Romances of Continuity in the English Rous Roll

Edward Arden and the Dudley earls of Warwick and Leicester, c. 1572–1583

“…44 In the fifteenth century, the scholar-priest John Rous created a seamless link between the Saxon magnate Turchil and the Norman earls of Warwick by falsely depicting Henry Beaumont's wife, a Norman noblewomen called Margaret, as Turchil's daughter on the armorial rolls commonly known as the Rous rolls. 45 Rous's account of Oxford halls may have recommended him as a scholar to Richard Neville, earl of Warwick (d. 1471) and his wife, Anne, daughter of Richard Beauchamp (d. 1439), and in the mid-1440s he was appointed chantry priest at Guy's Cliffe. 46 His rolls, probably prepared in Warwickshire in the 1480s for Anne Beauchamp, gave a visual representation of the history of the earls of Warwick from the legendary Saxon warrior, Guy.…”