her death. 'She had known and admired Queen Elizabeth; she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of King James,' though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset ; she rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second.' A journal of her life, in her own handwriting, is still in existence at Appleby Castle. She was a girl in the reign of James I.; and she says, what will no doubt shock modern notions, that when she went with her mother to Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, on the occasion. of that king's coming from Scotland, their clothes were covered with vermin, simply because they had sat for a while in Sir Thomas Erskine's chamber.

The family mansion of the Cliffords was situated on Clerkenwell Green at that period. Anne Clifford lived also in the days of the Commonwealth; and to her is attributed the spirited reply to Cromwell's secretary, Williamson: 'I have been neglected in a court, and baulked by an usurper; but I shall not be dictated to by a subject: your man shan't stand.' The reply, however, must be classed with popular It was in all probability never uttered or written, but was invented as the subject of a paper in The World, not far short of a century subsequent to her death.1

errors.

SCRIVELS BY AND THE QUEEN'S

CHAMPIONSHIP.

HE family of Dymoke ranks, in point of antiquity, male and female, with the most ancient in the

kingdom. It derives the celebrated office of

Champion from the baronial house of Marmyun, or Marmyon, with the feudal manor of Scrivelsby, to which the championship is attached. The village of Scrivelsby lies about two miles south of Horncastle, on the road towards Boston, Lincolnshire. Inherited successively by the Marmyons, the Ludlows, and the Dymokes, this famed estate is rich in historic associations. It appears in Domesday-book to have been then holden by Robert de Spencer, but by what service is not stated. Shortly after, the Conqueror conferred the manor of Scrivelsby, together with the castle. of Tamworth, on Robert de Marmyon, lord of Fonteney, whose ancestors were, it is said, hereditary champions to the Dukes of Normandy previously to the invasion of England. Scrivelsby was, by the terms of the grant, to be held by grand serjeantry, to perform the office of champion at

the king's coronation. The lord of Fonteney, thus invested with these extensive possessions in the conquered country, fixed his residence therein, and became a magnificent benefactor to the church, bestowing on the nuns of Oldbury the lordship of Polesworth, with a request that the donor and his friend Sir Walter de Somerville might be reputed their patrons, and have burial for themselves and their heirs in the abbey-the Marmyons in the chapter-house, and the Somervilles in the cloister.

The direct male line of the grantee expired with his great-grandson Philip de Marmyon, a gallant soldier, who, in requital of his fidelity to Henry III. during the baronial war, was rewarded, after the victory of Evesham, with the governorship of Kenilworth Castle. His death occurred 20 Edward I. (1292), and he was then found to have been seised of the manor of Scrivelsby and the castle of Tamworth. He left daughters only; and between them his estates were divided, Scrivelsby falling to the share of Joan, the youngest co-heir, and it was by her conveyed in marriage to Sir Thomas de Ludlow. The offspring of the alliance consisted of one son, John de Ludlow, who died issueless; and one daughter, Margaret, the lady of Scrivelsby, who inherited from her brother that feudal manor; and wedding Sir John Dymoke, a knight of ancient Gloucestershire ancestry, invested him with the championship, which office he executed at the coronation of Richard II. From that period to the present-a space of nearly five hundred years-the Dymokes have uninterruptedly enjoyed this im

portant estate of Scrivelsby, and continuously performed the duties its tenure enjoins.

The second champion was Sir Thomas, the son of Sir John Dymoke, who at the coronations of Henry IV. and Henry v. executed the duties for his mother. His son,

Sir Philip Dymoke, officiated as champion of Henry vi., who made a mandate to the keeper of his wardrobe to deliver to the champion such furniture, etc., as his ancestors have been accustomed to have on these occasions. His son, Sir Thomas Dymoke, by his connection with the Lords Wells and the Lancastrian interest, was brought to the scaffold in the reign of Edward IV. His son, Sir Robert Dymoke, who was of very tender years at the time of his father's unhappy death, officiated as champion at the coronation of. Richard III., Henry VII., and Henry VIII. He was one of the principal commanders at the siege of Tournay, and was a knight banneret. His son, Sir Edward Dymoke, officiated at the coronations of Edward vi., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. The last male representative, Sir Henry Dymoke, Bart., succeeded to the estates and the hereditary championship at the decease of his father, the Rev. John Dymoke, in 1828, he having previously performed the duties. as deputy for that reverend gentleman at the coronation of King George IV.

Sir Walter Scott tells us: 'The champion was performed (as of right) by young Dymoke, a fine-looking youth, but bearing perhaps a little too much the appearance of a maiden knight to be the challenger of the world in a king's

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. On the whole, this striking part of the exhibition somewhat disappointed 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 behaved extremely well.' Haydon the painter describes Wellington, Howard, and the champion standing in full view as the finest sight of the day: The herald read the challenge; the glove was thrown down; they then all proceeded to the throne.' Sir Henry Dymoke was the seventeenth of his family who inherited the ancient office of champion. Sir Henry also officiated as champion at the coronation of William IV. and our present Most Gracious Sovereign; but the ceremonial was then shorn of its ancient chivalric state.

Sir Henry Dymoke was created a baronet in 1841. He died 28th April 1865, when the baronetcy became extinct; and the estate of Scrivelsby and the office of champion passed to his only brother, the Rev. John Dymoke, rector of Scrivelsby and Roughton, Lincolnshire, now the Honourable the Queen's Champion.

One gentleman, a scion of the house of Dymoke in the female line, Edmund Lionel Welles, Esq. of Grebby Hall, county Lincoln, has, since the death of the baronet, assumed, by royal licence, the additional surname and arms of Dymoke; no doubt in the contemplation of the