nerium de Shirefield, tanquam marescallus de meretricibus in hospitio regis."[1]
Such an establishment was then an ordinary appendage of court etiquette; it was as indispensable as a foreign orchestra, or a regiment of grenadiers to any German prince and their imitators in our own times.
His most Christian Majesty, however, was not so very Turkish as to permit the superintendence to one of his own sex, as we find from the royal expenditure of his household at the commencement of the sixteenth century.[2]
"A Olive Sainte, dame des filles de joye suivant la cour du roy[3], 90 livres, par lettres données a Watteville le 12. May 1535, pour lui aider, et auxdites filles a vivre et supporter les depenses qu'il leur convient faire a suivre ordinairement la cour. Alius, an. 1539.—A Cecile Viefville, dame des filles de joye suivant la cour, 90 livres, par lettres du 6. Janv. 1538, tant pour elle, que pour les autres femmes, et filles de sa vacation, a departir entr'elles pour leur droit, du 1. jour de May dernier passé, qui etoit dû a cause du bouquet qu'elles presenterent au roy ledit jour, que pour leurs estrains, du 1. Janvier; ainsi qu'il est accoustumé de faire de tout temps. Eadem occurrunt annis 1540, 41, 42, 44, 46."
The old adage in papal times, "Judœi vel meretrices," was not always equally vilifying. Carpentier remarks, "Quæ (sc. meretrices) hic uti infumes habentur, de comitatu regio fuerunt, pensionibus etiam donisque dotatæ."[4]
The said John Warblington must have been as versatile and expansive as Mercury; for he not only performed the more familiar duties of this delicate charge, but also the high legal office of coroner within the liberties of the palace—was clerk of the market to the household, or purveyor-general thereof—broke condemned felons upon the wheel—exercised the duties of a gauger, and enforced the observance of his self-regulated standard of weights and measures.[5]
The etymology, then, of the excellent Selden would appear not to be altogether conclusive; and Wachter[6] would seem to be more fortunate, in deducing the term from "mer, mar," major vel princeps, and schalk, as before, a servant, i. e. officer of any kind—thus making it to signify any considerable officer or superintendent, or, according to Jameson (who seems rather to incline to this deduction), upper servant, or steward—not necessarily of the crown alone; a much more extended signification, and one which accounts for the term having characterised so many various and heterogeneous employments.
I have forgot to allude to the more ordinary sense, indicative of high military command,[7] either as exercised by the marshal of Scotland over the royal guards, previous to the union, or by field marshals, or marshals of armies, personages familiar to all. An office of a similar nature,—to compare small things with great,—would appear formerly to have been common in the Highlands of Scotland, as we learn from the following amusing description in an ancient MS. History of the Name of Mackenzie, composed before the year 1667, by John Mackenzie of Applecross, extant in the Advocates' Library.
"Alexander McKenzie of Coull was a naturall son of Collin, the 12 laird of Kintail, gotten wyt Marie McKen-
- ↑ It is noticed in Borthwick's Remarks on British Antiquities, but more fully in Madoxe's Baronia Anglica, p. 242, note, where the office is proved to have existed as far back as the time of Henry II.
- ↑ Comput. ærarii Reg. ap. Carpentier, vocc. Meretricialis, Vestis.
- ↑ Hence the origin of courtezan, now only used in a restricted and bad sense.
- ↑ Selden, quoth Lord Lyttelton, (Life of Henry II. vol. iv. p. 50), would not have admitted among the grand sergeantries Warblington's office, "of the meanest and most dishonourable nature; and he is angry with Madox for having so classed it!—This is a good illustration of Chalmer's remark, (Cal. vol. i. 626), that this lord's "notions and language are altogether modern." Independently of other considerations, it may be stated, that Blount, in his Tenures, has quoted an old deed, where it is expressly said to be held by "grand sergeantry."
- ↑ Johannes de Warblington, coronator marescalciæ ac clericus mercati hospitii regis ad placitum.
"Idem tenet in feodo serjantiam essendi marescalli meretricum in hospitio, et dismembrandi malefactores adjudicatos, et mensurandi galones et bussellos." Rot. Pat. 22, Ed. III. - ↑ Wachter, Glossar. voc. Marescallus.
- ↑ Marescalli—postea dicti, qui excrcitibus, et copiis militaribus praeerant." Du Cange.
