’s activities in seeking ‘halowes’, Jerusalem among them, to two lines (6191–92), so as to move quickly on to the rescue of Earl Jonas’s fifteen sons. Lloyd is scarcely more loquacious, allowing two long lines (i.e. four in the ballad) to his activities as a pilgrim. The play is much more forthcoming. When Guy first arrives within sight of Jerusalem in Act III, it allows him to comment, Is this Judea’s pride, fair Zions hill? Sanctum sanctorum and the house of Heaven, the place where my dear Saviour lost his Life?  [C2v]

This Guy, however, is more Crusader than pilgrim. In place of the episodes of the rescue of the Earl’s sons and of his combat with the giant pagan champion Amaraunt, the play substitutes an account of how Guy fights to raise the devilassisted Saracen siege of Jerusalem: a section culminating in the enforced conversion of the Sultan’s empire (as the hero of Jonson’s romance plot summary also achieves). Converting the heathen still carried a resonance in a Protestant world that visiting shrines did not – even more so if one read Guy’s success as an exemplary model for English championing of divine Truth in all 10

For more detail, see Helen Cooper, ‘Guy of Warwick, Upstart Crows and Mounting Sparrows’, in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography, ed. by Takashi Kozuka and J. R. Mulryne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 119–38. 11 Guy of Warwick nach Coplands Druck, ed. by Gustav Schleich, Palaestra, 139 (Leipzig: Mayer and Müller, 1923). 12 Henslowe’s Diary, ed. by R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), p. 20.

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its forms. Such a reading is indeed introduced in Time’s chorus preceding Act II, though the polemic is turned not, as one might expect, against the Pope and all his works, but against the Puritan resistance to Anglican norms: specifically, the Calvinist resistance to clerical vestments, ‘surplices and tippets’, which fuelled a lively debate, the Marprelate controversy, in the late 1580s, and rumbled on for some years after that. Guy is praised for turning his aggression ‘against his Saviours and his Soveraigns foes’ rather than against ‘Deanes and Chapters’ in his home country. The fourth act reverts to the romance story, with his return to England and his fight with Colbron; the fifth deals with his life as a hermit, though he is never described as such. Instead, after a touching scene in which he takes alms unrecognized from Phillis, he declares, Now will I hye me unto Arden wood, there in a Rock of stone I’le build a Cave,  [sig. E2r]

and vows to spend there the last of the twenty-seven years he has undertaken to devote to his ‘long Pilgrimage’. Pilgrimage here, however, comes to be equated with life itself – the same sense in which the Protestants Spenser and Bunyan used the term – as an angel comes to warn him that he will die on the day the years are completed. He speaks a twenty-nine-line declaration of faith, remarkable on the Elizabethan stage, beginning with a meditation – O what a pretious soul hath sinful man!  [sig. F1v]

– and proceeding to a summary of the doctrine of the Fall and Redemption, and a final prayer: which life eternal, grant sweet Christ to me, that in Heavens joyes I may thy glory see.  [sig. F2r]

Guy himself dies with this religious emphasis foremost. In this version, it is Rainborne, who happens to be passing by the cave, who bears his ring to Phillis, but neither he nor his father recognize each other; and as in the romance, Phillis arrives only after he is too close to death to speak to her. She invokes death (‘O break my heart, that I with him may dye’, F3r), but she is still living when the action ends. Neither child nor wife therefore significantly alters the doctrinal climax of the final scene. The play thus establishes its place in the religious controversies of Elizabeth’s reign very clearly as high Anglican, countering all Puritan resistance to the theatre with a direct attack of its own. If it were indeed acted in the reign of Charles I, as the titlepage indicates, its message would have lost none of its force; and although there is no evidence for its performance after its publication in 1661, the appearance of the text at the Restoration follows a similar ecclesiastical logic, with the renewed triumph of the Church of England. That does not add up to the Tragical History’s being a religious play, or even a belated saint’s play. There is far too much emphasis on comedy, in the 191



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activities of the clown;13 and on magic, in the second act in which Guy has to be rescued from an enchanter by Oberon and his accompanying fairies, and in the third by the more overtly devilish machinations of a pagan sorcerer, who promises to conjure up ‘heaps of damned spirits from hell’ to assist the Sultan in his siege of Jerusalem. The play does not attempt to stage the monsterfights, but it does give space in its opening chorus to the local traditions about those, with a mention of both ‘that fell savage Bore of Calledon’ and ‘the wild Cow of Dunsmore Heath’; and they reappear again in Athelstan’s closing speech at the end (since the King also turns up to honour Guy’s newly deceased corpse), in which he orders the preservation of the well-known relics – the boar’s ‘shield-bone’ at Coventry, the cow’s ribs at Warwick, a memorial ‘hermitage’ (the only usage of the word in the play) at Guy’s cave. The play does, however, enlist a very English and very martial Guy into the cause of the established Church of England, and, by implication, into the cause of the theatre itself.

Guy as epic: Samuel Rowlands’ Famous Historie Even while the story of Guy was receiving unprecedented exposure on the streets and in the playhouses of London, attempts were being made to turn the legend into romantic epic, to raise it towards the new generic example set by Spenser, or by Harington and Fairfax in their translations of Ariosto and Tasso. Guy was the subject of two such attempts in the early years of the seventeenth century. The first, by Samuel Rowlands, first appeared in 1609, in a version that became even more seminal than Richard Lloyd’s in transmitting the story down the ensuing centuries. The other, which constituted the most ambitious treatment of the story since its inception, was completed in 1621 by John Lane, who entitled it, in a pointed comment on Rowlands’ selective retelling of the story, The Corrected Historie of Guy of Warwick. Lane had high ambitions for his poem – his preface invokes Sidney, Virgil, and Spenser – but he had nothing of Rowlands’ consumer orientation, and it never progressed beyond manuscript.14 Little is known of Rowlands himself; his birth and death dates are uncertain. He was a prolific writer of short works aimed at the mass market, mostly either religious or satiric; many of them went through several editions. The earliest dates from 1598, the latest from 1628. His first and only editor, Edmund Gosse, described him as a kind of ‘small non-political Defoe’.15 He never, in 13

Sparrow is closely reminiscent of the clown in Mucedorus, also of the early 1590s, with which the play also shares some phraseology: see John Peachman, ‘Links between Mucedorus and The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick’, Notes and Queries, 53 (2006), 464–67. 14 The manuscript is London, British Library, MS Harley 5243; for discussions, see Legend, pp. 213–19, and the chapters by A. S. G. Edwards and Andrew King above. The preface is printed by Hales and Furnivall in their edition of the Percy Folio, II, 521–25. 15 The Complete Works of Samuel Rowlands, with introduction by Edmund Gosse, 3 vols (Glasgow:

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his lifetime or later, made the breakthrough into high culture or, so far as is known, the corresponding sector of the market; but his Guy of Warwick does show evidence of more poetic ambition than do most of his consumer-oriented pamphlets, both generically and in length. Its twelve-canto format is associated with epic, inviting comparison with Virgil’s Aeneid, or, more directly, with the Faerie Queene, where each book is given a twelve-canto structure devoted to a single exemplary knight. The format thus implicitly invites a reading of Guy as in effect a further defender of England to set alongside the Redcross Knight or Arthegall (itself the traditional name of one of the legendary earls of Warwick).16 Lane, who trumped both Spenser and Rowlands in producing a twenty-six-canto version, even perceives that Spenser’s Guyon is an allegorical transposition of the heroic Guy. Both Rowlands and Lane convert the romance’s tetrameter couplets into weightier iambic pentameters, Lane in Chaucerian rhyme royal, Rowlands in his favourite six-line verse form rhyming ababcc – a form also favoured by some Elizabethan writers of epyllia, notably Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis and Thomas Lodge in Scillaes Metamorphosis, and of historical narratives, such as Daniel’s Complaint of Rosemond. It is a lighter form than the ottava rima favoured by the Italian romantic epics and their translators (Ariosto and Harington, Tasso and Fairfax), but its alternating rhymes and closing couplet recall those. The connection with Fairfax furthermore may be a direct one. His translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, Godfrey of Bulloigne, had appeared as recently as 1600, with a second edition in 1602: given the recurrent attempts by English writers to replace the French Godfrey with the English Guy as the ninth Worthy, it is at least possible that Rowlands wrote his epic to counter Godfrey’s new high profile in England. He stresses his hero’s Englishness in his introductory material: the dedication’s ‘our famous Contryman’; praise in the prefatory poem ‘To the Noble English Nation’ for the ability of England to breed men of outstanding valour, and, in the parallel ‘To the Honourable Ladies of England’, for the primacy of ‘worthy English’ among the ranks of chivalrous knights; and the introduction of Guy himself in the second stanza of the main narrative as ‘a worthy English man’. Lane makes the same points explicitly in his own preface, insisting that the ‘meerly [purely] english’ Guy is properly ‘the last of the Nine worthies’, and it is only the impudence of ‘some forane haeraultes’ who have deposed him in favour of Godfrey. In appearance, the Famous Historie makes no attempt to imitate the upmarket folio form in which Godfrey had been published: it is a quarto volume, illustrated with woodcuts after the manner of many of the metrical Hunterian Club, 1872–80), I, 24. Guy itself appears in vol. 3. Quotations from Rowlands’ work are taken here from the Early English Books Online copy of the first edition of 1609. 16 John Rous’s late-fifteenth-century history of the earldom includes an account and a picture of Arthgallus: see John Rous, The Rous Roll, facsimile of the 1839 edition with introduction by Charles Ross (Gloucester: Sutton, 1980), no. 7 in the numbered genealogy. For the picture, see also Antonia Gransden, ‘Antiquarian Studies in Fifteenth-century England’, reprinted in her Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon, 1992), plate 34.

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romances, Guy itself among them. Its title page, which was to be reprinted or copied in almost every succeeding version or chapbook edition, combines many of the iconic details of the legend, its Guy in full armour carrying the boar’s head on his spear,17 with the lion stepping alongside, and both he and his horse sporting dashing ostrich-feather plumes. The introductory material – the dedication to the Earl of Montgomery, the prefatory poems – align it with more serious publications than the format of Rowlands’ other works usually claims. The appearance of the stanzas on the page is reminiscent of Spenser or Fairfax, despite their comparative brevity, and even though the pages themselves are smaller; and each canto is preceded by a quatrain verse summary set in an ornamental box, as in the Faerie Queene. Most of the woodcuts are regressive in design, but they vary in their degree of antiquarianism. The first, which shows a naked Cupid shooting Phelis as she lies dreaming of a Guy who appears mincing alongside her bed (Plate 11), makes a small appeal to Classicism, though its accompanying verse (and indeed her position in the bed) is more suggestive than the main narrative in implying just what she might be dreaming about: Faire Phelis in a Vision Entertaines the love of Guy, Injoyning aduentures strange His manly force to trie.  [sig. C2v]

The next (E1v) portrays Guy wearing what seems to be a particularly floppy set of trunk hose after the new Jacobean fashion; whereas his combat with Amarant (M1v) pictures both knight and giant in short-sleeved chain mail tunics, Guy for once without his plumed helmet but sporting long hair and a moustache in a surprisingly historical attempt at Anglo-Saxon style. Rowlands’ ambitions for the work are evident in the detail of the verse as well as the format. He scatters it with Classical allusions: its opening words, ‘When dreadfull Mars’, make a claim of shared humanist understanding that both flattered his readers and declared his own epic reach. Guy declares his love to Phelis by invoking a comparison with Hero and Leander and by a display of emotion that both recall the Elizabethan epyllion. When she repels him, he runs mad in a flurry of Classical analogies intensified from Hieronimo’s soliloquy in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy that had itself become archetypal as an expression of the distracted mind: Shall I be cousen’d as Orpheus was, Assist me Theseus to reuenge this wrong, Where’s Rhadamant?18 17

The head has tushes, and the boar was Guy’s hallmark, but many texts specify that it was the dragon’s head that he stuck on his spear: see, for example, Guy nach Coplands Druck, ed. by Schleich, lines 5975–76. 18 Sig. C1v; compare Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy III.xiii, in particular 110-11 (Alcides, Theseus’s

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Other commonplaces abound, such as a warning about the instability of Fortune (E4v). Spenser is an evident influence, both in the way Rowlands opens his cantos – In the supposed hauen of repose, Hope casteth Ancker for his Barke to ride  [sig. E2r]

– and most explicitly in the dragon-fight. Both Redcrosse’s and Guy’s dragons have ‘flaggy wings’; Spenser’s beast’s     deep devouring jawes Wide gaped, like the grisly mouth of hell,19

whilst Rowlands’ has     devowring jawes Wide gaping, grisly, like the mouth of hell.  [sig. H3r]

And when Guy abandons his wife in order to ‘learne to dye’ (L3v: a safely Protestant euphemism for his pilgrimage), the section of narrative one would expect to be devoted to his sojourn in the Holy Land instead turns into an ubi sunt meditation strongly reminiscent, in its interrogatory format, of Hamlet in the graveyard: Some tyme he would goe search into a grave, And there finde out a rotten dead-mans scull; And with the same a conference would have, Examining each vanitie at full. And then himselfe would aunswer for the head, His owne obiections in the dead mans stead.  [sig. N2r]

He accordingly runs through the skull’s possible personae, including as a ‘counsailer of state’ whose policy is now come to nothing, and as a ‘beautious Lady’ whose lips, now rotted away, once invited kissing. It is in keeping with this striving to align the work with other well-known recent literature that Rowlands makes only minimal reference to the more popular aspects of the legend: the combat against the dun cow (here upgraded into a ‘wilde cruell beast’ with nothing bovine about it, P4v), for instance, is mentioned only within Athelstan’s speech promising to preserve his relics at Coventry – a speech that here comes after Guy reveals his identity to the king after the fight with Colbrand, rather than after his death, as happens in the Tragical History. companion to the underworld), 117 (Orpheus), 141 (Rhadamanth); ed. by A. K. McIlwraith in Five Elizabethan Tragedies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938). 19 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. by A. C. Hamilton, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 2001), I.xi.10, 12.

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The later history of Rowlands’ poem attests to how well he caught the mood of his public. It went through numerous editions, and maintained its popularity despite the appearance of rival versions of the story, such as Samuel Smithson’s shorter prose version, in the mid-century. Rowlands’ own text was being reprinted until at least 1689, though by that time the new editions were appearing alongside others that looked almost identical but which took more liberties with his text. By 1680, the fashion for stanzaic narrative had given way to the fashion for the heroic couplet, and Rowlands’ Guy was adapted accordingly. It had already become customary to print the verses without breaks, so given that the title page of this 1680 sported the same woodcut, the same title, and Rowlands’ name, it may be that few purchasers noticed that the old favourite had been given a modern makeover. The only visual sign of change, indeed, is the occasional appearance of braces marking triple rhymes, a feature that announced its modernity while leaving the text itself comfortingly familiar. The couplets were created with minimal effort, most often by rearranging the original abab lines into aabb with little regard for precision of sense, occasionally by nudging a rhyme where the syntax resisted such rearrangement or by shrinking four lines into a triplet. Thus Guy’s soliloquy in which he considers approaching Phelis with a declaration of love reads, in Rowlands’ 1609 original, But if I should doe so, what hope have I, That she will hear my word, or reade my lines? She is Earle Rohands heire, and borne too hye To condescend unto my poore designes, Though I a gentleman by birth am knowne, Earledomes I want and Lordships I have none. Oh! women are ambitious out of measure, They mount aloft upon the wings of pride, And often match more for their worldly tresure, Then any loving cause on earth beside. Which makes some wish, rather there were no golde, Then love for it, should base be bought and solde.  [B2v]

The new version abandoned the early debt to the Elizabethan epyllia and instead aligned itself with the new mode for translations of Classical epic, so that the same lines run, with an opening triplet that declares its debt to Dryden: But if I shou’d do so, what hopes have I? For she’s Earl Roband’s Heir,20 and born too high To condescend to thy Designs, poor Guy! Tho’ I a Gentleman am born, ’tis known, 20

  

‘Roband’ is a frequent substitution for ‘Rohand’ across a range of these later texts, and does not seem to indicate specific lines of descent: the italic h was very easily mistaken for b.

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Guy as Early Modern English Hero Earldoms I have not, and have Lordship’s none. O! Women are Ambitious beyond measure, They often match much more for Worldly Treasure Than any other Cause of Love beside, So much they mount upon the Wings of Pride; Which makes some wish there rather were no Gold, Than Love shou’d be for it so bought and sold.21

It is at least possible that the medieval elements in Dryden’s Fables, printed in 1700, received their enthusiastic welcome in part because this Guy had already familiarized readers with such stories in heroic couplet form. The fashion for epic, however, rapidly gave way to the fashion for prose fiction, and again Rowlands’ text was given a makeover to match. The Noble and Renowned History of Guy Earl of Warwick was apparently first printed in 1706, and went through successive editions even more rapidly than Rowlands’ original; it had reached its eighth by 1736, and was still being reprinted in 1790.22 Rowlands’ name no longer figures in this version (it has a dedicatory epistle signed by an unidentified ‘G. L.’, which in turn disappears from the 1790 edition), though a rough re-cut of the traditional title-page woodcut, of Guy on horseback carrying the boar’s head and with the lion trotting alongside, appeared as a frontispiece facing the title-page itself, so that buyers could be reassured that they were getting the traditional story. The interesting thing about this version is that it is not in any normal sense a prose retelling: it is often closer to being the original text printed with run-on lines. The conversion is sufficiently perfunctory for the bones of the original pentameters, and even sometimes the rhyme, to stick through. The lines quoted above here run as follows: But if I should, can I have any Hopes that she should hear my Words, or read my Lines? She is Earl Roband’s heir, and born too high to listen to such poor Designs as mine. For, though I am a Gentleman by Birth, yet I have no Earldoms, nor Lordships neither; and Women are exceedingly ambitious; and mounting up upon the Wings of Pride, do oftner match themselves for worldly Treasure, than for that sacred Love that is far more precious; which makes some rather wish there were no Gold than Love should be so basely sold for it.  [p. 13] 21

The Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwick written by Samuel Rowland (London: printed for G. Conyers, at the Gold-Ring in Little Britain, [n.d.]), sig. A4r; dated in Early English Books Online as 1680 (Wing R2086); not to be confused with The Famous History of Guy of Warwick, Wing R2087, printed by Conyers in the same year, which is a thirty-two-page prose version so adapted and abbreviated as to leave its immediate source uncertain, even though it keeps the ascription to ‘Samuel Rowland’ ([sic] in both editions). The title pages use the same woodcut and look almost identical, but in addition to the small difference in title Wing R2087 has ‘Golden-ring’ for ‘Gold-Ring’, and, what no doubt distinguished the two for prospective purchasers, it omits ‘Price 1 s’ in the lower right corner. I have deleted a hypermetric ‘this’ from the seventh line (‘this Worldly Treasure’). 22 For a full discussion, see Legend, pp. 286–98.

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Not the least point of interest about that sequence of versions is that the formal shape of Rowlands’ original should have gone through so many fashions while leaving the content untouched. A little antifeminism, it seems, was always acceptable through all the changes of taste. It is, however, a distinctively Early Modern antifeminism: the medieval Guy is comparably anxious about how his suit will be received, but it never occurs to him, or to the authors of the various romance redactions, to extend that into an attack on women in general.23 More remarkable still in marking the longevity of Rowlands’ words is the nineteenth-century life of The Noble and Renowned History. It appeared in repackaged form, with minimal indication of the antiquity of its text, in 1821; and later editions down to 1870 presented it as a guidebook to Warwick and its environs, complete with pictures of the surviving Guy-related antiquities, which by this time had expanded to include a cauldron known as his porridgepot. An abridgement, still with recognizable chunks of Rowlands’ text, was printed as late as 1920.24 The prose version of Rowlands’ Jacobean poem was thus still being reinvented as a text for popular reading some decades after the antiquarian Hunterian Club had sponsored the first and only scholarly reprint of the original. If Rowlands’ text achieved its greatest longevity in the guise of a novel or a guidebook, it survived too for a surprisingly long time as poetry. Lines of his poem appear embedded in a short verse chapbook printed in Vermont and Massachusetts in 1792–93. It announces itself on the title page as ‘A Remarkable Account of Guy […] in a poem entirely new’, but that is far from being true. It achieves its brevity, like the play, largely by starting its story with Guy’s abandonment of Phelice, but it also cuts all the martial elements, to turn the poem into an extended memento mori taken from Rowlands’ final canto. This version too presents the story in heroic couplets, but its immediate source seems to be, not the already existing couplet version, but Rowlands’ original, subjected once again to a couplet reorganization. A sixth of its text is devoted to Guy’s will, which consists largely of a prayer – a kind of declaration of faith comparable to that put into the dying Guy’s mouth in the Tragical History. The chapbook lifts this section almost whole from Rowlands, including some lines omitted from the 1680 couplet redaction. So Rowlands’ Guy declares, I giue to Sorowe, all my sighs and cryes Fetch’d from the bottome of a bleeding hart: I giue Repentance teares & watery eyes …  [sig. Q4v]

The 1680 couplet text omits the second line, but the American version restores it (my italics):

23

For the equivalent soliloquy in Copland’s print, the version that was apparently Rowlands’ source, see Guy nach Coplands Druck, ed. by Schleich, lines 293–310. 24 This was the second of two abridgements, the first printed in 1810, the second from 1840 to 1920 (Legend, pp. 299–303).

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Guy as Early Modern English Hero To sorrow I my sighs and tears impart, Fetch’d from the bottom of a bleeding heart. I give repentance, tears, and wat’ry eyes …25

Guy’s Englishness, perhaps not surprisingly, disappears from this version, along with the giants, boar, dragons, cow, and every other fantastic element of the story. American readers could find a fuller version of the story in other chapbooks, most often in Smithson’s prose text or shortened versions of it; the Remarkable Account gave them an uplifting and moralizing treatise with an impeccably Protestant moral, which renounces the pleasures of the world as decisively as ever Guy himself did. There is however a paradox even there, for if ever there were a text that owed its longevity to its ability to give pleasure, it was not just Guy’s story, but Rowlands’ retelling of it. He may not have been a poetic genius (though he was a much better poet than he is usually given credit for), but he did have a genius for knowing what readers would enjoy. Almost drowned in black oblivion as he may be, in the long history of the romance of Guy, Rowlands can claim heroic stature.

25

Quoted from the edition by John Simons in Guy of Warwick and other Chapbook Romances: Six Tales from the Popular Literature of pre-Industrial England (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1998), p. 76. Simons discusses the role of this version among those available in America, pp. 24–26.

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Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative Short summary Guy, the son of the steward of Earl Rohaud of Warwick, falls helplessly in love with the Earl’s daughter Felice. Felice will grant him her love once he has proved himself as a knight. Guy travels to France with his companions, including Herhaud of Ardern. He distinguishes himself in a tournament at Rouen and as a prize is offered the love of Blancheflour, the daughter of the German Emperor Reiner. Guy returns to England to claim the love of Felice [E 209–1054; Auchinleck 235–1130; CUL 177–792]. On his return, Felice tells Guy that she will grant him her love only when he has proved himself the best of all knights. Guy travels abroad again and distinguishes himself in a series of tournaments. His adventures include: the ambush at the orders of Duke Otes (whom he had earlier wounded at Rouen) and the battle for the Duke of Louvain against the Emperor Reiner. The Emperor Reiner’s champion is Tirri. Otes is also fighting on his side and violently opposes the reconciliation that Guy finally effects between the two former enemies. Guy next travels to Constantinople. He frees the land of the Emperor Hernis from the forces of the Sultan and is offered his daughter in return. However, Guy is hated by the Emperor’s jealous steward Morgadour, who slanders him and kills his pet lion. At this, Guy kills Morgadour, refuses to marry the daughter, and leaves. In Lorraine Guy rescues Tirri (who has become his sworn brother) and his mistress Oisel and then helps Albri (Tirri’s father) against Loher (Oisel’s father) and Otes (now Oisel’s intended husband). After rescuing Tirri from prison Guy kills Otes. Then, whilst hunting Guy kills a young knight and has to fight with the vassals of Florentin, the knight’s father. Guy returns to England and kills a dragon that is devastating Northumberland. He returns to Warwick, marries Felice, and conceives a child [E 1055–7562; Auchinleck 1131–7306, stanzas 3–19; CUL 793–7116]. A fortnight after the marriage, Guy repents that he has so long neglected God through his excessive devotion to Felice and sets out on a pilgrimage of atonement. After visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, he successfully fights for King Triamour against the Sultan’s gigantic champion, Amoraunt. While travelling through Germany on his way back to England, Guy meets with Tirri and defends his cause against the steward Berard. On his return to England he meets king Athelstan at Winchester and averts the threat of Danish rule by defeating their gigantic champion, Colebrond. He then goes to Warwick where he receives food and drink from the hand of Felice without being recognized [E 7563–8974, 9393–11,412; Auchinleck stanzas 20–281; CUL 7117–8396, 8745–10,520]. 201



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Still incognito, Guy removes to a hermitage. When close to death he sends a messenger to Felice bearing a ring she had given him as a token of recognition. She reaches him when he is on the point of death and dies soon afterwards herself. Hearing of Guy’s death, Tirri obtains his body and has it buried in Lorraine [E 11,413–11,656; Auchinleck stanzas 282–299; CUL 10,521– 10,786]. [The story of Guy’s son Reinbroun follows, or otherwise is interspersed with, that of Guy in the various manuscript versions:] Reinbroun is born after his father has renounced married life and is therefore entrusted to the care of Herhaud. Aged seven years old, Reinbroun is stolen from Wallingford by merchant pirates, sold to King Argus of Africa, and reared by his daughter. Herhaud searches for Reinbroun and eventually finds him after unwittingly duelling with him. They set out for England. Reinbroun frees Amis, a knight who had aided Guy and is imprisoned in an elvish palace. Reinbroun unwittingly duels with Herhaud’s son Haslak, who has been searching for his father. Reinbroun, Herhaud, and Haslak reach home safely [E 8975–9392, 11,657– 12,926; Auchinleck stanzas 1–127; CUL 8397–8744, 10,521–11,976]. [After Maldwyn Mills, ‘Structure and Meaning in Guy of Warwick’, in From Medieval to Medievalism, ed. by John Simons (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 54–68 (59–60).] Detailed summary based on the Auchinleck Guy of Warwick and Reinbroun Guy of Warwick I

Introduction The narrator affirms the value of ‘auentures’ as examples of faith, truth, and fidelity. He mentions that his story is one of an earl, his steward, the love of the steward’s son for his lord’s daughter, and how, after he had married her, he went wandering. The narrator goes on to say that he heard all this from a wise man and he will delay no longer. The very rich and powerful Earl Rohaud, who owns Warwick and is lord of Oxford and Buckingham, has a daughter, Felice la Belle, who is beautiful, accomplished, and has been educated in the seven arts by the most eminent teachers from Toulouse. She is wooed by earls and dukes from the world over. The Earl also has a steward, Syward: a native of Wallingford who is faithful and valiant in defence of his master. The country is so peaceful under his supervision that a man loaded with gold can walk around safely. The steward’s son and cup-bearer to the Earl is Guy of Warwick. He possesses many knightly qualities and his tutor in the ways of chivalry is Herhaud of Ardern [1–184]. 202



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Guy’s love for Felice On Pentecost day the Earl holds a great feast, attended by earls, barons, and ladies of high reputation, where maidens and knights choose their love. After he has served the Earl, Guy dresses himself in a becoming silk kirtle and attends on Felice, who questions him about his father Syward. Guy acquits himself so well that thirty maidens fall in love with him. He, however, only has eyes for Felice. Not daring to confess his feelings, Guy returns to his chamber sick with love. He is greatly missed at court and his friends wonder at his grief. Caught in a very powerful love sickness, he curses the day he met Felice and debates with himself – one moment determining to reveal his feelings to her, the next fearing how her father would punish his presumptuousness. He throws himself on his bed and lies in torment until the feast is over. When he finally resolves to talk to Felice she scornfully rejects his suit. Driven to despair, he becomes distracted on account of love and the Earl’s doctors find he has a fever. His second appeal is likewise rejected by Felice, until one of her maids expresses pity for Guy. At last Felice is moved and tells Guy she will grant her love when he has proved himself as a knight. Guy asks the Earl to knight him and he is dubbed at a great ceremony. He presents himself to Felice only to be told that he has done nothing yet. He therefore asks his father’s leave to seek adventures overseas and receives gold, silver, and three knights, Herhaud, Torold, and Urry, as companions [185–780]. The tournament in Rouen Guy and his companions travel to France. At a great tournament in Rouen for the German Emperor Reiner’s daughter Blancheflour, Guy throws Gayer, Duke Otes of Pavia, and Duke Reyner of Saxony. His companions also distinguish themselves but Guy is declared to have won the prize. He declines the love of Blancheflour and sends his other winnings to Rohaud. On returning to England he is welcomed by King Athelstan. Guy reminds Felice of her promise, but she refuses to marry him until he is proved the best of all knights [781–1164]. The ambush in Lombardy Guy crosses the sea a second time and distinguishes himself in Normandy, Spain, Germany, and Lombardy. Although he is generally loved, he is hated by Duke Otes of Pavia, whom he had wounded at Rouen. At a tournament near Benevento, Otes realizes that Guy is wounded. Seeing his chance, Otes sends Earl Lambard and fifteen knights to lie in ambush for Guy. Despite his wounds, Guy refuses to leave his men. Urry and Torald are slain by Lambard and Hugoun (the nephew of Otes), Guy and Herhaud retaliate by slaying Lambard and unhorsing Hugoun. Gauter strikes a terrible blow on Herhaud and, seeing his companion fall, Guy slays Gauter and three other Lombards. He wounds Gwichard, who rides to tell Otes the news of the failed ambush. Otes and Guy each grieve for their lost fellows – Guy repents that the men died as a result of his love for Felice and regrets he did not heed the advice of 203



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his elders. Guy carries the bodies of Torald and Urry to a hermit and delivers Herhaud’s to an Abbey for a dignified burial. After Guy has left, the Abbot realizes Herhaud is not dead and manages to revive him [1165–1666].

The battle of Segyn, Duke of Louvain, against the German Emperor Reiner After passing through Apulia and Saxony, Guy sets off for England. At the coast he is tearfully reunited with Herhaud, who is healed and dressed as a pilgrim. They resolve to return home, but their plans are disrupted when Guy hears (from a pilgrim at St Omer) the plight of Segyn, the Duke of Louvain. Segyn killed Sadok, the nephew of the German Emperor Reiner, in self defence, having been challenged in a provocative and unchivalrous manner. After delivering Sadok’s body to an Abbey, he withdrew to his city of Arascoun, where he is now besieged by Emperor Reiner. Guy leaves the next morning to go to Segyn’s aid. He fights with Reiner’s steward before Arascoun, takes him prisoner, and is welcomed and rewarded by Segyn. Angered, Reiner summons a council where Duke Otes of Pavia advises him to renew the siege. The renewed hostilities include hand-to-hand combat between Herhaud and Guy and their opponents Otes, Duke Reyner, and Constable Gaudiner. On the verge of defeat, the Germans rally when Sir Tirri of Gormoise appears, but they are ultimately overcome. Tirri brings the bad news to Reiner and they march on the city again. Reiner’s son Gaier is taken prisoner and his men put to flight. Segyn is rescued by Guy and they retreat to the city, which Reiner assaults daily. One day, Segyn receives a tip-off from a spy that Reiner is planning a hunting trip. Guy is chosen as a peace envoy; he approaches Reiner with an olive branch and persuades him to dine with Segyn in Arascoun. Segyn presents himself to Reiner in church, barefoot, bareheaded, and with a rope around his neck, to ask mercy for having killed Sadok. Segyn’s prisoners (including Duke Reyner, Constable Gaudiner, and Reiner’s steward as well as his second son) also intercede for him, as does Tirri. Reiner eventually yields and a peace treaty is effected, much to the vexation of Otes; he and Guy almost come to blows but Reiner forbids the fight. Segyn marries Reiner’s sister Erneborwe and Guy returns with the Emperor to the city of Spires [1667–2800]. The battle of Emperor Hernis of Constantinople against the Sultan and his Saracen forces Returning from hunting one day, Guy is told by Greek merchants that the Eastern Emperor Hernis is besieged by the Sultan in Constantinople. Guy goes to his aid and Emperor Hernis offers him the hand of his daughter Clarice. Guy learns of the arrival of the Emir Costdram – one of Hernis’s strongest enemies, whose army fight with venomous weapons. Guy immediately sallies out and kills the Emir, presenting his head to Hernis as a gift. Guy’s and Hernis’s men (Herhaud, Tebaud, Gauter, Morgadour, Guinman, and Gilmin) distinguish themselves against the Saracens (who include the king of Turkey, Helmadan, Redmadan, Esclandar, Romiraunt, and an emir). As the Saracens 204



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flee, Guy fights fiercely with Esclandar and puts a lance through his body. On their return to the city, Hernis again offers Clarice to Guy, evoking the envy of his own steward Morgadour. Esclandar, still with the lance through his body, reports to the Sultan of their losses and Guy’s valour and the Sultan vows to take Constantinople [2801–3146]. While Hernis is out hawking, Morgadour invites Guy to play chess in Clarice’s chamber and Guy wins several games. Morgadour then slanders Guy to Hernis, saying he has dishonoured Clarice by ravishing her. Hernis refuses to believe the slander and says that, in any case, he has already given his daughter to Guy. Foiled, Morgadour tells Guy to flee anyway. Guy, indignant, is about to go over to the heathen side only to be intercepted and reconciled with Hernis, who is astonished as to why he would leave [3147–3390]. The Saracens make a fresh assault on the city. The Sultan sends in Helman with twenty thousand Turkish knights but the Greeks, led by Guy, who is counselled by the constable Tistor, defend themselves well. Guy fights in close combat with the Sultan himself. The Greeks construct engines and fight valiantly until the Saracens are vanquished. The Sultan, having withdrawn to his pavilion, reproaches his gods with ingratitude and smashes their statues. Meanwhile, Guy and his men return to the city and Morgadour volunteers Guy and Herhaud for a perilous mission – to take a message to the heart of the Sultan’s camp. Despite Hernis’s reservations and Tristor’s opposition to the whole foolhardy plan, Guy accepts and insists on going alone. Reaching the Sultan’s pavilion (which is distinguished by a golden eagle), and after an imprecation on all believers in ‘Mahoun’, Guy challenges the Sultan to find a champion to match him and settle the war in a single-combat contest. When the Sultan learns Guy’s name he orders him to be thrown in prison. But before he can be seized, Guy strikes off the Sultan’s head. As he rides away, with the head in his lap, he decapitates another hundred Saracens and is attacked by several hundred more. Herhaud has a dream about Guy being assailed by wolves and bears and goes to his aid. Guy presents the Sultan’s head to Hernis who sets it on a pillar as a warning to all his enemies. Hernis once again offers Guy the hand of Clarice and this time he accepts [3391–4109]. Whilst out riding, Guy rescues a lion from a dragon. It becomes loyal to him and follows him like a pet. The day of Guy’s wedding to Clarice approaches, when he will receive riches and become heir to the title of the Eastern Emperor. However, when the archbishop steps forward with the ring, Guy’s heart suddenly aches for Felice and he is overcome. He swoons, postpones the wedding, and retires to his bed for a fortnight – during which time his lion neither eats nor drinks. At first Herhaud’s advice is to marry Clarice, but he changes his view when he realizes the strength of Guy’s feelings for Felice. With his mind made up, Guy makes a return visit to court, where he leaves his lion asleep in an orchard. Morgadour attacks the lion, which runs to Guy with its guts trailing and dies at his feet. A maid who witnesses the crime reveals Morgadour to be the murderer and Guy cleaves him from head to foot. Guy then reproaches Hernis for the ill return of his good service and vows to leave. 205



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Hernis urges him to marry Clarice and become his heir, but Guy says that such a decision would cause consternation amongst the Greeks. They all weep at Guy’s parting but Guy is determined to return to England [4110–4490].

The battle of Sir Tirri of Gormoise against Duke Loher On the return journey to England, Guy and his companions reach a forest in May. In reflective mood, Guy sends his men ahead in order to spend some time alone. Allowing his mind to wander, he strays from the path, only to be distracted out of his reverie by the sound of a man moaning. Under a hawthorn he finds Sir Tirri of Gormoise, wounded after his attempted elopement with Oisel (the daughter of the Duke of Lorraine who promised her in marriage to Guy’s arch-enemy Duke Otes of Pavia). Oisel had lowered herself down from her chamber by a cable and escaped her pursuers with Tirri, only to be abducted by outlaws. Guy manages to rescue Oisel but, on returning, they find Tirri has been carried away by four of Otes’s knights. Guy rescues Tirri and kills the four knights (who include Otes’s steward as well as his nephew Hogoun). When he returns, this time Oisel has disappeared (having been discovered by Herhaud who was searching in the forest for Guy). He takes Tirri to the town to receive medical attention and they come across Herhaud and Oisel, who becomes hysterical because Tirri appears to be dead. They remain until Tirri is healed, during which time Guy and Tirri become sworn brothers. Guy prepares to return to England with Tirri and Oisel [4491–4938]. On a day before they leave, Guy is looking out at a window and sees a knight approaching. He brings news that Tirri’s father (Earl Albri) is besieged by Oisel’s father (Duke Loher) because of Tirri and Oisel’s elopement. Guy agrees to help Tirri defend his aged father and they take five hundred German knights to Albri in Gormoise. During the first battle, Guy and Herhaud rescue Tirri and return with many prisoners. Otes advises Loher to attack the city again the next day and, during this second battle, Otes is pursued by Herhaud and Guy. When help comes to Otes, Guy and Tirri withdraw into the town but Herhaud follows Otes, is nearly killed, and has to be rescued by Guy and Tirri. Otes next advises Loher to use guile. An archbishop is sent to Gormoise with an offer of peace and the princess’s hand. The two sides meet (Albri is unarmed and accompanied by Oisel) and Otes proposes they exchange a kiss of peace: Loher kisses Tirri but Guy refuses to kiss Otes. Albri returns home (he is old and tired from the journey) and Tirri and Herhaud are seized. Guy manages to make his escape – killing some of Loher’s men with his bare hands and by means of a cudgel procured from a stranger, and putting a stretch of dangerous water between himself and his pursuers. Loher returns to Lorraine with Herhaud as his captive. Otes starts for Pavia and takes as prisoners Tirri and a distressed Oisel, whom he intends to marry. He orders Oisel to be cheerful or else he will kill Tirri. Oisel persuades him to postpone the marriage for forty days and resolves to kill herself; her only hope is Guy. They reach Pavia and Otes throws Tirri into a dark prison [4939–5952]. Next day, Guy sets off for Pavia to avenge Tirri. He shelters at the castle 206



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of Amis of the Mountain, but declines his offer of support. Arriving in Pavia in disguise, Guy calls himself ‘Yon’, presents Otes with a swift steed, and pretends to have a personal grudge against Guy and Tirri. Otes makes him Tirri’s jailor. Guy murders a Lombard who discoveres his identity – telling Otes he is a traitor. He frees Tirri and sends him to Amis of the Mountain. He sustains Oisel with the promise that he will deliver her before her wedding in three days time. On the day of the ceremony, Guy overtakes the wedding party on the way to church, kills Otes, and rescues Oisel. Guy is pursued by Otes’s kinsman Berard whom he wounds and refuses to fight in ‘pleyn armes’. Berard returns to Pavia to bury Otes and Emperor Reiner grants him all of Otes’s lands and appoints him steward of Germany. Tirri and Oisel are reunited at Amis’s castle, where they remain until Guy decides, with Amis’s help, to liberate his men from Loher’s prison. They repair to Gormoise. Loher, anxious to be reconciled, sends Herhaud to meet them there with a message offering Tirri his daughter and half his land. There is great joy at the reconciliation, which takes place in Lorraine. Tirri marries Oisel [5953–6710].

The dispute with Earl Florentin One day in Lorraine Guy is hunting a great boar that he follows all the way into Brittany and eventually kills. He sounds his horn and attracts the attention of Earl Florentin’s son, who reproaches him for hunting without permission and demands his horse. When he tries to take the horse forcefully, Guy strikes him with his horn for the insult and thus kills him. Guy then rides off until he reaches a castle where he is received by the old Earl Florentin. While they are eating, church bells are rung and the son’s dead body is brought into the hall. A squire identifies Guy as the murderer and the entire court rush at him. Guy defends himself – killing the steward with an axe and many of Florentin’s best knights – and asks for his horse to leave the castle. Pursued by the remaining members of the court, Guy only desists from killing the Earl out of pity and for the meal he received. The Earl returns to bury his son and Guy returns to Lorraine [6711–7034]. The defeat of the dragon in Northumberland Guy resolves to go back to England as he wishes to see his father and friends after more than seven years abroad. All Tirri’s enemies are now vanquished – although Tirri, fearful that Otes’s kinsmen will attack him once his friend and protector leaves, offers Guy all of Gormoise to stay. But Guy longs to see Felice. He arrives in Warwick and is received by King Athelstan. One day there is news of a beast come out of Ireland that is terrorizing Northumberland. Guy attacks and kills the dragon with a strike beneath the wing. The dragon’s head is presented to Athelstan at Warwick, where it is hung and many men wonder at it [7035–7506].

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Guy of Warwick II

Guy’s marriage and repentance Switching (in Auchinleck) from couplets to twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas, the narrative re-commences with a prayer from the narrator, praise for Guy, and a brief recapitulation of the story so far: Guy has returned to Warwick having established his status as pre-eminent knight in a series of battles and adventures. While he was away his father died and Guy bestows all his inheritance upon Herhaud. Felice, the original inspiration for his martial exploits, tells Guy that she will take no husband but him. Rohaud is also eager for the marriage, which is arranged without delay. The wedding celebrations last for two weeks, during which time Felice conceives a son. But the festivities are barely over when Guy is suddenly struck by remorse. He repents that he has so long neglected God and is inspired to go on a pilgrimage of atonement. Despite Felice’s protestations, and having her assurance that she will not reveal his departure until he is away, he sets off wearing her gold ring and disguised as a pilgrim. Felice is distressed and only desists from suicide because she knows that she is pregnant and that Guy may be accused of her murder. The next day she tells her father of Guy’s departure and search parties are sent out for him [stanzas 1–43]. Amoraunt Meanwhile, Guy has reached Jerusalem and Bethlehem where he visits the holy places. Guy then encounters Earl Jonas and hears of his plight. Jonas tells the story of how he and his fifteen sons had been warring with the Saracen invaders of Jerusalem and, having pursued them into Saracen lands, were outnumbered and imprisoned by King Triamour. During their imprisonment, Triamour’s son, Fabour, fought with and killed Sadok, the son of the rich and powerful Sultan. As punishment, the Sultan’s court granted Triamour a year and forty days in which to find a champion to match the Sultan’s Egyptian giant, Amoraunt. When asked by Triamour for advice on this matter, Jonas tells how he responded by saying that only Guy of Warwick or his companion Herhaud could defeat such a giant. Finally, Jonas describes the bargain he has made with Triamour: he has agreed to bring Guy or Herhaud to Triamour within a year in exchange for his liberty and that of his sons. Ever since, Jonas has wandered throughout Europe and the East searching for Guy and Herhaud [stanzas 44–72]. Guy offers to act as champion and, though initially put off by Guy’s bedraggled appearance, Jonas accepts and presents him to Triamour in Alexandria. Triamour tells Guy (who uses the pseudonym ‘Youn’) that he should hate him for being an Englishman and a fellow countryman of Guy (who slew his brother Helmadan and his uncle the Sultan). Nevertheless, after some speculation about Guy’s shabby dress, he accepts him as his champion and promises that if he wins he will not only release Jonas and his sons but will liberate 208



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and ensure safe passage for all Christian travelers to the Holy Land [stanzas 73–88]. Guy is prepared and armed for battle, which takes place in a field surrounded by a river. During the battle Guy grants Amoraunt leave to drink but, when he asks for the same privilege, is denied unless he reveal his true name. When he hears Guy’s name, Amoraunt is infuriated since Guy in his younger years had wrought such destruction on the Saracen people. Guy makes a desperate dash for the river to drink then resumes battle, cutting off both of Amoraunt’s hands and then his head, which he presents to Triamour who holds true to his promised rewards. Guy reveals his identity to Jonas before sending him back to his homeland. Next Guy visits the shrines of Greece and Constantinople [stanzas 89–141]. [The first part of the Reinbroun story appears at this point in most manuscript copies, see the summary of Reinbroun stanzas 1–32 below. However, in Auchinleck the entire story of Reinbroun is presented as a separate romance after that of Guy.]

Berard After another long pilgrimage, Guy reaches Germany where he encounters his sworn brother Tirri dressed as a pilgrim, begging for his bread, and full of sorrow. Unrecognized, Guy encourages him to explain the cause of his poverty and distress. Tirri describes how Emperor Reiner’s steward Berard has falsely accused him of the death of his uncle, Duke Otes of Pavia (who in fact was slain by Guy previously). Tirri tells how, following his friends’ appeal to Reiner, he has been released from prison on agreement that he find and bring Guy to defend him against Berard’s accusation. Having searched far and wide, Tirri is convinced that Guy must be dead. As the time has now come to fulfill his agreement with Reiner, Tirri is desperate [stanzas 142–158]. Guy offers comfort to his old friend. Tirri then has a dream which leads the two of them to a cave of treasure, from which Guy takes a magnificent sword. They head towards court together but Tirri becomes so fearful that Guy leaves him at an inn, with the sword in his possession. Guy therefore enters the court alone as an anonymous pilgrim. He enrages Berard with reports of his bad reputation abroad and challenges his treatment of Tirri, whom he agrees to defend [stanzas 159–178]. Guy and Berard are prepared (Berard with a suit of ‘double’ armour and Guy with the sword from the treasure cave) and engage in a fierce battle. Tirri hides in a church and visits the battlefield only once, when he cannot believe that the fierce warrior he sees is the same pilgrim he met. Evening falls and it is agreed that combat will be resumed the next morning. During the night, through Berard’s treachery, Guy is carried to the sea and set adrift in his bed. He awakes to see the stars above him but, by luck or providence, is rescued by a fisherman. At daybreak, finding the pilgrim gone, Reiner confronts Berard. The fisherman intervenes with the news of his rescue and the battle is resumed 209



Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative

until Guy is victorious. Guy goes to tell Tirri the news of his defeat and, after correcting his fears of betrayal, has him instated as steward in place of Berard. Before departing, Guy reveals his identity to Tirri [stanzas 179–232].

Colebrond Guy returns to England where he learns that King Athelstan and the English barons are at Winchester praying to God for help against the Danish invaders. The Danes have demanded tribute if no match can be found for their gigantic African champion Colebrond. No champion for the English comes forward, but that night Athelstan receives a visit from an angel who tells him his champion will be the first pilgrim at the north gate of the city the next day. The king follows the angel’s instructions and Guy eventually accepts the fight despite reservations about his own waning physical strength [stanzas 233–248]. Guy is armed and prays for divine deliverance. The terms of the battle are agreed and Colebrond comes forward armed in black steel splinters and with enough weapons to fill a cart. Guy struggles under Colebrond’s blows and loses his sword. He makes a dash for Colebrond’s stash of weapons and selects a long-handled axe. Colebrond is so enraged that his aim goes awry. When he reaches to retrieve his sword, Guy takes the opportunity to cut off his arm; when he tries again for the weapon, reaching downwards, Guy beheads him. There is great rejoicing among the English, though Guy will accept no reward and asks only for the return of his pilgrim’s cloak. Before leaving Guy reveals his identity to Athelstan and elicits from him the promise that he will keep his secret for a year [stanzas 249–277]. Guy’s return to Warwick and his death in the hermitage Guy joins the poor men fed by Felice at the gates of Warwick castle and one day is among thirteen invited to eat alongside her. Still unrecognized, he is singled out by Felice for his wretched demeanor and offered daily sustenance. However, when the tables are set he leaves. He goes to a hermitage in a nearby forest, where he hopes to receive instruction. When Guy finds the hermit has died, he decides to remain there himself and receives the sacraments daily from a priest. A week before death he is visited by an angel and told to make his final preparations. He sends his page to Felice with her gold ring and she reaches him on the point of death. A miraculous, sweet smell surrounds Guy after death and no physical effort can move his body from the hermitage. Felice dies soon after and is buried alongside Guy. When news reaches Tirri, he moves Guy’s body to Lorraine and has an abbey built where masses are continually sung for Guy and Felice [stanzas 278–299].

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Appendix: Synopsis of the Guy of Warwick narrative

Reinbroun Reinbroun is abducted by Russian merchants The story of Reinbroun commences (in twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas in Auchinleck) with a prayer from the narrator and a reminder that Reinbroun’s father Guy was a great warrior who fought many battles for the love of the woman on whom he begot his son. The boy is tutored by Herhaud but, when only seven years old, is stolen by merchants. Intending to return to Russia, a tempest blows the merchants off course. They land in Africa and present the boy to King Argus, who allows Reinbroun to be educated with his daughter [stanzas 1–13]. Back in England, Herhaud sends out search parties. King Athelstan holds a parliament at which Herhaud attempts to offer advice on the impending threat of Danish invasion. However, envious lords, especially Medyok the Duke of Cornwall, accuse Herhaud of treachery and of having sold Reinbroun for his weight in gold. Herhaud defends himself against the accusation and publicly vows to go in quest of Reinbroun, to the end of the earth if necessary, and on his return to strike off Medyok’s head. When Medyok again accuses Herhaud of treachery, Herhaud’s steward Egar leaps to his defence and has to be parted from Medyok by Athelstan [stanzas 14–26]. Herhaud fights Reinbroun in Africa Herhaud entrusts his Wallingford estates to Egar, warning him that Medyok may try to attack. Despite this threat, Herhaud sets off in search of Reinbroun and travels through many countries. Whilst attempting to reach Constantinople, he is driven off course by a fierce storm and lands in Africa. The master mariner fears for their lives as they are within the domain of King Argus, a renowned hater of Christians. They reach a city that has recently been attacked and are imprisoned by Amiral Parsan [stanzas 27–32]. Informed by the jailor that he is a famous warrior, Parsan calls for Herhaud, who is unkempt and bearded after his long imprisonment but who agrees to fight against Argus. Parsan only has one city left and, as they prepare for battle, he instructs Herhaud to kill a particularly outstanding knight in Argus’s army – one whom only Guy would not fear. Herhaud rides out at the head of Parsan’s army and performs with astonishing bravery. He is rewarded by being appointed steward and he regains all of Parsan’s lost lands. Argus, angered by this old Christian knight who has done him so much damage, initiates a great battle. Herhaud almost kills Argus but a young, recently dubbed knight challenges him. They fight on horseback and on foot, each unaware of the other’s identity. Eventually, Herhaud asks the young knight’s name, which Reinbroun will not reveal. Instead, Reinbroun demands to know Herhaud’s name or he would kill him, for he is an old man. Herhaud replies that the men in his country become braver as they get older and he will think him young before they part. They continue to fight and to argue until Reinbroun reveals that he is English, his father is Guy of Warwick, Herhaud is his tutor, and he 211



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was stolen by Russian merchants. Hearing this, Herhaud thanks God, weeps for joy, swoons, then reveals his identity to Reinbroun, who begs forgiveness. They embrace, ride to the Parsan’s city together, and vanquish Argus [stanzas 32–67].

Reinbroun frees Amis On their return journey to England, Herhaud and Reinbroun come upon the castle of Amis of the Mountain only to find Amis absent. The lady of the castle explains that Berard (Emperor Reiner’s steward) banished Amis for helping Guy and so they came to live in Great Arderne. One day Amis disappeared and the lady suspects he has been taken prisoner by an elvish knight – one whom Amis once fought with but could not wound. Herhaud decides that he and Reinbroun must help Amis for the sake of Guy [stanzas 68–75]. The next day Reinbroun insists on riding into the forest alone. He rides into a hill, though a gate which shuts behind him, and reaches some water, across from which is a palace made of crystal and marble. It has cypress rafters, a resplendent carbuncle, and a tree filled with singing birds. Thinking of his father, Reinbroun plunges into the deep, dangerous-looking water. His trusty horse swims to the palace on the other side. It appears empty, but he finds Amis in a chamber who describes how he has been trapped there by the elvish knight Sir Gayer and how no one grows old in this palace. He also warns Reinbroun that strength will not avail against Gayer and he should arm himself with a sword which emits light when unsheathed [stanzas 76–89]. Reinbroun takes Amis by the hand and as they ride from the palace they are confronted by Gayer. Reinbroun, again thinking of his father, vigorously fights with Gayer who begs mercy for the sake of Guy. Reinbroun ensures the release of Amis, as well as more than three hundred knights from the elvish palace, and they are welcomed home by Herhaud and the lady. Shortly afterwards a knight brings news that Berard has been killed by a pilgrim and that, as a result, Amis’s lands in Germany will be returned to him. Amis receives his castles and towns from Emperor Reiner [stanzas 90–99]. Reinbroun fights Herhaud’s son Haslak in Burgundy Continuing their journey to England, Herhaud and Reinbroun pass through Burgundy and witness much devastation around the region. They learn that the Duke of Marce is at war with an earl who is valiantly defending his last castle helped by a noble knight less than twenty years old. This young warrior kills every knight passing the castle unless he relinquish his coat of mail or his steed. Reinbroun rejoices at the prospect of having met his match. They ride to the castle and see the knight on a white steed bearing red arms. Reinbroun attacks and they fight vigorously. He tries to discover the knight’s identity and so does Herhaud, who thinks it a pity either should be slain. Haslak agrees to reveal his identity because he wants to understand the strong and apparently irrational impulse of fear he feels towards Herhaud. Haslak is discovered to be Herhaud’s son, who had gone in search of his father. They kiss and shed tears 212



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of joy, Haslak asks for his father’s blessing, and they are welcomed into the lord’s castle [stanzas 100–124].

Reinbroun, Herhaud, and Haslak return to England Five days before Christmas they defeat the Duke of Marce, Herhaud striking the blow that kills Marce himself. Herhaud, Reinbroun, and Haslak then leave for England. They meet with King Athelstan in London and then return to Warwick and Wallingford. The narrator concludes that this is the end of his story, which teaches men to do good and avoid evil [stanzas 125–127]. [After Guy, ed. by Zupitza (1883–91), and The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick, ed. by Alison Wiggins (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), pp. 1–3. Fols 107A (the opening folio of Guy), 118, 120A, and 175A (the final folio of Reinbroun) have been partially or entirely cut away in Auchinleck, so the missing sections of text are summarized from Caius and C.]

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Index Aeneas  76 African Princess (character)  144 Alcuin  81–3 Liber de virtutibus et vitiis 82 Alexander  106 image of  117 Alexius I Commenus, Emperor  5 Allde, E.  159 Ami et Amile  22–3 Amis and Amiloun  41, 66 Amis e Amiloun  49 Amoraunt (character)  59, 97, 104–5, 107, 116, 160, 164–5, 184, 190, 194 Amy de la Mountaine (character)  175 Ancestral romances   xvii, 12, 23–4, 50, 60, 186 Anglo-Norman romance  9, 49, 50–1, 54–5 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  9 Anglo-Saxon England  51, 53, 59, 96 Anlaf  2, 111 Antioch  5 Ariosto  192–3 Aristotle  175 Arpad, Joseph   46 Arthegall  193 Arthur  55, 78, 110–1, 120, 186 Arundel/Arondel (horse)  162, 167 Ascopart (character)  157, 162, 166–7 Aselac (character)  144–5 Athelstan chair of  119 daughter of  145–6 elegy over Guy  74, 192, 195 and Felice  70 and Guy  89, 195 image of  112, 130 King of England  2, 53–4, 59, 86, 92, 108, 111–12, 130, 136, 144–6 Audience  xviii, 51, 55, 67 n.18, 77, 86, 98, 124, 187–8 Augustine  83, 175–7, 180, 184 Bagford, John  63 Baldwin of Antioch  5 Ballads  159, 163, 182, 185–7, 189 Barnet, battle of   124, 152 Batayle, John   115

Beauchamp, Ann,15th Countess of Warwick  131 Beauchamp, Anne, 16th Countess of Warwick  76, 124–5, 134, 148–9, 151–3 Beauchamp, Elizabeth   130 Beauchamp Family, Earls of Warwick arms of  122, 125–7, 130–1 and cult of Guy  xx, 120–3, 147–8, 174 estates  151 literary influence  75–6, 133–4 propaganda  125, 148 and ring motif  136–40 women of  142, 150–3 Beauchamp, Guy, 10th Earl of Warwick  25, 120–1 Beauchamp, Henry, 1st Duke of Warwick  124, 150–1 Beauchamp, Isobel  150 Beauchamp, John  123 Beauchamp, Margaret  87–8, 130, 133–4, 137, 142, 145, 148, 150–1, 153 Beauchamp Pageant  76, 124–7, 134, 148–9, 153 Beauchamp, Richard, 13th Earl of Warwick  133, 138, 150 in Beauchamp Pageant  76, 125–6, 134, 148 and cult of Guy  123–4, 130, 186 death and bequests  127, 131, 142 descendant of Guy  77, 79 and French Prose Gui  87–8 tomb of  140 n.22, 142 n.26, 151 n.58 Beauchamp, Thomas, 11th Earl of Warwick  121 Beauchamp, Thomas, 12th Earl of Warwick  121–3, 127 Beauchamp, William, 9th Earl of Warwick  121 Beaulieu Abbey  152 Beaumont, Francis  180 Bede  110 Bedford Master  128, 131 Beowulf   105 Berard (Barnard) of Pavia (character)    7–8, 48, 149, 164

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Index

(Sir) Beues of Hamtoun (ME)  27–8, 96, 112–13, 172, 181, 183 Famous and Renowned History of Sir Bevis of Southampton   163 print tradition  155–63, 161, 167 Bevis (character)  46–7, 154–6, 160, 162, 164, 167 Bhabha, Homi  100 Blake, Norman  75 Blancheflour (character)  149 Boar of Caledon  120, 164, 174, 186, 189, 192, 194, 197 Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae   175–7, 180 Boeve de Haumtone (AN)  1, 12, 17, 21, 23–4, 49 Bone Florence of Rome   69–70 Bonet, Honoré, Livre de l’Arbre de Batailes  128 Book of Homilies  173 Books of Hours  114, 131 Bordesley Abbey  25, 120 Bosworth, Battle of  126, 152 Bouvines, Battle of  6 Bower of Bliss  175, 182 Brantley, Jessica  113 Brewer, Derek  105 Britomart  173 Brunanburh, battle of  111, 146 Brut (Prose)  90, 151 n.56, 170 Buckingham, earldom of  145 Bunyan, John   191 Burgundy  3 Burnley, David  31 Bury St Edmunds  90 Byland Abbey  25 Bynum, Caroline Walker  97, 109 Byzantium see Constantinople Calin, William  24, 47, 51, 58 Calkin, Siobhain Bly  100–1 Calthorpe family  78 Canterbury, St Augustine’s  19, 15 Holy Trinity  123 Castillon, Battle of  151 Caterik family  20 Caxton, William  74, 171–2 Chansons de geste  xvii n.4, 2, 25, 60, 128, 147 Chanson de Willame  19, 49 Chapbooks  159, 164, 167, 185, 194, 198 Charlemagne  55, 81, 106 romances of  19, 128 Charles I, King of England  189, 191

Charny, Geoffroi de, Livre de Chevalerie 97 n.11 Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost 84 Chaucer, Geoffrey  78, 168, 173 The Canterbury Tales  66, 78 Melibee  84 Troilus and Criseyde  66, 78, 158 Sir Thopas  41, 52, 154, 156 Squire’s Tale  91 Chevalier au Cygne  128 Chivalry  xxi, 5, 9, 46, 68, 71–2, 73, 177–84, 188 Cholmondeley family  25 Chrétien de Troyes  2, 48, 49, 51, 114 Chronicle of the Kings of England  22 Chronicle tradition  55, 112, 185 Chronicon Universale  1, 9 Chronique de Normandy  128 Church of England  192 Clarels, King  106 Clarence, George Duke of  126 Clarice episode  8, 47, 57, 73, 99, 149 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome  100, 104, 105 n.35, 108 Colbrond episode  52, 59, 86–7, 89, 92, 97, 108, 165, 191 Colbrond/Colebrant/Colbrand (character)  xix, 2, 40, 116, 184, 195 axe of  119, 127 image of  118–19, 127, 157–8, 160, 162 Conlon, D. J.  138, 150 Constantinople (Byzantium)  1, 4–8, 94, 97–101 Cooper, Helen  9, 173, 183 Copland, Robert  157–63, 167, 170, 174–5, 177–9, 183, 190 Costdram (character)  100–1 Coventry  164–5, 195 St George’s Chapel  120 Crane, Susan  7 n.27, 12 n.2, 22, 23–4, 27, 28, 42, 51, 58, 97, 103–4 Crusader states  5 Crusades  98, 172 First  4 Fourth  4, 7, 8, 99 Danes  52, 59, 86–7, 89, 111, 130, 136, 164, 186 Daniel, Samuel, Complaint of Rosemond 183 Davenport, W. A.  53 Debray, Regis  100

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Index

Dekker, Thomas and John Day  189   n.7 Despenser family  151 D’Oilley family  148 D’Oilley, Margery  50, 147 Domesday Book  9 Dominicans  18 Don Quixote  180–1, 183 Dover Castle  171 Dragon in Bevis  173 in Guy  53, 101–2, 113, 164–7 in Spenser and Rowlands  195 Drayton, Michael, Poly-Olbion  xx, 157, 165 Dryden, John, Fables  196–7 Dudley, Ambrose  186 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester  185 Dugdale, William, Antiquities of Warwickshire  124, 136–7, 146, 148 n.48 Dun Cow (Cow of Dunsmore)  116, 158 n.19, 164–5, 167, 174, 186, 189, 192, 195 Durazzo (Dyrrachium)   5 Earl of Tolous  69 East Anglia  1, 49, 77, 85, 112 East, Thomas  157, 161–2, 166 Eastern Empire  1, 4 Edward I, King of England  110 Edward III, King of England  67 Edward IV, King of England  152 Edward the Confessor, King of England  1 shrine of  171 Edward the Elder  146 Edward, Prince of Wales  126, 152 Edwards, A. S. G.  157 n.14, 167 Edwin and Morcar  9 Elizabeth I, Queen of England  173, 185, 191 Ely  118 England  xix, 2, 11, 22, 50, 53, 55, 57, 59, 101, 108–9, 172, 186, 193 English  96, 109 in Constantinople  5, 6, 8, 9 English language  56, 58, 67 Englishness  xvi–xix, 69, 120 Esole, manor of  123 Everwic (York)  39 Ewert, Alfred  xvi, 4, 16, 29, 30, 31, 35 n.20, 36, 42, 148 Exile-and-return theme  47

Fabliau  22 Fabyan, Robert, New Cronycles of Englande  91–2 Fairfax, Edward  192–4 Fastolf, John  128 Felice/Phyllis (character) as ancestor  76 as exemplary figure  xx, 70, 133–6, 141–3, 150–3 Guy’s courtship of  47–8, 96, 108, 116, 178, 182, 196 and Guy’s return and death  10, 87, 89, 102, 140, 191 image of  118, 127, 158–9, 163, 166, 194 marriage and abandonment  54, 97, 179, 190, 198 and ring token  103, 138–41 tomb of  148, 174 Fellows, Jennifer  162, 163 n.37, n.38 Fergus  23 Ferrers, Henry de, 1st Earl of Warwick  9 n.35 FitzCount, Brian  50, 147 FitzRichard, Hugh   136–7 Fleet, London  68, 85 Florence de Rome  21 Florentine episode  71, 73, 114, 179–80 Foucher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitano  6 Fouke le Fitz Waryn  12, 23, 50, 51 Foxe, John, Book of Martyrs  173 Frankis, John  70, 71 n.27, 87, 130 Frederic Barbarossa  5, 6 Frettenham, Norfolk  77 Fyftene Joyes of Maryage  161 Generydes  78 Geoffrey of Monmouth  100 Geradus Cornubiensis (Gerald of Cornwall)  87, 118, 151 Germany  3 Gesta Romanorum  161 Giant fight  104–5, 108, 111, 118, 127, 157, 160, 162–4, 166 Gilbert, Jane  45 Giraldus Cambrensis  91 Gloucester Cathedral  117–19 Godfrey de Bouillon  174, 186, 193 Godfrey of Bulloigne  193 Goscelin, Miracula Sancto Augustin  6, 9 Gosse, Edmund  192 Gosson, Stephen  188, 190 Grafton, Richard  91

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Index

Gregory I, Pope  83 Gregory IX, Pope, Decretals  114 Grey family  21, 25, 68 Grosby, Steven  109 Gui de Warewic (AN) arming scene  106 Eastern empire in  xix, 1, 5, 6 Englishness in  xix, 58–60 and Shrewsbury Book  130 Structure   52 n.35, 57 Western empire in  6–7 Gui de Warewic (character)  5, 10–11, 54, 57–9 Guido of Tours  82 Guillaume d’Angleterre  23 Guines  125 Gundreda, Countess of Warwick  143 Guthelinus and Gwiderius  126 Guy and Colbrond  61–2, 78 Guy of Warwick (ME) arming topos in   105–7 Auchinleck version   116, 120 as embedded text   170–3, 181 as exemplum   95, 187, 190 later knowledge of  170, 173 plays of  185, 188–91 print tradition  158–61, 163, 167, 170, 174 redactions of  65–72 Guy of Warwick (character) as ancestor  xviii–xx, 134, 142, 147, 153, 185–7 arms of   125, 127 chivalric hero  9, 79, 89, 98–9, 101 crusader   99, 102–4, 135, 141, 182, 190 cult of   70, 79, 120–1, 124, 130 death and burial  136, 139–41, 174, 190, 195 defender of England  xviii, 94, 108–9, 157, 164, 183, 193 as English hero  94, 97, 109–10, 120, 125, 155 English identity  xvi–ii, xxi, 42, 69, 95, 186, 192–3, 199 as hermit  97, 124, 140, 156, 163, 184 image of   118, 127, 129 Milites Christi  94, 98–9, 103, 109, 156, 175 monster-killer  156, 160, 163–5, 188, 199 as pilgrim  xx–xxi, 70, 89, 112, 127, 171, 174, 183 tapestries of  122, 174

as Worthy  xxi, 58, 164, 186 Guyon (character)  170–1, 174–5, 177, 179, 181–4, 193 Guy’s Cliff (Gybbeclyf)  70, 71 n.27, 88, 108, 121, 124, 127, 148, 174, 182, 186 Guy’s hermitage  70, 130, 192 Guy’s porridge-pot  198 Guy’s Tower  121, 137 n.11, 178 Hamlet  187, 195 Hanna, Ralph  67 Harington, John  192–3 Harold Hardrada  8 Haukenham, John  16 Havelok the Dane  139 Hawes, Stephen, Pastime of Pleasure  167 Example of Virtue  167 Hector  106, 107 n.42 Heng, Geraldine  95, 99 Henry I, King of England  111 Henry II, King of England  5, 50 Henry III King of England  111 Henry (Bolingbroke) IV King of England  76, 122 Henry V King of England  129 Henry VI, Emperor  6 Henry VI King of England  124, 128–9, 152 Henry VII King of England  125 Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony  6 Henslowe, Philip  190 Herbert, joculator  62 Herhaud/Heralt (character)  8, 10–11, 47, 98–9, 101, 117, 130, 142, 144–5 Hernis/Ernis, Emperor of Constantinople (character)  3, 5, 98 Hibbard, Laura (Loomis)  28, 41, 53 n.39, 66 n.15, 155 n.7 Higden, Ranulf, Polychronicon  87, 91 Cronycle of Englonde  159 Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica  91 Holden, A. J.  41, 49, 58 Holler, Wenceslaus  124 Holy Roman Emperor  6 Holy Roman Empire  3 Homer, Iliad  105 Horn (character)  47, 154 Horn, Andrew   67 Horse as symbol  103 n.28, 181–2 Howard family  185 n.2 Hudson, Harriet   46, 55, 56 Hunterian Club  198 Huon of Bordeaux  189–90 Hyde Meede  87, 119

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Index

Hyde, Winchester, Liber monasterii de Hyda  87 Iconography of Bevis legend  156, 166–7 of Guy and Bevis  158, 163, 168 of Guy legend  112, 131, 156, 160, 163, 169–70, 182, 194 Innocent III, Pope  6 Ipomadon (ME)  57 Ipomedon (AN)   49, 51 Irene, Princess of Byzantium  8 Italy  3 Jason  162 Jatvartharsaga  1, 8, 9 Jerusalem  5, 125, 148, 190, 192 John, King of England  50, 111 John, Viscount Lisle  151 Jonas (character)  6, 104, 190 Jonson, Ben  189–90 Josiane (character)  113, 158, 160, 162 Keen, Maurice  143 King’s Men  189 Knighton, Henry  92, 118, 139 n.20 Knyvett family  78 Kyd, Thomas, Spanish Tragedy  194 Kölbing, Eugen  41 Konya (Iconium)  5 Kyng Alisaunder  66 Lai d’Haveloc  12, 23 Lancastrian kings  77, 123, 128 Lane, John  91–2, 192–3 Langland, William  173 Langtoft, Peter, Chronique d’Angleterre 110–12 Lay Folk’s Catechism  84 Lefèvre, Raoul  157 Legge, M. D.  8, 10, 12 n.2, 23–4, 44, 47 Leicester  90 Leland, John   91, 124 Leonetta, wife of Reinbroun  146–7 Le Saux, Françoise  22 L’Estoire de iiii sorurs  22 Lewis, C. S.  135 Liber Eliensis  146 Life of Sir Guy (Irish)  134, 136–8, 140, 143, 145 Lion  68 n.22, 113, 115, 182, 194, 197 Lion-dragon fight  115, 122, 127 Lloyd, Richard  xx, 164–5, 174, 186 n.3, 187, 190, 192

Lodge, Thomas  193 Loher of Lorraine (character)  7 London  144 book trade  79, 90, 112, 116 Lords Appellant  122 Lorraine  10–11 Low Countries  3 Lui, Yin  125 Lydgate, John  119, 131, 133–4, 136–7, 140–3, 145, 150–1, 153 Guy of Warwick  81, 86–93, 137 Hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye  160–2 Life of St Giles  90 Verses on the Kings of England  90 Madden, David  46 Maduit family  120, 125 Maidenhead Inn, Islington  189 Malory, Sir Thomas, Morte Darthur  74– 5, 101 n.24, 181 Mandeville, Sir John, Travels  84 Mannyng, Robert, Brut  110 Manuel I Commenos, Emperor  5, 6 Manuscripts: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 572  62 Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 50 (C) 2 n.3, 10, 19, 22, 25, 29, 30 Fitzwilliam MS 40–1950  131 Fitzwilliam MS 41–1950  131 Gonville and Caius College, MS 107/176  30, 31–3, 37, 39–40, 42, 53, 56–9, 64, 65, 69, 72–9 marginalia in   76 scribes of   75 St John’s College MS 256  85 Trinity College MS R.3.21  89, 90 Cambridge University Library Add. MS 2751 (J)  13 Cambridge University Library MS Dd.11.89  81, 83, 85 Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38  xvi, 31, 36, 38–41, 64, 65, 69–70, 72, 79, 134–5, 140–2, 144–5, 148–9, 170 n.4, 174, 178–9, 180 n.24 Cologny-Geneva Bibl. Bodmeriana, MS 67 (M)  2 n.3, 10, 19, 21, 30 Bibl. Bodmeriana, MS 168 (F)  2 n.3, 6 n.23, 10, 21, 25, 30, 68

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Index Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ 19.2.1 (Auchinleck)  28–33, 36–42, 56–9, 62, 63, 65, 71–2, 74, 85, 134, 175, 179–80 and Beauchamp family  120 editor of   29 n.3, 55, 59, 66 Englishness in  xviii-xix, 69, 96 exemplary texts in  70 illuminator of  116–17 patron of   67, 116 reception of  68 scribes of  62–3, 67 Speculum Guy in  83 verse form  53 Glasgow, University Library Hunter MS 231  113 Harvard, Houghton Library MS Eng. 530  88–9, 90 Leiden University Library, MS Germ. Gall. Vossius Q9  89, 90 London, British Library Add. MS 14408  62 Add. MS 27879 (Percy Folio)  62, 185 Add. MS 36983  81, 84, 85 Add. MS 38662 (E)   2 n.3, 10, 18–19, 30, 31–3, 36, 38–41, 46, 56, 58 Add MS 48976 (English Rous Roll)   124, 134, 136 n.7 Arundel MS 140  84, 85 Cotton MS Julius E IV (Beauchamp Pageant)  124, 134 Egerton MS 2781  114 Harley MS 525  82, 84, 85 Harley MS 1731  84 Harley MS 3775 (H)  2 n.3, 16–17, 25 Harley MS 5243   91 Harley MS 7333   88–9, 90 Lansdowne MS 285   125 Lansdowne MS 699  89, 90 Royal MS 2. B. VII   112 Royal MS 8. F. IX (R)  2 n.3, 10, 18, 25 Royal MS 10. E. IV (Smithfield Decretals)  112, 114–15, 117, 144 Royal MS 15. E. VI (ShrewsburyTalbot)  127–31 Royal MS 17. B. XVII   84, 85, 86 Royal MS 20. A. II  110–11 Sloane MS 1044  63, 65, 68

Yates Thompson MS 13 (Taymouth Hours)  112, 113, 114–15, 118, 120 London, College of Arms Arundel MS 27 (A)  15–16 MS Warwick Roll (Latin Rous Roll)  124, 134 Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Eng.50  84, 85 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS 591 (B)  15, 30, 39–40 New York, Pierpoint Morgan MS M.956  147 Nottingham, University Library Oakham Parish Library, MS Bx 1756 S 4 (N)  13, 25 Oxford, Bodleian Library Add. MS C.220  85 Ashmole MS 839  146 n.35, 147 Bodley MS 283  64, 75 Laud misc. 683  88, 90 Rawlinson MS D 913 (O)  13 Corpus Christi College, MS 491 (X)  13, 25 Magdalen College, MS lat.147  87 Paris BN ff 1476  130 BN fr 1669 (P)  17, 30 Peterborough, Central Library s.n.  89, 90 Ripon Cathedral, MS XVII. F.33(L)  14 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bib. MS Cod.Aug. MS 87, 4 (G)  10, 14, 29, 30, 34–6, 38–9, 41–2 York Minster, MS 16.1.7 (Y)  14, 25 Margaret of Anjou  128–30, 151–2 Marie de France, Milun   49 Marprelate Controversy  191 Marshal, William, Earl of Pembroke  8, 46 n.13, 147 Marske Hall  20 Mason, Emma  4, 50, 120, 147 Massachusetts  198–9 Mazer  123 McDonald, Nicola  45 Merlin (image of)  111 Meyer, Paul  17, 23 Michael IV, Emperor  8 Milemete, Walter de  67 Miles (character)  163 Mills, Maldwyn   29, 30, 39, 41, 42, 66, 72, 78, 134

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Index

Milner, John  119 Minstrels  155 Misericords  117–19 Moniage Guillaume  2 Montgomery, Earl of  194 Moore, William  77 Morgadour (character)  73, 115 Nabbes, Thomas  189 Nashe, Thomas   181 Neville, Anne, Duchess of Buckingham  78 n.56 Neville, Anne, Duchess of Gloucester  152 Neville, Richard, ‘Kingmaker’, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury  124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 151–3 Newburgh (Beaumont) family  120, 122, 126 Newburgh, Henry, 1st Earl of Warwick  137 Newburgh, Henry, 5th Earl of Warwick  50, 147 Newburgh, Roger, 2nd Earl of Warwick  127 Newburgh, Thomas, 6th Earl of Warwick  148 Newburgh, Waleran, 4th Earl of Warwick  147 Nine Worthies  xxi, 106–7, 109, 186, 188, 193 Noble and Renowned History of Guy Earl of Warwick   197–8 Norfolk  77, 78, 86 Normandy, loss of  4 Oberon (character)  192 Octavian  69 Oliver of Castile  161 Orality  xviii, 42, 61, 71, 115–17, 186 Ordericus Vitalis  5, 6 Osbert of Arden  51 Osney Abbey  30 Otes/Otun of Pavia (character)  7, 48, 52, 53, 71, 73 Otinel  21 Otto of Brunswick  6, 7 Otto of Wittelsbach  6, 7 Otuel  106 Palmer figure  182–3 Parliament  59, 122, 152 Paston, John II  78, 125 John III  78

Payne and sorowe of evyll maryage  161 Pearsall, Derek  67 n.18, 88 Philip Augustus, King of France  5 Philip of Swabia  6, 7, 8 Phillipps, Sir Thomas  21 Phyllis/Phelys (character) see Felice Pilgrimage  104, 107, 142, 148, 149 n.49, 171, 175, 177, 184, 186, 191, 195 Pisan, Christine de, Le Livre des Fais d’Armes et de Chevalerie  128 Playhouses   185 closing of   188 Pontus et Sidoine  128 Price, Paul  48 Prick of Conscience  83–4, 85, 86 Protestantism  172–3, 175, 183, 186, 187, 188, 190, 195, 199 Prynne, William, Historiarchos  92–3 Pynson, Richard  91, 156, 160–3, 166–7 Ramsey Abbey  25 Rate, John  65 Redcrosse Knight  172, 180–1, 183, 193, 195 Regime Principium  128 Reinbroun (character)  10–11, 47, 49, 51, 53, 57, 76, 87, 108, 116–17, 127, 134–5, 142–7, 175, 190–1 Beauchamp name  121 descendants of  145–8 wife of   144–7, 153 Reinbroun section  63, 64, 65, 74, 116–17, 144 Reiner/Reyner, Holy Roman Emperor (character)  3, 52, 98, 115 Remarkable Account of Guy  198–9 Renaissance, Legend of Guy in  xvi, xx, 157, 185–92 Renaut de Montauban  128 René, Count of Anjou  129 Reynard cycle  117–18 Richard Coeur de Lion  55, 78 Richard II, King of England  122 Richard III, King of England  125, 126, 146 n.37, 152 Richmond, Velma Bourgois  xxi, 2, 7, 8, 45, 53 n.39, 55, 56 n.43, 88 n.33, 136, 139, 144 n.30, 147, 157, 158 n.19, n.20, 165 Riddy, Felicity  70 Ring as recognition token  71, 103, 136–40, 188, 191 Ritson, Joseph  155 Robert Guischard  5

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Index

Robert le Diable  2 Robert of Sicily  84 Robinson, Pamela  64 Roger II of Sicily  5 Rohaud, Earl of Warwick (character)  46, 76, 138, 142, 158, 196–7 Rolle, Richard, Emendatio Vitae  84 Romance of Horn  12, 23, 24, 49, 51 Roman d’Alexandre  128 Romaunt de Guy de Warwik et de Herolt d’Ardenne (Prose Guy)  xix, 21 n.39, 87–8, 127, 129–30, 134, 138 n.13, 143, 145, 151 Rouen   128–9, 131 Rous, John  124, 127, 135–6, 139, 150, 152–3 Rous Rolls  76, 124, 126–7, 134, 136, 139, 143, 147, 152 n.61, 153 English  127, 134–5, 141, 145–6, 150, 152–3, 193 n.16 Latin  134, 143, 145–8, 152 n.58 Rouse, Robert  2, 47 Rowlands, Samuel, Famous Historie  xxi, 159–60, 163, 185 n.1, 187–8, 192–9 Rudbourne, Thomas  119 Sandler, Lucy  114 Sarepta, widow of  83 Schirmer, Walter  88 Scott, Kathleen L.  64, 75 n.44 Seege of Troy  84 Segyn/Seguin of Louvain (character)  7, 16 Seljuc Sultanate  5 Shakespeare, William  189, 193 Shirley, John  88, 90, 124, 151 n.56, 165 Short English Metrical Chronicle  116 Shrewsbury  131 Battle of   125 Book see BL Royal MS 15 E VI Sidney, Sir Philip  192 Sigismund, Emperor  125 Sigurd, Earl of Gloucester  9 Sir Degore  161 Sir Eglamour  69 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  105 Sir Tryamour  69 Siward of Arden  9 Skinners’ Company  75 Smithers, G. V.  66 Smithfield Decretals see BL Royal MS 10 E IV Smithson, Samuel  196, 199 Somme le Roi  85

Song of Colbrond  62 South English Legendary  85 Speculum Guy de Warwick  xviii, 81–6, 116 Speed, Diane  100 Spenser, Edmund, Fairie Queen  xxi, 92, 169–84, 191, 193–5 Speyer  3 St Albans Abbey  17, 25 St Alexis  2, 49, 137 n.10 St Bartholomew’s Priory  114–15 St Christopher  119 St Frideswide, Oxford  9 n.38 St George  119, 163 n.38, 167, 172–3 St Leonard  136–7 St Louis  129 St Nicholas Hospital, Harbledown  122 St Paul’s, London  113 St Swithin’s shrine  119 St Werburg’s Abbey, Chester  18 Statuts de l’Ordre du Gartir  128 Steward (Styward), Arthur  77 n.50 Stow, John, Abridgement of Chronicles 91 Stratford-on-Avon  190 Suffolk, William de la Pole, Duke of  76 Surrey, Thomas Duke of  122 Swan Cup  122 Swan, Knight of the  117, 122, 161 Syward/Sequart(character)  9, 58 Talbot Hours see Cambridge Fitzwilliam MSS 40–1950, 41–1950 Talbot, John, Earl of Shrewsbury  129–31 arms of  130–1 will of  151 Talbot Master  129, 131 Talbot, Richard, Archbishop of Dublin  138 Tapestries  122, 174 Tasso  192–3 Taylor, Andrew  115, 144 n.30 Taylor, John  189 Taymouth Hours see MS BL Yates Thompson MS 13 Tewkesbury, battle of  152 Thomas, Hugh  51 Thornton, Robert  65 Three Kings of Cologne  84 Thurkil of Warwick  9 Tirri/Terri of Worms (character)  7, 10, 11, 48, 52–3, 116, 174 Tosny family  122, 125

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Index

Tragicall Historie of Guy of Warwick 185–7, 189–91, 195, 198 Translation  27–43, 55–9, 65–6, 192 Treaty of Tours  131 Triamour (character)  104, 107, 176–7 Tristan   47, 49, 53 Troy  106 n.38, 107, 173 Truelove, the iiii leves of  158 Turville-Petre, Thorlac  95, 96, 105 n.34 Undo your dore  158 Uther, image of   111 Valentyne and Orson  161 Varangian Guard  5, 8 Vérard, Antoine  161 Vermont  189–9 Verse form  24, 37 n.28, 193 ‘via regia’ motif  58 Vielliard, Françoise  20 Vikings  53 Virgil  192–3 Vortigern, image of  111 Wace, Robert, Roman de Brut  19, 20, 22, 23, 110 Waldef  1, 4, 12, 21, 23–4, 41, 49, 51, 58 Wallingford  9 n.38, 50, 117, 145, 148 Waltham, Roger of  113 Warton, Thomas Description of Winchester  119 History of English Poetry  154 Warwick, Earl of (character) see Rohaud Warwick Castle  137, 164, 178 and cult of Guy  70–1, 148, 165, 192 Earls of  xx, 25, 71, 75–8, 120–1, 123, 125, 150, 152–3, 193

Guy’s return and burial  10, 54, 87–9, 108 Lady chapel  142 patronage of earls  120, 126–7, 132 Priory of  127 as romance setting  50, 96, 145, 182, 198 and Romaunt de Guy  130–1 St Mary’s  124, 142 Tapestry  174 Warwick-D’Oilley marriage  9 n.35, 120 Watermarks  64 Wathelet-Willem, Jeanne  4 Wegeat (character)  146–7 Weiss, Judith  106 Wells Cathedral  117–19 Wiggins, Alison  29–31, 57, 106 Wigod  50 Wilcox, Rebecca  99 William I, King of England  9, 111 William II, King of England  111 William of Malmesbury Gesta Regum Anglorum  8, 146 Prophecies of Merlin  21 William of Poitiers  5 William Worcester, Acta domini Johannis Fastolf  125 Winchester  xix, 59, 87, 108, 111, 120, 136, 164, 172 Winchester Cathedral  62, 119 Woodcuts  156–66, 182, 193–4, 196–7 Worde, Wynkyn de  78, 157–9, 161 Wroxhall Priory  136–7 Zoe, Empress of Byzantium  8 Zupitza, Julius  xvi, 62 n.2, 71 n.28, 139, 144

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