Legs To Centuries Old Armour Restored: Found In King’s Champion’s House

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 88, 30 August 1948, Page 7

Legs To Centuries Old Armour Restored: Found In King’s Champion’s House

A most curious story of how a suit of armour which formerly belonged to King Henry the Eighth got its legs back' after some centuries of separation was told recently by Colin Wells in the BBC’s Pacific Service feature “In Britain Today” which includes all kinds of interesting facts and figures. The story dealt with the Dymoke family, which for, seven hundred years has had the privilege of acting as the King’s Champion. This was once a very real office, and the champion of an unpopular monarch had to fight the King’s critics in the field. At a later date the office had high honour and symbolic significance and right up to the Coronation of George the Fourth in 1821 a member of the family had to ride into Westminster Hall, where the coronation banquet was being held, and fling down his gauge as a challenge 'to all present to dispute the King’s right. ‘ Both the banquet and challenge ceremony haye been abandoned since 1821, but the Dymokes still function as King’s Champion and Mr Frank Dymoke, who died last year, carried the King’s Banner of England during the coronation services of the last three kings. ' In the olden days each time a new king was crowned he gave his Champion a new suit of armour. These suits were kept at the Dymoke’s house, Scrivelsby Court. Colin Wills told how “after Mr Dymoke’s death, officials visited and inspected the collection of armour, and were delighted to find Henry the Eighth’s legs or rather the legs of one of his suits of armour in the Tower of London, one which stood legless for centuries. The legs' were added to the body, and the suit in the Tower is now complete. It is a handsome, almost graceful affair with a full skirt, a pointed visor, arid square-toed feet. And it shows that the young Henry the Eighth, who loved all manner of sports, including single combat, was a tall, slim, young knight, as different in physical shape as one can imagine from the stout figure we know so well from portraits in his later days.