My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern potentate injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and irritated especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of a pillar, night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. The offender had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant Simeon, but was cudgelled almost into pulp by the simulacre of that saint. I very much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy dwelling-place at that particular hour of the night. I was reminded of this by what happened to the duke’s champion, Robert de Marmion. He was roused from a deep sleep by the vision of a stout lady, who announced herself as the wronged St. Edith, and who proceeded to show her opinion of De Marmion’s conduct toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her crosier, until she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with repentance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that night, it is impossible to say; but that he enacted the part successfully, is seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to Polesworth, and made ample restitution of all of which they had been deprived. The nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing.
With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by grand sergeantry, “to perform the office of champion at the King’s coronation.” At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his ill-acquired prize—the priory; but happening to fall into one of the newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor, a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior, too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling and emphatically “battling” life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned. This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too, in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate, and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs.
This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and “modern instances.”
SIR GUY OF WARWICK,
AND WHAT BEFELL HIM.
“His desires
Are higher than his state, and his deserts
Not much short of the most he can desire.”
Chapman’s Byron’s Conspiracy.
The Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular name in the county of York. I have never heard a reason assigned for this, but I think it may have originated in admiration of the deeds and the man whose appellation and reputation have survived to our times. I do not allude to Guy Faux; that young gentleman was the Father of Perverts, but by no means the first of the Guys.