Sir Jeffery Hudson was known as Lord Minimus, or Charles I’s dwarf, but a modern audience might call him the real-life Tyrion Lannister:
Among his Worthies of England, published in 1662, Thomas Fuller includes the dwarf, Jeffery Hudson of Oakham in Rutlandshire, immortalised by him in the following words:
Jeffery was born in the Parish of Oakham in this County, where his father was a very proper man, broad-shouldered and chested, though his son never arrived at a full Ell (i.e. 45″) in stature… His father, who kept and ordered the baiting Bulls for George Duke of Buckingham (a place, you will say, requiring a robustious body to manage it) presented him at Burleigh on the Hill to the Duchess of Buckingham, being then nine years of age, and scarce a foot and a half in height, as I am informed by credible1 persons then and there present and still alive. Instantly Jeffery was heightened (not in stature but) in condition, from one degree above rags into Silk and Satten, and two tall men to attend him.
He was without any deformity wholly propotionable whereas often Dwarfs, Pigmies in one part, are Giants in another… And so I take my leave of Jeffery, the least man of the least County in England.
At some point, Jeffery started to take himself rather seriously:
A gentleman of the household, Mr Croft, lost no time in provoking the dwarf to challenge him: a duel, only meant for fun, was arranged in the park at Nevers. Croft and the dwarf were to meet on horseback, armed with pistols. The gibing cavalier took no fire-arms, but merely a huge squirt, with which he meant at once to extinguish his small adversary, and the powder of his weapon. The vengeful dwarf, however, managed his good steed with sufficient address to avoid the shower aimed at himself and his loaded pistols, and, withal, to shoot his laughing adversary dead.
Then Turkish pirates take his ship off the coast of France. After serving as a slave, he grows — to three feet and nine inches. Eventually he makes it back to England.
I grew up in his home town. There are streets, buildings named after him. Very big man, so to speak.