been deprived. The nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing. With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by grand sergeantry, "to perform the office of champion at the King's coronation." At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his ill-acquired prize-the priory; but happening to fall into one of the newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor, a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior, too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling and emphatically "battling" life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned. This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too, in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate, and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs. This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and "modern instances." SIR GUY OF WARWICK, AND WHAT BEFELL HIM. "His desires Are higher than his state, and his deserts Not much short of the most he can desire." Chapman's Byron's Conspiracy. THE Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular name in the county of York. I have never heard a reason assigned for this, but I think it may have originated in admiration of the deeds and the man whose appellation and reputation have survived to our times. I do not allude to Guy Faux; that young gentleman was the Father of Perverts, but by no means the first of the Guys. The "Master Guy" of whom I am treating here, or, rather, about to treat, was a youth whose family originally came from Northumberland. That family was, in one sense, more noble than the imperial family of Muscovy, for its members boasted not only of good principles, but of sound teeth. The teeth and principles of the Romanoffs are known to be in a distressing state of dilapidation. Well; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, and being compelled to compound with their creditors, by plundering the latter, and paying them zero in the pound, migrated southward, and finally settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the sense about him, and house had a considerable share of common after much suffering in a state of shabby gentility, he not only sent his daughters out to earn their own livelihood, but, to the intense disgust of his spouse, hired himself as steward to that noble gentleman the Earl of Warwick. "My blood is as good as ever it was," said he to the fine lady his wife. "It is the blood of an upper servant," cried she, "and my father's daughter is the spouse of a flunkey. The husband was not discouraged; 'and he not only opened his office in his patron's castle but he took his only son with him, and made him his first clerk. This son's name was Guy; and he was rather given to bird-catching, hare-snaring, and "gentism" generally. He had been a precocious youth from some months previous to his birth, and had given his lady-mother such horrid annoyance, that she was always dreaming of battles, fiery-cars, strong-smelling dragons, and the wrathful Mars. "Well," she used to remark to her female friends, while the gentlemen were over their wine, "I expect that this boy" (she had made up her mind to that) "will make a noise in the world, draw bills upon his father, and be the terror of maid-servants. Why, do you know- and here she became confidential, and I do not feel authorized to repeat what she then communicated. At eight years But Master Guy, the "little stranger" alluded to, proved better than was expected. He might have been considerably worse, and yet would not have been so bad as maternal prophecy had depicted him. but I hear you say, "When did all this occur?" Well, it was in a November's "Morning Post," that announcement was made of the birth; and as to the year, Master Guy has given it himself in the old metrical romance, "Two hundred and twenty years and odd, After our Savior Christ his birth, I lived here upon the earth." At eight years old, I was about to remark, young Guy was the most insufferable puppy of his district. He won all the prizes for athletic sports; and by the time he was sixteen there was not a man in all England who dared accept his challenge to wrestle with both arms, against him using only one. It was at this time that he kept his father's books and a leash of hounds, with the latter of which he performed such extraordinary feats, that the Earl of Warwick invited him from the steward's room to his own table; where Guy's father changed his plate, and Master Guy twitched him by the beard as he did it. At the head of the earl's table sat his daughter "Phillis the Fair," a lady who, like her namesake in the song, was "sometimes forward, sometimes coy," and altogether so sweetly smiling and so beguiling, that when the earl asked Guy if he would not come and hunt (the dinner was at 10 A. M.), Guy answered, as the Frenchman did who could not bear the sport, with a Merci, j'ai été ! and affecting an iliac seizure, hinted at the necessity of staying at home. ment. The youth forthwith was carried to bed. Phillis sent him a posset, the earl sent him his own physician; and this learned gentleman, after much perplexity veiled beneath the most affable and confident humbug, wrote a prescription which, if it could do the patient no good would do him no harm. He was a most skilful man, and his patients almost invariably recovered under this treatHe occasionally sacrificed one or two when a consultation was held, and he was called upon to prescribe secundum artem; but he compensated for this professional slaying by, in other cases, leaving matters to Nature, who was the active partner in his firm, and of whose success he was not in the least degree jealous. So, when he had written the prescription, Master Guy fell a discoursing of the passion of love, and that with a completeness and a variety of illustration as though he were the author of the chapter on that subject in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The doctor heard him to the end, gently rubbing one side of his nose the while with the index-finger of his right hand; and when his patient had concluded, the medical gentleman smiled, hummed "Phillis is my only joy," and left the room with his head nodding like a Chinese Mandarin's. By this time the four o'clock sun was making green and gold pillars of the trees in the neighboring wood, and Guy got up, looked at the falling leaves, and thought of the autumn of his hopes. He whistled "Down, derry, down," with a marked emphasis on the down; but suddenly his hopes again sprang up, as he beheld Phillis among her flower-beds, engaged in the healthful occupation which a sublime poet has given to the heroine whom he names, and whose action he describes, when he tells us that "Miss Dinah was a-walking in her garding one day." Guy trussed his points, pulled up his hose, set his bonnet smartly on his head, clapped a bodkin on his thigh, and then walked into the garden with the air of the once young D'Egville in a ballet, looking after a nymph-which indeed was a pursuit he was much given to when he was old D'Egville, and could no longer bound throught his ballets, because he was stiff in the joints. Guy, of course, went down on one knee, and at once plunged into the most fiery style of declaration, but Phillis had not read the Mrs. Chapone of that day for nothing. She brought him back to prose and propriety, and then the two started afresh, and they did talk! Guy felt a little "streaked" at first, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and it would have been edifying for the young mind to have heard how these two pretty things spoke to, and answered each other in moral maxims stolen from the top pages of their copy-books. They poured them out by the score, and the proverbial philosophy they enunciated was really the origin of the book so named by Martin Tupper. He took it all from Phillis and Guy, whose descendants, of the last name, were so famous for their school-books. This I expect Mr. Tupper will (not) mention in his next edition. After much profitable interchange of this sort of article, the lady gently hinted that Master Guy was not indifferent to her, but that he was of inferior birth, yet of qualities that made him equal with her; adding, that hitherto he had done little but kill other people's game, whereas there were nobler deeds to be accomplished. And then she bade him go in search of perilous adventures, winding up with the toast and sentiment, "Master Guy, eagles do not care to catch flies.” Reader, if you have ever seen the prince of pantomimists, Mr. Payne, tear the hair of his theatrical wig in a fit of amorous despair, you may have some idea as to the intensity with which Master Guy illustrated his own desperation. He stamped the ground with such energy that all the hitherto quiet aspens fell a-shaking, and their descendants have ever since maintained the same fashion. Phillis fell a-crying at this demonstration, and softened considerably. After a lapse of five minutes, she had blushingly directed Master Guy to "speak to papa." Now, of all horrible interviews, this perhaps is the most horrible. Nelson used to say that there was only one thing on earth which he dreaded, and that was dining with a mayor and corporation. |