The St. Johns herald., 1893-12-07
THE QUEENS CHAMPION.
An Official Whose Duty It Is to
 Throw Down a Glove.
z ChiValric Title Which Has Been Held by the Dynnoke Family Ever Since the Days of Richard 1.-Scott's
 Description of the Challenge.

ne QCdk1 OI G0c queen of England's champion, which occurred at Horncastle recently, has reminded the world that even in the midst Of the present prosaic and utili- tarian age one l1nightly office, at least, is in existence, to contradict the asSer- tion of Edmund Burke that ''the age of chivalry is gone" The late holder of the office was a Lincolnshire magis- trate and an officer in the local militia; the two previous ones were clergymen. The office is not, as it has often been stated, hereditary to the Dymoke fam fly, but is attached to the lord of the manor of Scrivelsby, which is held by the ancient tenure known as grand sergeantry Ii. e., where one holds lands of the sovereign by service which he has to perform in person. The serv- ice by which Scrivelsby is held is thus quoted by the New York World: ''That the lord thereof shall be the kings champion"
 The championship has no salary att tached to it, for, though the Dymoke family hold Scrivelsby on the feudal tenure of performing this duty, they have been owners of that manor for upward of five hundred years, and they obtained it, not by royal grant or out of the public purse, but by marriage with an heiress, the last of the proud line of Marmion, granddaughter of Philip de Marmion, a name which re- calls memories of chivalry and of the poetry of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott. There is no record of the office under the Saxon kings, but, according to the late Sir Bernard Burke, its du- ties were appended by William I. as an honor to the old baronial house of Marmyon, or Marmion, the ancient owners of the manor of Scrivelsby. This manor, together with the castle of Tamworth, had been conferred, soon after the Norman conquest, on one Robert de Marmyon, lord of Fon- tenoy, in Normandy, on condition of performing the office of champion at the kings coronation.
 The name of Dymoke is Welsh. The Dymokes, or Dymocks-for the name is spelled both ways-claim a tradition al descent from Tudor Trevor, lord of Hereford and Wilmington, and founder of the tribe of the Marches. The chief himself had three sons, the sec ond of whom, marrying daughter of the prince of North Wales, half a cen tury before the Norman conquest, be- came the ancestor of one David ap Madoc, who, in the Welsh tongue, was styled colloquially Dai Madoc, the word Dai being the short form of Da- vid. His son and heir was David ap Dai Madoc, or David Dai Madoc, and by the usual abridgement Dai Madoc came in the course of time to be pro- nounced as Daimoc or Damoc, the tran sition from which to Dimoc or Dymoc, and again from that to Dimos or Dy- moke is easy andnobvious.
 The first, then, of the Dymol1e fam fly who fulfilled his office as champion was Sir John Dymoze, knight, who married Margaret Ludlow in the reign of Edward H., and was present at the coronation of Richard II. His claim was disputed by Baldwin de Freville, the lord of Tamworth castle, but after deliberation it was found that the right belonged to the manor of Scriv- elsby, as the caput baroniae or head of the barony of the Marmion family; and, as it appeared that the late King Edward III. and his son, Edward, prince of Wales, known as the black prince, had often been heard to say that the office was held by Sir John Dymolze, the question was settled in his favor.
 The Gentleman's Magazine for 1891 contains a picture of the royal champion, Henry Dymoke, in the act of riding on his white charger into Westminster hall, and throwing down the glove or gauntlet of defiance, supported on either side by the duke of Wellington and the marquis of .Anglesey, also on horseback, while two heralds stand by on foot with tabards and plumes. The performance of the champion on this occasion is thus described by Sir Walter Scott in letter to one of his friends:
 "The champions duty was per formed, as of right, by young Dymoke, fine looking youth, but bearing per haps little too much the appear ance of a maiden knight to be the challenger of the world in the kings behalf He threw down his gauntlet, however, with becoming manhood, and showed as much horsemanship as the crowd of knights and squires around him would permit to be exhibited. His armor was in good taste, but his shield was out of all propriety, being round rondache, or Highland target, a defensive weapon which it would be impossible to use on horseback, instead of being a three-cornered or leather shield, which in the time of the tilt was suspended round the neck. Pardon this antiquarian scruple, which you may believe occurred to few but myself. On the whole, this striking part of the exhibition somewhat dis appointed me, for I would have had the champion less embarrassed by his assistants and at liberty to put his horse on the grand pas, and yet the young lord of Scrivelsby looked and o11-