The King’s Champion performed a crucial role at every coronation banquet (though this was the last occasion that this medieval rite was in fact observed): he challenged anyone to contest the right of the new King to reign. The role of Champion belonged by hereditary right to the Dymoke family. Jones here depicts the coronation banquet of George IV in Westminster Hall on 19th July 1821 at the moment when the King's Champion, Henry Dymoke (1801-1865), enters the hall in full armour. He is escorted by two mounted peers, the Deputy Earl Marshall, General Kenneth Alexander Howard, later 1st Earl of Effingham (1767-1845) and the Lord High Constable, the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852). The King, attended by officers of state and members of the Royal family, is seated at his throne and raises his glass to drink to the Champion. The peer standing in front of the table is the King’s Carver, William Fielding, 7th Earl of Denbigh (1796-1865). Jones here creates a living pageant to match the spender of the medieval Westminster Hall, aligning his view so that the whole appears as a magnificent adjunct to the enthroned King who occupies the exact centre of the composition looking straight out towards us. This image also allows us to appreciate the unique prestige of light before electricity – the Hall was lit by 28 chandeliers creating the dazzling brightness, which Jones so carefully reinforces with his warm colour range. These lux levels were as much a part of the magnificence of the occasion as the robes, frocks and jewellery. The depiction of Royal ceremonies, something managed so systematically by Queen Victoria, begins during the reign of George III. This important early example was apparently commissioned by the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (1770-1828). A reproduction of it occurred in Robert Whittaker’s description of the Coronation published in 1822.