The three Knights. We thus then seal our contract.
Geo. Which thus we ratifie.
Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon;
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance,
We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.
And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it. The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.
Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of England is perhaps the most important personage—in the point of view of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (les pions) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place. Now the champ pion, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more than the field pion, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the king’s quarrel.
The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed, exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation “Dymoke” is derived from De Umbrosâ Quercu; I should rather say it is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.
This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter, in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of English surnames.
The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman dukes had theirs in the family of Marmion—ancestors of that Marmion of Sir Walter Scott’s, who commits forgery, like a common knave of more degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred sundry broad lands in England on his champions; among others, the lands adjacent to, as well as the castle of Tamworth. Near this place was the first nunnery established in this country. The occupants were the nuns of St. Edith, at Polesworth. Robert de Marmion used the ladies very “cavalierly,” ejected them from their house, and deprived them of their property. But such victims had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own.