Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/125

 THE

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ON THE NATURE OF THE OFFICE OF MARESCHAL.

learned Selden has traced the etymology of under all its variations of Mariscaldus, Marscaldus, and Marscalcus, from the Teutonic "schalk," a servant, and "maere," a horse, or rather a mare—the mare, it seems, being always the better horse, and therefore very properly used generically to designate the species—adding, that the term strictly describes a person who busied himself about horses and the manege.

This popular derivation is, in some degree, countenanced by the epithet having been applied to innkeepers, grooms, farriers, and horse-doctors, as is proved by sundry passages from Becanus, the capitularies of Charlemagne, and other authorities. It is, however, at the same time, evinced to have very early received other significations, having no reference either to the above quadrupeds or to their attendants.

Marshal notoriously denoted a civil officer whose jurisdiction lay alone within the state rooms of a palace—"marechal de palais"—an adept in the ceremonies and forms of court etiquette; and, at the same time, any superior domestic servant, or steward, in which last sense it is used in this passage from Barbour:

Edward the Second's valet is called "marescallus aule regis." It was indiscriminately given to stewards of bishops and abbots, governors of jails and prisons, and officers attending upon courts of law, &c. &c.

These were not unfrequently deputies of the hereditary marshal of the kingdom, but most commonly they were "servientes" or functionaries of rather a higher order.

There was also an old English office, of a singular import to modern ears, held heritably by grand sergeantry, and attached to a manor,—"marescallus de meretricibus in hospitio regis."

An ancient roll of Edward the Third indicates, that "Johannes de Warblynton, filius et hæres Thomæ de Warblyntone, fecit finem cum rege, &c. quod dictus Thomas tenuit