Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick, or Gui de Warewic, is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to 17th centuries, but now largely forgotten.

In one recension, Guy, son of Siward or Seguard of Wallingford, by his prowess in foreign wars wins in marriage Felice (the Phyllis of the well-known ballad), daughter and heiress of Roalt, Earl of Warwick.

Soon after his marriage he is seized with remorse for the violence of his past life, and, by way of penance, leaves his wife and fortune to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Making his way to Warwick, he becomes one of his wife's beadsmen, and presently retires to a hermitage in Arden, only revealing his identity, like Saint Roch, at the approach of death.

The versions which we possess are adaptations from the French, and are cast in the form of a roman; the adventures open with a long recital of Guy's wars in Lombardy, Germany and Constantinople, embellished with fights with dragons and surprising feats of arms.

[9] "Filicia", who belongs to the twelfth century, was perhaps the Norman poet's patroness, and occurs in the pedigree of the Ardens, descended from Thurkill of Warwick and his son Siward.

Tradition seems to be at fault in putting Guy's adventures anachronistically in the reign of Æthelstan; the Anlaf of the story is probably Olaf Tryggvason, who, with Sweyn I of Denmark, harried the southern counties of England in 993 and pitched his winter quarters in Southampton; this means the King of England at the time was Æthelred the Unready.Winchester was saved, however, not by the valour of an English champion, but by the payment of money.

[4] The Anglo-Norman French romance[13][14][15] was edited by Alfred Ewert in 1932 and published by Champion, and is described by Emile Littré in Histoire littéraire de la France (xxii., 841–851, 1852).

[4] In the chivalric romance "Tirant lo Blanch", written by the Valencian knight Joanot Martorell, there appears a character based on Guy whose name is Guillem de Varoic.