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Article Excerpt
When Thomas Beauchamp II, Earl of Warwick, was condemned and exiled for treason in 1397, the forfeiture of his property generated some detailed and informative paperwork. A list of his possessions in Warwick that year includes 'a bed of white damask embroidered with divers arms and bears', and 'a "dorser" and 4 "costers" of "aras" with the story of Guy of Warrewyk'. (1) The embroidered cloth of arras went to Thomas Holland, Duke of Surrey, who also had custody of Thomas Beauchamp's young son Richard and Richard's wife Elizabeth. (2) But these items evidently found their way back into the possession of the earl when he was restored by Henry IV, for, when he made his will on 1 April 1400, he included this bequest: to Richard, my son and heir, my blessing and a bed of silk embroidered with bears and my arms, with all thereto appertaining, also a *** wrought with the arms and story of Guy of Warwick, and the sword and coat of mail, which was that worthy Knight's, likewise his harness and ragged staves; also I will that the said sword and coat of mail, with the cup of the swan, and the knives and salt-cellars for the coronation of a King, shall be, and remain to my son and his heirs after him. (3) With this extraordinary assemblage of accessories, therefore, the 19-year-old Richard began his career as the thirteenth Earl of Warwick, the fifth Beauchamp to hold that title, when his father died in 1401. When he wrote his own will, thirty-five years later, he had effectively reversed the disgrace of his father the Appellant and had become one of the foremost men of England: a celebrated soldier, statesman, poet, literary patron, and servant of the Crown. And he had done so partly by making use of his father's bequest. The saltcellars and cup, the staves and sword, became for Richard Beauchamp tokens of a chivalric identity that linked him not only to the legends of his ancestors but also to the reputation that he deliberately and skilfully constructed for himself. And of these objects none may have proved more useful for his purposes than the bed of damask decorated with Beauchamp bears and with the arms of his family.
The 'cup of the swan' and the Guy of Warwick paraphernalia represent the Beauchamps' long history of appropriating chivalric romance in the interests of self-promotion. (4) The swan cup alludes to the legend of the Knight of the Swan, known throughout Europe, associated with more than one noble family, and represented in English literary tradition by the late fourteenth-century verse romance Chevelere Assigne. (5) But the bears and ragged staves, the sword and armour of Guy of Warwick, were the peculiar property of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. (6) After the Beauchamps acquired the earldom in 1268, they evidently considered themselves heirs of the local legend: that of Guy of Warwick, whose exploits were the subject of a thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance and numerous later works in English, including the three-part romance preserved in the Auchinleck manuscript. (7) William Beauchamp IV, the first Beauchamp Earl of Warwick (earl 1268-98), named his son and heir Guy, a name that had not previously been in the family, thus creating a historical Guy of Warwick in obvious imitation of his legendary predecessor. Guy Beauchamp I, Earl of Warwick 1298--1315, included, among a collection of books donated to Bordesley Abbey in 1305, 'Un Volum del Romaunce de Gwy, e de la Reygne tut enterement'. (8) An early fourteenth-century drinking bowl shows a knight killing a dragon in the presence of a lion, a reference to an episode in the romance of Guy of Warwick--but the knight on the bowl bears the Beauchamp arms. (9) Thomas Beauchamp I, Earl of Warwick 1315-69, named his first son Guy, after the hero; his second son Thomas, presumably after himself; and his third son Reynbrun, after the son of the legendary Guy. His grandson Richard, therefore, was continuing family traditions when he established a chantry at Guyscliff in Warwickshire, where his legendary ancestor was supposed to have lived as a hermit in his last years, and placed in the chapel of St Mary Magdalene at Guyscliff a larger-than-life statue of Guy of Warwick, dressed not as a hermit but as a knight. (10)
Earl Richard's eagerness to transform fiction into artefacts was perhaps appropriate to a man who was also a literary patron and book collector, as were other members of his family. (11) The book producer John Shirley was his retainer as early as 1403, and served as his secretary for many years. Shirley produced for his patron London, British Library, Additional MS 16165--which includes, along with Chaucer's Boethius, Edward of York's Master of Game, and numerous Lydgate lyrics, a virelai composed by Richard Beauchamp for his second wife, Isabella Despenser. We can be reasonably certain, as well, that the earl owned London, British Library, MS Additional 24194, a copy of Trevisa's Polychronicon; and Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS fr. 831, a collection of poems by Froissart. These books must have been representative of a much larger collection, for the Beauchamps actively commissioned literary work. Earl Richard's first wife, Elizabeth Berkeley, daughter of the important literary patron Thomas, Lord Berkeley, herself commissioned John Walton's 1410 translation of Boethius. His second wife, Isabella Despenser, commissioned John Lydgate's Fifteen Joys of Our Lady. London, British Library, MS Harley 7333 credits the Beauchamp family with commissioning three Lydgate poems: (12) Richard Beauchamp for The Lives of St Edmund and St Fremund and for 'The title and pedigree of Henry VI', and Richard's eldest daughter Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, for Lydgate's version of the Guy of Warwick story; the prologue attached to Lydgate's Guy in this manuscript describes its subject as 'the lyf of pat moste worthy knyght Guy of warwike of whos bloode shee [i.e. Margaret] is lyneally descendid'. (13)
Two of the most thorough commentators on the connections between the Beauchamp family and the Guy of Warwick legend, Emma Mason and Carol Fewster, point out that references to the Guy legend seem to cluster around critical episodes in family history: in other words, they represent the commemoration of a heroic ancestral past in service of present politics. Both Mason and Fewster see these references as propagandistic, in that they seem to have served as methods of advancing the family's reputation and power. Thus one clump of Guy references gathers around the Beauchamps' consolidation of their position as earls of Warwick in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and another around the critical period in the late fifteenth century when the Beauchamp inheritance was in jeopardy. (14) But there is also evidence that a Beauchamp Earl of Warwick between these two points in time could appeal more generally to romance conventions and family history to advance his own prestige. In other words, we can see 'propaganda' (or, perhaps, just as anachronistically, 'public relations') operating on another level--not so much to build up the political position of the family but to build up the position of the Earl of Warwick himself. The first item in the list of objects that Thomas, Earl of Warwick, bequeathed to Richard, the bed of silk, provides a fascinating opportunity for such a study, for it inspired a well-documented event that can be dated to a specific point in Earl Richard's life. And I wish to suggest that the success of this exploit rested on its operation as enacted narrative: a demonstration of Richard Beauchamp's ability to construct and communicate systems of signification, including the structures of chivalric romance.
The primary source for my account of this event is item 10, fols [16.sup.r]-[17.sup.v], in London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 285, the 'Grete Boke' of Sir John Paston. (15) This book is a collection of texts having to do with ceremonial, military, and chivalric subjects, including a great number of items relating to tournaments and similar feats of arms. G. A. Lester suggests that Paston started the book in 1468, but notes also that item 10 is obviously a copy of a much earlier text, probably written by an eyewitness within a year of the event it records. (16) Although Richard Beauchamp is nowhere mentioned by name in this source, various details point to an Earl of Warwick; and references to the event in later sources (the Rous Rolls and the Beauchamp Pageants) indicate clearly that the English lord in question is Richard Beauchamp.
According to the Lansdowne account, the...
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