“Four Pages richly apparelled, attendants on the Champion. At the entrance into the Hall, the Trumpets sounded thrice, and the passage to the King’s table being cleared by the Knight Marshall, the Herald, with a loud voice proclaimed the Champion’s Challenge, in the words following:—
“‘If any person of what degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our sovereign Lord King George the fourth, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, son and next heir to our Sovereign Lord King George the third, the last King, deceased, to be the right heir to the Imperial Crown of this United Kingdom, or that he ought not to enjoy the same, here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with him, and in the quarrel will adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.’
“Whereupon the Champion threw down his gauntlet: which having lain a short time upon the ground, the Herald took it up, and delivered it again to the Champion. They then advanced to the middle of the Hall, where the ceremony was again performed in the same manner.
“Lastly they advanced to the steps of the throne, where the Herald with those who preceded him ascended to the middle of the steps, and proclaimed the challenge in the like manner; when the Champion having thrown down his gauntlet and received it again from the Herald, made a low obeisance to the King: Whereupon the Cupbearer, having received from the officer of the Jewel-house a Gold Cup and Cover filled with Wine, presented the same to the King, and his Majesty drank to the Champion, and sent to him by the Cupbearer the said Cup, which the Champion (having put on his gauntlet) received, and having made a low obeisance to the King drank the Wine; after which, making another low obeisance to his Majesty and being accompanied as before, he departed out of the Hall, taking with him the said Cup and Cover as his fee.”
Driby, Tumby, and Tattershall.
NORMAN ACTIVITY
The amount of work done by the Normans in England has always astonished me. Not only did they build castles and strongholds, but in every county they set up churches built of stone, and not here and there but literally everywhere. They apportioned and registered the land, measured it and settled the rent, and, though hard task masters, they showed themselves efficient guardians, nor was any title or property too small for the king and his officers to inquire into. Hence, in quite small out-of-the-way places in the county we find monuments in little and almost unknown churches which attest the activity of our Norman forefathers and which, when examined by the aid of documents from the Public Record Office or the abbey or manor rolls, old wills and all the early parchments in which the industrious bookworm revels, often unfold chapters of early history of extraordinary interest, if not for the general public, at least for students and for the local gentry who still haunt the places where once the armed heel of the knight rang and the monastery dispensed the unstinted doles of a period which would have held up both hands in astonishment at the luxury of our poor laws, the excellence of our roads and the enormity of our rates and taxes. Take, for instance, the little village of Driby in the Lincolnshire wolds, a village the early denizens of which my old friend, the late W. C. Massingberd, has taken the trouble to make acquaintance with, and to whose labours I am indebted for what little I know about it. He tells us how even in Saxon times a notable man lived at Driby, one Siward, not perhaps the great Northumbrian Thegn mentioned in Macbeth, but a later Siward who helped Hereward and his fenmen to oppose the Normans at Ely. Whoever he was, he held Scrivelsby and a large acreage in the Wolds. Next we find the great Lincolnshire Baron, Gilbert de Gaunt, succeeding Siward at Driby, holding, as Domesday Book (1086) shows, direct from the king.
THE ABBOT OF KIRKSTEAD
Early in the next century Simon de Driby comes before us; and his son Robert—the eldest son was nearly always alternately Simon or Robert—grants some lands in Tumby to the abbey of Kirkstead. Robert’s father is called sometimes Symon de Tumbi and sometimes Simon de Driby, and it seems that he had obtained disposal of this land in Tumby by a grant from Robert, son of Hugh de Tattershall, just as his forefather had held land in Driby by the grant of Gilbert de Gaunt. On February 25, 1216, a Simon de Driby made his submission to King John at Lincoln, and Ralph de Cromwell, whose descendant of the same name eventually married the heiress of the Simon de Dribys and held the castle of Tattershall, also submitted at Stamford on the 28th and gave his own eldest daughter as a hostage for his good behaviour. The submissive Simon died in 1213, and his son, the inevitable Robert, made an agreement with Hugh, the Abbot of Kirkstead, by which the abbot was allowed to have his big cattle and sheep dogs, mastiffs they were termed, in the warren of Tumby at all times of the year, but no greyhounds or lurchers (leporarios vel alios canes preter mastivos), and if the latter turned riotous and chased game they were to be removed and others put in their place.
Robert’s son Simon obtained by marriage additional lands near Driby, at Tetford, Bag Enderby, Stainsby, and Ashby Puerorum on the wolds, as well as some of the rich marsh land at Wainfleet. Henry III. granted to Robert Tateshalle license to crenelate his house at Tateshall, “quod possit kernelare mansum suum” in 1239; and we may here note that Tattershall Castle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and half of the fifteenth was a stone building. Just at the close of the reign of Edward I. a Robert de Driby married Joan, one of the three co-heiresses of Robert de Tateshale or Tattershall, the last male representative of the family, and Joan tried to settle the castle and manor of Tattershall on her youngest son, Robert, instead of on the rightful heir. Until the heir was of age Edward had granted them to his wife, Queen Margaret, a sign that the property was valuable. She, moreover, when a widow, had the manor of Tumby for her dower house.