So also the following:—
1655. Fuller, Church History [1845], vol. V., p. 160. For who can otherwise conceive but such a prince-principal of darkness must be proportionately attended with a black guard of monstrous opinions.
The Black Guard of Satan, argues a writer in Notes and Queries [Sir J. Emmerson Tennent, N. and Q., 1 S., vii., 78], was supposed, in the popular view, to perform the drudgery of the kitchen and servants' hall in the infernal household.
1588-1628. Hobbes, Microcosmus, vol. II., p. 134. Since my lady's decay I am degraded from a cook, and I fear the devil himself will entertain me but for one of his blackguards, and he shall be sure to have his roast burnt.
Hence came the popular superstition that these goblin scullions, on their visits to the upper world confined themselves to the servants' apartments of the houses which they favoured with their presence, and which at night they swept and garnished; pinching those of the maids in their sleep who, by their laziness, had imposed such toil on their elfin assistants; but slipping money into the shoes of the more tidy and industrious servants whose attention to their own duties before going to rest had spared the goblins the task of performing their share of the drudgery. In allusion to this is Gifford's note on Ben Jonson's plays [vol. II., p. 170],—
In all great houses, but particularly in the Royal Residences, there were a number of mean dirty dependents, whose office it was to attend the wool-*yard, sculleries, etc. Of these, the most forlorn wretches seem to have been selected to carry coals to the kitchens, halls, etc. To this smutty regiment, who attended the progresses, and rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, which, with every other article of furniture, were then removed from palace to palace, the people, in derision, gave the name of black guards; a term since become sufficiently familiar, and never properly explained.
Many other references also go to prove the connection in the popular mind, so far as usage is concerned, between the two significations. In all this, however, the peculiarly contemptuous odium attached to the word in modern times is absent, and between the old and the modern significations a sharp line may, as already stated, be drawn.
The earliest reference to blackguard as applied to a vagabond or loafer occurs in 1683. Since that time the word seems gradually to have become more and more depraved, until its present meaning of a low, worthless fellow, one open to, and ready for any villainy has been reached. The following quotations will well repay comparative study.
1683. MS., in Lord Steward's Office, Windsor Castle [N. and Q., 1 S., ix., p. 15]. 7 May, Whereas of late a sort of vicious, idle, and masterless boys and rogues, commonly called the black-*guard, with divers other lewd and loose fellowes, vagabonds, vagrants, and wandering men and women, do usually haunt and follow the Court.
1695. Congreve, Love for Love, Act iii., Sc. 10. Or if that won't do, I'll bring a Lawyer that shall out-lye the Devil: and so I'll try whether my black-guard or his shall get the better of the day.
1744. Nov. 26, Walpole, Lett. to Mann (1833), II., 57. The whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs.
1780. Parody on the Rosciad, etc., p. 13. Like him I'm a blackguard and sot.
1788. G. A. Stevens, Adv. of a Speculist, i., 59. As black-guards at
