General Notes

BIOGRAPHY: Reyburn was stolen by foreign merchants and carried into Russia, and one of Earl Guy's train, called a gallant Knight, Sir Heraud de Arderne, went in search of his young lord. Earl Guy himself also set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and returning in the guise of a Palmer (pilgrim), arrived at the court of King Athelstan at the time, A. D. 926, when he was sorely besieged by the Danes at Winchester, and to whom he would be compelled to become a vassal unless he could find a champion to overthrow in single combat a gigantic Dane, or "Saracen," called Colbrand. The disguised Palmer inquires of King Athelstan if no one among his warriors is willing to encounter the Dane, and the King mournfully answers in the negative, adding, "I had once a gallant knight, which was the Earl of Warwick, called Guy; would to God I had him now." The Palmer, after some hesitation, for he was weak from travel and sickness, fights with Colebrand, slays him, and then discovers himself privately to the King, but begs permission to retire from active life, and he became a hermit, fixing his abode at the place since called after him, "Guy's Cliff," near Warwick. Dugdale, p. 154, gives a view of this romantic place, and of "the statue of the sometime famous Guy standing here with in the Chapell of Saint Mary Magdalen." His heater shaped shield has thereon--Chequy Or and Azure a Chevron Ermine. Reynbourne married King Athelstan's daughter. The King thus rewarded Earl Guy and Reynbourne for his rescue from Colbrand