him to seek fitter help. To this the king bitterly answers, “I had but one valiant knight, which was Earl of Warwick, called Guy, and he had a courageous servant, named Sir Heraud de Ardene; would to God I had him here, for then should this duel be soon undertaken, and the war finished; and as he spake these words, the tears fell from his eyes.” [Illustration: _The Castle, from the banks of the Avon._] The pilgrim is moved, and ultimately consents, and after three weeks spent in prayer and preparation the battle begins. Colbrand “came so weightily harnessed, that his horse could scarcely carry him, and before him a cart loaded with Danish axes, great clubs, with knobs of iron, squared bars of steel, lances, and iron hooks, to pull his adversary to him.” The giant uses a bar of steel in the combat, which lasts the whole day. Guy in the end proving victorious, and taking a farewell of the king, to whom he declares himself, goes towards Warwick, and thence to a hermit in its neighbourhood, living with him till his death, and succeeding him in his cell until his own decease.[34] The spot is still pointed out, and bears the name of Guy’s Cliff. But this is not the only giant-story connected with the family. Their well-known crest, or cognisance, is said to come from one Morvidus, an Earl of Warwick in the days of King Arthur, “who being a man of valour, slew a mighty gyant in a single duell, which gyant encountered him with a young tree pulled up by the root, the boughs being nog’d from it; in token whereof, he and his successors, Earles of Warwick in the time of the Brittons, bore a ragged staff of silver in a sable shield for their cognisance.” Other stories are the combat and overcoming of the famous dun cow, the slaying of a ferocious lion, and “the greatest boar that man e’er saw,” the killing of “the mighty dragon in Northumberland that destroyed men, women, and children,” and the killing of the fifteen armed knights. Such were the old fables with which our ancient family histories were obscured, or rendered romantic and wonderful to the subordinate classes.