Tewkesbury.
{353}
_Giving Quarter_ (Vol. viii., p. 246.).--It must be observed that the older
form of the expression is "keeping quarter:"
"That every one should kill the man he caught,
To _keep no quarter_."--_Drayton in Richardson._
Now very obvious application of the word _quarter_, instanced by Todd, is
to signify the proper station or appointed place of any one.
"They do best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it _keep
quarter_, and sever it wholly from their serious affairs."--Bacon's
_Essays_.
To keep quarter, then, is to keep within measure, within the limits or
bounds appointed by some paramount consideration; and hence, as in the
following passage from Shakspeare (where it is clumsily interpreted amity
or companionship), the word is used as synonymous with terms or conditions:
"Friends all but now,
In quarter and in terms like bride and groom
Divesting them for bed, and then but now
Swords out and tilting one at other's breast."
In the same sense Clarendon speaks of "offering them _quarter_ for their
lives if they would give up the castle," _i. e._ offering them conditions
for their lives on their performing their part of the bargain.
Again, in a passage of Swift, cited by Todd: "Mr. Wharton, who detected
some hundred of the bishop's mistakes, meets with very ill quarter from his
Lordship," _i. e._ meets with very ill conditions of treatment from him.
Finally, _to give quarter_ in the military sense is to give conditions
absolutely, as opposed to the unmitigated exercise of the victor's power,
and, as the most important of all conditions, to spare life.