namely, on the day of coronation, to ride, completely armed, upon a barbed horse, into Westminster Hall, and there to challenge the combat against any who would gainsay the King’s title.  But this office was adjudged to Sir John Dymoke, to whom the manor of Scrivelby had descended by another of the co-heiresses of Robert de Marmion; and it remains in that family, whose representative is Hereditary Champion of England at the present day.  The family and possessions of Freville have merged in the Earls of Ferrars.  I have not, therefore, created a new family, but only revived the titles of an old one in an imaginary personage.’—­Scott.

’The last occasion on which the Champion officiated was at the coronation of George iv.’—­’Notes and Queries,’ 7th S. III, 236.

line 161. mark, a weight for gold and silver, differing in amount in different countries.  The English coin so called was worth 13s. 4d. sterling.

line 163.  ’This was the cry with which heralds and pursuivants were wont to acknowledge the bounty received from the knights.  Stewart of Lorn distinguishes a ballad, in which he satirises the narrowness of James V and his courtiers by the ironical burden—­

     “Lerges, lerges, lerges, hay,
      Lerges of this new year day. 
      First lerges of the King, my chief,
      Quhilk come als quiet as a theif,
      And in my hand slid schillingis tway1,
      To put his lergnes to the preif2,
      For lerges of this new-yeir day.”

1two 2proof

’The heralds, like the minstrels, were a race allowed to have great claims upon the liberality of the knights, of whose feats they kept a record, and proclaimed them aloud, as in the text, upon suitable occasions.

’At Berwick, Norham, and other Border fortresses of importance, pursuivants usually resided, whose inviolable character rendered them the only persons that could, with perfect assurance of safety, be sent on necessary embassies into Scotland.  This is alluded to in Stanza xxi. p. 25.’—­Scott.

line 165.  Blazon’d shield, a shield with a coat of arms painted on it, especially with bearings quartered in commemoration of victory in battle.  See below V. xv, vi. xxxviii, and cp.  Tennyson, ’The Lady of Shalott,’ Part 3:—­

     ’And from his blazon’d baldric slung
      A mighty silver bugle hung.’

line 174.  The Cotswold downs, Gloucestershire, were famous as a hunting-ground.  Cp.  Merry Wives of Windsor, I. i. 92, ’How does your fallow greyhound, sir?  I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.’

line 185.  The reversed shield, hung on the gallows, indicated the degraded knight.

Stanza xiii. line 192.  Scott writes:—­’Were accuracy of any consequence in a fictitious narrative, this castellan’s name ought to have been William; for William Heron of Ford was husband to the famous Lady Ford, whose syren charms are said to have cost our James iv so dear.  Moreover, the said William Heron was, at the time supposed, a prisoner in Scotland, being surrendered by Henry VIII, on account of his share in the slaughter of Sir Robert Ker of Cessford.  His wife, represented in the text as residing at the Court of Scotland, was, in fact, living in her own castle at Ford.—­See Sir Richard heron’s curious Genealogy of the Heron Family.’