_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 the devil's blacke guarde."--Chap. 8. Perhaps, in
distinction to the gaily dressed military guard, the menial attendants
in a royal progress were called black-guards from their dull appearance.
I remember a story current in Dublin, of a wicked wag telling a highly
respectable old lady, who was asking, where were the quarters of the
guards, in which corps her son was a private, to inquire at the lodge of
Trinity College if he was not within those learned walls, as the "black
guards were lying there."