Champion

Champion (Low Lat. campio, from Low Lat. campus, 'a combat,' whence also A.S. camp, 'a fight'). In the judicial combats of the middle ages, it was allowed to women, children, and aged persons, except in cases of high treason or of parricide, to appear in the lists by a representative. Such a hired combatant was called a champion. Those who followed this profession were generally of the lowest class, and were held disreputable (see BATTLE, WAGER OF). At a later period, in the age of chivalry, the word champion came to have a more dignified acceptance, and signified a knight who entered the lists on behalf of an injured lady, of a child, or of any one incapable of self-defence (see CHIVALRY). In England, the crown had its champion, the Champion of England, who, mounted on horseback and armed to the teeth, challenged, at every coronation at Westminster, all who should deny the king to be the lawful sovereign. This office is said by Dugdale to have been conferred by William the Conqueror on Robert de Marmion, with the Lincolnshire manor of Scrivelsby; and by reason of his tenure of that manor, the championship was claimed under Henry IV. by Thomas Dymoke. Henry Lionel Dymoke, who died in 1875, was the nineteenth member of this family who held the office. But the ceremonies of the championship were last exercised at the coronation of George IV. See Notes and Queries (1887) and Lodge's Scrivelsby (1893).