MysteryLegendary
The Tennis-Court Blow
One slap, three lost manors, a famous novel.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Village and large medieval church below Ivinghoe Beacon
- Legend from
- Medieval legend; Scott 1819
- Tone
- Light-hearted
You're coming into Ivinghoe, the village that gave Walter Scott the name Ivanhoe, all thanks to a rhyme about a tennis-court punch.
An old rhyme claimed that an ancestor of John Hampden lost the manors of Tring, Wing and Ivinghoe for striking the Black Prince during a quarrel over tennis, and was glad to escape with his life. When Sir Walter Scott needed a title for a new novel, he remembered that rhyme and borrowed the name of Ivinghoe, turning it into Ivanhoe because it had an ancient English sound and gave nothing away about the plot. County historians found the rhyme and its tale entirely unsupported: those manors never belonged to the Hampdens.