In the Middle Ages the story in the chronicle of
Pierre de Langtoft (Peter of Langtoft) written at the end of the thirteenth century was accepted as authentic fact. It was still taken seriously enough in the late 16th century for it to be at the heart of a prolonged dispute between the noble families of Dudley and Arden. It was also well known to
William Shakespeare, who mentioned the giant Colbrand in his plays
King John and
Henry VIII. The Anglo-Norman warrior hero of
Gui de Warewic, marked Guy's first appearance in the early thirteenth century. Topographical allusions show the poem's composer to be more familiar with the area of
Wallingford, near Oxford, than with Warwickshire. Guy was transformed in the fourteenth century with a spate of metrical romances written in
Middle English. 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. The name
Guy entered the Beauchamp family,
earls of Warwick, when William de Beauchamp IV inherited the title in 1269 through his mother's brother, and named his heir "Guy" in 1298. A tower added to
Warwick Castle in 1394 was named "Guy's Tower", and Guy of Warwick relics began to accumulate, including the reputed
Guy of Warwick's Sword, Sir Guy's fork (believed to be a historic
military fork), and large cauldron known as Sir Guy's "Porridge Pot" (believed to be a large garrison crock of the sixteenth century). Queen
Elizabeth I is alleged to have paid for these relics to be guarded. "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.
Guy’s Cliffe, near Warwick, where in the fourteenth century
Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, erected a chantry, with a statue of the hero, does not correspond with the site of the hermitage as described in the
Godfreyson (see
Havelok). The adventures of Reynbrun, son of Guy, and his tutor, Heraud of Arden, who had also educated Guy, have much in common with his father's history, and form an interpolation sometimes treated as a separate romance. A connection between Guy and Guido, count of Tours (flourished about 800) was made when
Alcuin's advice to the count,
Liber ad Guidonem, was transferred to the English hero in the
Speculum Gy de Warewyke (c. 1327), edited for the
Early English Text Society by Georgiana Lea Morrill Morrill in 1898.
Possible origins The name
Guy (from Guido or Wido) was brought to Britain by the Normans, suggesting that if the story really already existed, that the name was adapted from a similar-sounding Anglo-Saxon name. A cupbearer to
Edward the Confessor,
Wigod of Wallingford, who was also later favoured by
William the Conqueror, and whose daughter and granddaughter held the lordship of Wallingford up to the time of
Henry II, is one such candidate. Another possible historical inspiration of the romance is an historical Siward, who was sheriff of Warwickshire shortly before the
Norman Conquest, and had, according to documents quoted by
Dugdale, a daughter of the unusual name of
Felicia. Velma Bourgeois Richmond has traced the career of the character known as "Guy of Warwick" from the legends of
soldier saints to metrical romances composed for an aristocratic audience, which widened in the sixteenth century to a popular audience that included Guy among the
Nine Worthies, passing into children's literature and local guidebooks, before dying out in the twentieth century. The kernel of the tradition evidently lies in Guy's fight with the giant Colbrand. The religious side of the legend finds parallels in the stories of
St Eustachius and St Alexius, and makes it probable that the Guy-legend, as we have it, has passed through monastic hands. 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. This Olaf was not unnaturally confused with
Anlaf Cuaran or
Havelok the Dane. ==Manuscript tradition==