  The earliest known printed edition of this romance is French, "Cy commence Guy de Waruich, chevalier d'Angleterre, qui en son temps fit plusieurs prouesses et conquestes en Angleterre, en Allemaigne, Ytalie et Dannemarche, et aussi sur les infidelles ennemys de la chrestienetÉ. Par Fr. Regnault, 7 Mars 1525," small folio, Gothic letter; and Ebert mentions an earlier undated edition. Hazlitt says the Bodleian library possesses a fragment of one leaf, containing thirty lines on a page, and printed with the types of Wynkyn de Worde's "Memorare Novissima." In Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, vol. x. p. 46, E. F. B. writes: "On recently examining a copy of the Sarum Ordinale edited by Master Clerke, Chantor of King's Coll. Cambridge, and printed by Pynson in 1501, I found three fly leaves of a book of earlier date, respecting which I should be glad to be informed; and therefore I subjoin a passage by which it may or may not be identified with the romance of Sir Guy. The type is of the Gothic character. "Wyth that the lumbardis fledde away Guy Guy and heraude and terrey pfay Chased after theym gode wone, They slowe and toke many one, The Lumbardis made sory crye. For they were on the worse partye, Of this toke duke otton gode hede, And fledde to an hylle gode spede; That none sued of theym echone, But syr heraude of arderne alone, Heraude hym sued as an egyr lyon And euer he cryed on duke otton, Heraude had of hym no doubte, Nor he sawe no man ferre aboute, But only theymselfe two." The earliest copy in the British Museum is 1560?, "The Booke of the most victoryous Prince Guy of Warwicke," and it was "Imprynted at London in Lothbury, ouer agaynst saynt Margarits Church, by Wylliam Copland," quarto, imperfect. This is in verse, beginning— "Sithen the tyme that God was borne And Chrisendom was set and sworne Many aduentures haue befall The which that men knew not all." There is a fine fourteenth-century illumination in the royal manuscripts in the British Museum (20 A. ii. fo. 4b) of Guy as a hermit. The mute witnesses of Guy's wonderful deeds, preserved in Warwick Castle, have been proved apocryphal in these investigating and matter-of-fact days. His breastplate, or helmet, is the "croupe" of a suit of horse armour; another breastplate is a "poitrel." His famous porridge-pot or punch-bowl is a garrison crock of the sixteenth century, and his fork a military fork, temp. Henry VIII. |
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