romance. The bulk of the legend is obviously fiction, even though it may be vaguely connected with the family history of the Ardens and the Wallingford family, but it was accepted as authentic fact in the chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft (Peter of Langtoft) written at the end of the 13th century. 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. There is a certain connexion between Guy and Count Guido of Tours (fl. 800), and Alcuin’s advice to the count is transferred to the English hero in the Speculum Gy of Warewyke (c. 1327), edited for the Early English Text Society by G. L. Morrill, 1898.
The French romance (Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 3775) has not been printed, but is described by Émile Littré in Hist. litt. de la France (xxii., 841-851, 1852). A French prose version was printed in Paris, 1525, and subsequently (see G. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. “Guy de Warvich”); the English metrical romance exists in four versions, dating from the early 14th century; the text was edited by J. Zupitza (1875–1876) for the E.E.T.S. from Cambridge University Lib. Paper MS. Ff. 2, 38, and again (3 pts. 1883–1891, extra series, Nos. 42, 49, 59), from the Auchinleck and Caius College MSS. The popularity of the legend is shown by the numerous versions in English: Guy of Warwick, translated from the Latin of Girardus Cornubiensis (fl. 1350) into English verse by John Lydgate between 1442 and 1468; Guy of Warwick, a poem (written in 1617 and licensed, but not printed) by John Lane, the MS. of which (Brit. Mus.) contains a sonnet by John Milton, father of the poet; The Famous Historie of Guy, Earl of Warwick (c. 1607), by Samuel Rowlands; The Booke of the Moste Victoryous Prince Guy of Warwicke (William Copland, no date); other editions by J. Cawood and C. Bates; chapbooks and ballads of the 17th and 18th centuries: The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievements and Curious Events of Guy, Earl of Warwick, a tragedy (1661) which may possibly be identical with a play on the subject Written by John Day and Thomas Dekker, and entered at Stationers’ Hall on the 15th of January 1618/19; three verse fragments are printed by Hales and Furnivall in their edition of the Percy Folio MS. vol. ii.; an early French MS. is described by J. A. Herbert (An Early MS. of Gui de Warwick, London, 1905).
See also M. Weyrauch Die mittelengl. Fassungen der Sage von Guy (2 pts., Breslau, 1899 and 1901); J. Zupitza in Silzungsber. d. phil.-hist. Kl. d. kgl. Akad. d. Wiss. (vol. lxxiv., Vienna, 1874), and Zur Literaturgeschichte des Guy von Warwick (Vienna, 1873); a learned discussion of the whole subject by H. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances (i. 471-501, 1883); and an article by S. L. Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography.
GUY, THOMAS (1644–1724), founder of Guy’s Hospital,
London, was the son of a lighterman and coal-dealer at Southwark.
After serving an apprenticeship of eight years with a
bookseller, he in 1668 began business on his own account. He
dealt largely in Bibles, which had for many years been poorly
and incorrectly printed in England. These he at first imported
from Holland, but subsequently obtained from the university
of Oxford the privilege of printing. Thus, and by an extremely
thrifty mode of life, and more particularly by investment in
government securities, the subscription of these into the South
Sea Company, and the subsequent sale of his stock in 1720,
he became master of an immense fortune. He died unmarried
on the 17th of December 1724. In 1707 he built three wards
of St Thomas’s Hospital, which institution he otherwise subsequently
benefited; and at a cost of £18,793, 16s. he erected
Guy’s Hospital, leaving for its endowment £219,499; he also
endowed Christ’s Hospital with £400 a year, and in 1678 endowed
almshouses at Tamworth, his mother’s birthplace, which was
represented by him in parliament from 1695 to 1707. The
residue of his estate, which went to distant relatives, amounted
to about £80,000.
See A True Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy, Esq. (London, 1725); J. Noorthouck, A New Hist. of London, bk. iii. ch. i. p. 684 (1773); Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iii. 599 (1812); Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, pp. 3–23 (1865); and A Biographical History of Guy’s Hospital, by S. Wilkes and G. T. Bettany (1892).
GUYON, JEANNE MARIE BOUVIER DE LA MOTHE
(1648–1717), French quietist writer, was born at Montargis,
where her family were persons of consequence, on the 13th of
April 1648. If her somewhat hysterical autobiography may be
trusted she was much neglected in her youth; most of her time
was spent as a boarder in various convent schools. Here she
went through all the religious experiences common to neurotic
young women; these were turned in a definitely mystical
direction by the duchesse de Béthune, daughter of the disgraced
minister, Fouquet, who spent some years at Montargis after her
father’s fall. In 1664 Jeanne Marie was married to a rich invalid
of the name of Guyon, many years her senior. Twelve years
later he died, leaving his widow with three small children and
a considerable fortune. All through her unhappy married life
the mystical attraction had grown steadily in violence; it
now attached itself to a certain Father Lacombe, a Barnabite
monk of weak character and unstable intellect. In 1681 she
left her family and joined him; for five years the two rambled
about together in Savoy and the south-east of France, spreading
their mystical ideas. At last they excited the suspicion of the
authorities; in 1686 Lacombe was recalled to Paris, put under
surveillance, and finally sent to the Bastille in the autumn of
1687. He was presently transferred to the castle of Lourdes,
where he developed softening of the brain and died in 1715.
Meanwhile Madame Guyon had been arrested in January 1688,
and been shut up in a convent as a suspected heretic. Thence
she was delivered in the following year by her old friend, the
duchesse de Béthune, who had returned from exile to become a
power in the devout court-circle presided over by Madame de
Maintenon. Before long Madame Guyon herself was introduced
into this pious assemblage. Its members were far from critical;
they were intensely interested in religion; and even Madame
Guyon’s bitterest critics bear witness to her charm of manner,
her imposing appearance, and the force and eloquence with
which she explained her mystical ideas. So much was Madame
de Maintenon impressed, that she often invited Madame Guyon
to give lectures at her girls’ school of St Cyr. But by far the
greatest of her conquests was Fénelon, now a rising young
director of consciences, much in favour with aristocratic ladies.
Dissatisfied with the formalism of average Catholic piety, he
was already thinking out a mystical theory of his own; and
between 1689 and 1693 they corresponded regularly. But as
soon as ugly reports about Lacombe began to spread, he broke
off all connexion with her. Meanwhile the reports had reached
the prudent ears of Madame de Maintenon. In May 1693 she
asked Madame Guyon to go no more to St Cyr. In the hope of
clearing her orthodoxy, Madame Guyon appealed to Bossuet,
who decided that her books contained “much that was intolerable,
alike in form and matter.” To this judgment Madame
Guyon submitted, promised to “dogmatize no more,” and
disappeared into the country (1693). In the next year she again
petitioned for an inquiry, and was eventually sent, half as a
prisoner, half as a penitent, to Bossuet’s cathedral town of
Meaux. Here she spent the first half of 1695; but in the summer
she escaped without his leave, bearing with her a certificate of
orthodoxy signed by him. Bossuet regarded this flight as a
gross act of disobedience; in the winter Madame Guyon was
arrested and shut up in the Bastille. There she remained till
1703. In that year she was liberated, on condition she went to
live on her son’s estate near Blois, under the eye of a stern bishop.
Here the rest of her life was spent in charitable and pious
exercises; she died on the 9th of June 1717. During these
latter years her retreat at Blois became a regular place of
pilgrimage for admirers, foreign quite as often as French.
Indeed, she is one of the many prophetesses whose fame has
stood highest out of their own country. French critics of all
schools of thought have generally reckoned her an hysterical
degenerate; in England and Germany she has as often roused
enthusiastic admiration.
Authorities.—Vie de Madame Guyon, écrite par elle-même (really a compilation made from various fragments) (3 vols., Paris, 1791). There is a life in English by T. C. Upham (New York, 1854); and an elaborate study by L. Guerrier (Paris, 1881). For a remarkable review of this latter work see Brunetière, Nouvelles Études critiques, vol. ii. The complete edition of Madame Guyon’s works, including the autobiography and five volumes of letters, runs to forty volumes (1767–1791); the most important works are published separately, Opuscules spirituels (2 vols., Paris, 1790). They have
