Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/396

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Guy
388
Guy

obviously a garrison crock of the sixteenth century, and the armour is horse-armour of the same date.

The French romance was first printed at Paris in 1525, and again in 1550. The English poem was first printed by William Copland (without date) about the middle of the sixteenth century, and was soon reprinted by John Cawood. A tradition that it was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde is not corroborated. According to Puttenham (Arte of English Poesie, 1589, ed. Arber, p. 57) the story was commonly sung to the harp in places of assembly in the sixteenth century. Portions of the story were converted into short ballads (cf. 'Guy and Colbrande' in Percy Folio MS., ii. 527-39). It formed the subject of a poem by Samuel Rowlands, 'The Famous History of Guy, Earle of Warwick,' which seems to have been first issued in 1607, and was reissued in 1649 and in 1654. An extract entitled 'Guy and Amarant' figures as a separate poem in Percy's 'Reliques.' Probably Rowlands's verse suggested 'A Play called the Life and Death of Guy of Warwicke, written by John Day and Thomas Decker,' which was entered on the Stationers' Register on 15 Jan. 1618-19, but is not now extant; it may be identical with 'Guy, Earl of Warwick: a Tragical History, by B. J.,' London, 1661, 4to. The romance seems to have been first reduced to prose by Martin Parker, who issued prose versions of the history of King Arthur and similar heroes, but all that is known of Parker's 'Guy, Earl of Warwick' is an entry licensing the publication in the Stationers' Registers for 1640. A ballad in the Roxburghe collection by Humphrey Crouch [q. v.] was first printed in 1655. A chapbook, apparently first issued in London in 1684 in 4to, was republished in the next century at Newcastle, Derby, Nottingham, and Leamington. Another chapbook (London, 1706, 12mo) was repeatedly reissued down to 1821. Pegge in his 'Dissertation' in Nichols's 'Topographica Britannica' (1781) was the first to critically examine the story as credulously told by Dugdale, and to show that it is at almost all points fictitious. Pegge supplies an engraving of the statue placed by Earl Richard at Guy's Cliffe.

[Pegge's Dissertation in Nichols's Top. Brit. vol. iv.; Ward's Cat. of Romances in the British Museum, i. 470 et seq. (an exhaustive criticism of the legend and an account of the manuscripts in the Brit. Mus.); Die Sage von Guy von Warwick, Untersuchung über ihr Alter und ihre Geschichte von A. Tanner, Bonn, 1877; Zur Literatur-Geschichte des Guy von Warwick von Julius Zupitza, Vienna, 1873; Guy of Warwick, ed. Zupitza for Early English Text Soc.; Percy Reliques (Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall), ii. 509 et seq.; Collier's Bibliographical Catalogue, i. xxxviii, ii. 104, 298; Halliwell's Dict. of Old English Plays, p. 113; Cox and Jones's Popular Romances of the Middle Ages (1871), pp. 63-4, 297-319; Dunlop's Hist. of Fiction, ed. Wilson ; Ten Brink's Early English Literature, transl. by Kennedy, pp. 150, 245-7.]

S. L. L.

GUY, HENRY (1631–1710), politician, only son of Henry Guy by Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Wethered of Ashlyns, Great Berkhampstead,was born in that parish on 16 June 1631. The father died in 1640, the mother in 1690, aged 90, when she was buried in the chancel of Tring Church, and her son erected a monument to her memory. Henry was admitted at the Inner Temple in November 1652, but adopted politics as a profession. He spent some time at Christ Church, Oxford, and was created M.A. in full convocation on 28 Sept. 1663. He afterwards held an excise office in the north of England, and ingratiated himself with the electors of the borough of Hedon in Yorkshire, where he was admitted a free burgess on 2 Aug. 1669. On 8 March 1670 he was elected its member in parliament, and continued to represent it until 1695. He again sat for it from 1702 till 1705, when his parliamentary career ended. He presented to the borough at different dates a large silver cup, a silver salver, and a very fine silver mace. On the corporation in trust for several objects he settled the annual sum of 20l., and in 1693 he erected for its inhabitants' a very large and convenient town hall.' His first appointment about the court was to the post of cupbearer to the queen, but he was soon admitted among the boon companions of Charles II. On the resignation in 1679 of Colonel Silas Titus, he became groom of the bedchamber, but sold his office by December of that year. In March 1679 he was appointed secretary to the treasury, and the payments from the public funds passed through his hands until Christmas 1688. Mr. Akerman edited from a manuscript in the possession of Mr. William Selby Lowndes for the Camden Society in 1851, as vol. lii. of their publications, the details of 'moneys received and paid for secret services of Charles II and James II from 30 March 1679 to 25 December 1688,' which consisted of an account rendered by Guy some time after the accession of William III. In the 'Correspondence of Henry, Earl of Clarendon' (ed. 1828), i. 654-5, are printed the particulars of sums paid to him for secret service money for one year, to 7 March 1688.' When Henry St. John first came to court, Guy especially warned him 'to be very moderate and modest in applications for friends, and