E.
“The story of Guy is so obscured with fable that it is difficult to ascertain its authenticity. He was the hero of succeeding Earls of Warwick. William Beauchamp called his eldest son after him. Thomas by his last will bequeathed the sword and coat-of-mail of this worthy to his son. Another christened a younger son after him, and dedicated to him a noble tower, whose walls are ten feet thick, the circumference 126, and the height 113 feet from the bottom of the ditch. Another left as an heirloom to his family a suit of arras wrought with his story. His sword and armour, now to be seen in Warwick Castle, were by patent, 1 Henry VIII., granted to William Hoggeson, yeoman of the battery, with a fee of 2d. per day. In the porter’s lodge at the castle they still show his porridge-pot, flesh-fork, iron shield, breastplate and sword, horse furniture, walking staff nine feet high, and even a rib of the dun cow which he pretended to have killed on Dunsmore Heath. In short, his fame and spirit seem to have inspired his successors, for from the Conquest to the death of Ambrose Dudley there was scarce a scene of action in which the Earls of Warwick did not make a considerable figure.”—Camden’s Britannia, vol. ii., 1806.
F.
Of the “Bestiary” of Philip de Thaun only one copy of the MS. is known, that in the Cottonian Collection, though of another of his quaint treatises, the “Livre des Créatures,” there are seven copies extant. Three of these are in the Vatican Library, and in England one may be seen in the Sloane Library, and another in the Cottonian. The author had as his great patron Adelaide of Louvain, the second queen of King Henry I. He dedicates his “Bestiary” to her in the following lines:—
“Philippe de Thaun into the French language
Has translated the Bestiary, a book of science,
For the honour of a jewel who is a very handsome woman,
Aliz is she named, a queen is she crowned,
Queen is she of England, may her soul never have trouble.”
His poems are the earliest examples extant of the Anglo-Norman language; we give herewith an illustration of it, the translation being from the excellent reproduction of the book by Thomas Wright, F.S.A.:—
“En un livre divin, que apelum Genesim,
Iloc lisant truvum quæ Dés fist par raisum
Le soleil e la lune, e esteile chescune.
Pur cel me plaist à dire d’ico est ma materie,
Que demusterai e à clers e à lai,
Chi grant busuin en unt, e pur mei perierunt.
Car unc ne fud loée escience celée;
Pur ço me plaist à dire, ore i seit li veir Sire!”