“The Manor of Hornmede, Hertforde, the Lady Lora de Laundford holds as a Serjeanty of our Lord the King by being Chamberlain to our Lady the Queen.” (7 Edward I., Rot., 39.) Ela, third daughter of Ela of Salisbury, foundress of Lacock, in 1285 was returned as holding the Manor of Hoke-Norton in Oxfordshire _in capite_ by the Serjeanty of carving before our Lord the King on Christmas Day, when she had for her fee the King’s knife with which she cut. (Placit Coron., 13 Edward I., Rot., 30. Bowle’s “Annals of Lacock Abbey,” p. 160.) =Champion.=—The Manor of Scrivelby was held by the Dymocks on condition of the possessor acting as King’s Champion. When the heiress, Margaret, inherited the property, she inherited the Office, which her son, Thomas Dymock, performed for her at the coronation of Henry IV. “The office of Champion at the last coronation was in a woman, who applied in that case to make a deputy.” (_See_ “Olive _versus_ Ingram,” 1739, and Co. Litt, 107.) =They could be Governors of Royal Castles.=—Isabella de Fortibus held the Borough and Camp of Plympton, and governed the Isle of Wight. In 8 and 9 Edward II. there was a settlement of Hugo de Courtenay’s petition to succeed to his kinswoman Isabella de Fortibus in governance of the Isle of Wight, etc. Isabella de Vesci held the Castles of Bamborough and Scarborough. Nicholaa de la Haye held Lincoln for the King. “And after the war it befell that the Lord the King (John) came to Lincoln, and the Lady Nicholaa came forth from the western gate of the castle, carrying the keys of the castle in her hand, and met the said Lord King John and offered him the keys as Lord; and said she was a woman of great age, and had endured many labours and anxieties in that castle, and she could bear no more. And the Lord the King returned them to her sweetly, and said. Bear them, if you please, yet awhile.” This story appears in that Royal Commission of Inquiry into the condition of the country named the “Rotuli Hundredorum.” The King was desirous to persuade so steadfast an adherent to continue to hold “in time of peace and in time of war” what, in those disturbed days, was one of the most important fortresses of the kingdom. For Nicholaa de la Haye and Gerard de Camville her husband had stood by King John in all his troubles; their attachment to him before he was King had brought suspicions and confiscations upon them. Gerard had to pay a heavy sum to Richard I. to be repossessed of his own estate, while Nicholaa paid the King three hundred marks for leave to marry her daughter to whom she would, provided it was not to an enemy of the King. After the death of Richard, Gerard de Camville was reinstated as Governor of Lincoln Castle, during the remainder of his life, and at his death John transferred the appointment to his wife, “a lady eminent in those days,” says Dugdale. She continued at her post, and the King also appointed her Sheriff of Lincoln. In 1217 the partisans of Louis