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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.3With 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 salt-cellars 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 Chevekre 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 AngloNorman 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 enteremwzt'.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. …
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