Black-guard

There are frequent entries among those of deaths of persons attached to the Palace of Whitehall, in the registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster, of "——, one of the blake garde." about the year 1566, and later. In the Churchwarden's Accompts we find— "1532. Pd. for licence of 4 torchis for Black Garde, vj. d." The royal Halberdiers carried black bills. (Grose, *Milit. Antiq.*, vol. i. p. 124.) In 1584 they behaved with great cruelty in Ireland. (Cornp. Peck's *Des. Curios.*, vol. i. p. 155.) So Stainhurst, in his *Description*, says of bad men: "They are taken for no better than rakehells, or…