February 11, 1829

Scrivelsby Manor is an old English house and neighborhood occupied since before the Norman invasion. The family living there is responsible for providing an antique sounding custom, continued from very early times. called being the champion. Their job is to ride into the coronation feast of new kings, wearing full knightly regalia,  and challenge anyone to dispute that king's right to rule. It has one assumes always been a festive formality associated with regal coronations.  The custom ended in the  18th century, but until then was performed by the owner of Scrivelsby Manor. 

Scrivelsby, the Home of the Champions: With Some Account of the Marmion and Dymoke Families, (1893) is a book detailing this custom and the families that called the manor home. The author, Samuel Lodge (February 11, 1829 to September 5, 1897) was rector of Scrivelsby beginning in 1867. Lodge's nephew was Oliver Lodge, the scientist who extended his research into psychic phenomena.

The book Scrivelsby, is a labor of love, love for a terrain and way of life. Here is an excerpt which provides some interesting insights into heraldry:

.... [M]any questions [regarding heraldry] ... are still involved in doubt and uncertainty. Amongst these questions is one of some importance as regards the family crest [of the owners of Scrivelsby]. It will be seen on the brass that the .... mantling, on which the knight's head reclines, is embellished with the ears which have long been used as one of the Dymoke crests, and are generally supposed to form part of the scalp of a hare. Although two other crests have been assumed by the family—an upright sword and a lion of England —the only one that is recorded at the Herald's College is that of the so-called hare's scalp, but it would almost seem..... that we have here another instance of those armes parlantes in which our forefathers so greatly delighted. If anything could be made out of the family name, it was tolerably sure to appear in the crest or the coat of arms. Thus the crest of the Bullens—an old Lincolnshire family, by the way—was a bull's head couped: that of Longstaff a demi-lion holding a staff in his paw: Wheatley has two arms holding a garb or Wheatsheaf, and Pusey a cat passant: the crest of Hawkins is a hawk's head between two wings, and the coat of the Papillons is charged with butterflies. In like manner, in the case before us, there seems to be a punning allusion to the final syllable in Dymoke, and the crest accordingly, as recorded in the Herald's College, is taken not from the ears of a hare, but from those other ears which were used as the appropriate head-gear of the Court Jester in olden times. Nor is it difficult to trace through different languages the origin of this conceit. It was the business of the Court fool to take part in the general conversation and, if possible, to turn it into ridicule. ....The Herald's College would be able to give an authoritative decision on this point, as well as upon the two other crests used by the Dymokes, although they are not recorded in the College. It must be remembered that crests as personal decorations were anterior to coats of arms, and it requires no stretch of imagination to infer that the Kilpeck sword and the Ludlow lions were adopted by the family long before the time of the first Herald's Visitation. Crests, as hereditary bearings, belong to a later time, and few studies are more interesting than to trace their origin. Ignorance in the matter of crests is as profound as it is general, even amongst those who wear crests upon their rings and wherever else they can find a place for them.