dead or
abroad, and he mourned in his spirit. A vision revealed to him that he
must welcome at the gate of Winchester an unknown pilgrim as the
defender of the country. The King obeyed the vision in faith,
unwittingly welcomed Guy, and laid on him the responsibility of becoming
the national champion.

[Illustration: WARWICK CASTLE.

_To face p. 162._]

Footsore, half-starved, and far from young, the pilgrim required rest
before he dared prudently attack the Danish opponent. At the end of
three weeks, however, he triumphantly encountered the giant, and the
Danes kept their promise and retired. The pilgrim, who refused to reveal
his name or receive any reward, also departed. He found that his son and
heir, Raynborn, had been stolen away, and that his faithful servant
Heraud was abroad in search of him. Affected by the strange religious
notions of the day, he returned to Warwick, not to gladden the heart of
his sorrowing spouse, but to receive charity at her hands among other
poor men for three days, and then to retire to a hermitage at a cliff
near Warwick, since called Guy's Cliff. There he remained till his death
in 929, in the seventieth year of his age.[372] He sent a herdsman with
his wedding-ring to tell his wife of his death, bidding her come to him
and bury him properly, and she should shortly afterwards follow him. She
fulfilled his wishes, set her house in order, left her paternal
inheritance to her son Raynborn, and within a fortnight was laid beside
her ascetic hero.

Heraud succeeded in finding young Raynborn in Russia, to whom, on his
return, the grateful King Athelstan gave his beautiful daughter Leonetta
in marriage. He, too, seems to have been of a wandering disposition. He
died abroad, and lies buried in an island near the city of Venice. He
left a brave son, Wegeat, or Wigatus, at home to succeed him, who was
noted for his liberality to the Church, in which virtue, however, his
son and successor, Huve,[373] or Uva,[374] seems to have exceeded him.

Huve died about the beginning of the reign of King Edward the Martyr,
and Wolgeat, his son, succeeded him. In early life[375] he enjoyed the
special favour of King Ethelred, but was deprived, at least for a time,
of his honours and possessions about 1006. It was probably during the
disorganized state of the earldom, in consequence of his "evil courses,"
that the Danes ravaged it so frequently. Wigod, or Wigotus, his son, a
potent man and a great warrio