The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-18

1t should be dignity and ornament to the crown, not 0 terror to the subject, Be this as it may, the original comple- ment of the body was fifty archers un- der the command of captain, and the following is the account given by Hall, the chronicler of the institution of this body: "Kyng Henry being made wyse and expert wyth Troubles any Mys- chiefes before passt, remembered vt was Wis-dome to feare and provide for the crafty Wyles and lurking Trappes of his secret Enemyes,-Wh for the save guarde and Preservation of his awne body, he constituted and or deyned a certain Nombre as well of good Archers as of diverse other Per- sons, being hardy, stronge and of Agil- itie, to geve dailye attendance on his Person, whom he named Yeomen of his Garde; which President (precedenD Men thought that he learned of the French Kyng when he was in Fraunce; for Men remembre not any Kyng of England before that tyme which used such Furnyture of daily Souldyourf." !"
 Henry VIII. seems to Have enlarged or diminished the numbers of the Yeo- men of the Guard according to circum- stances. On his accession he raised them to two hundred, of which half were furnished with horses; and when he led them at the siege of Terouenne in 15lS (the first occasion of their pro- ceeding on active service), he was at tended by six hundred of them "all in white gaberdines and cappes." In the same year. when Tournay fell into the r.... ynfk nfh forces for it's preservation four hundred archers of the guard, Queen Mary kept up the strength of the guard, and expended great sum on the ornamen- tation of their uniforms as may be learned from an order preserved among the Harleian MSS. at the British Muse um. which runs, "Deliver to Peter Richardson, maker of the spangles for the rich coats of the Queens High | ness's guard, the sum of 91,000, also 1 7,175 ounces of spangles gilt for em- broidering their coats" Elizabeth and l James I. continued the Yeomen in Or 1 dinary to the number of two hundred, reducing the extra yeomen to one hun 1 dred and seven. During the Common wealth, like other royal appendages, the Yeomen of the Guard disappeared, | but Charles H., in 1868, restored them | to the number of one hundred, which | has continued to be the establishment 1 of the corps down to the present day. l Since the Restoration the captaincy has always been held by a peer, and he 1 is the only officer of the corps who va cates his post on change of ministry
 Originally he received no pay, his only . tbn hpif1er gown of the value of G14. Charles II. changed this for a salary of f1 ,000 per 1 annum, which in 1885 was raised to e1,2oO, as in that year all fees payable l to the captain on appointment to the l corps were abolished. He carries an ebony baton tipped with gold as his badge of office, and, like the other otfi- l cers of the company, wears a rich mod ern military uniform. The costume of | the privates, however, attracts much | attention from it's richness and pecu- liarity. and is the only instance in this l country of any military body retaining l the original fashion of it's uniform for a period of nearly four hundred years | The Yeomen do not appear to have had any special dress till the eighteenth year of Henry VIII, their only distin- ! gushing badges of office heretofore seeming to have been the halberds, l then peculiar to themselves within the 1 kings palace. In the aforementioned year the monarch, in fixing their uni form, issued an order that they were to be rlad in red cloth embroidered with l gold, and Sir Joseph Ayloffe, the cele- brated antiquary, describing their cos- tune in 1598, said; Their habit is scarlet, guarded and laced on the skirts l and sleeves with garter blue velvet, and on their breasts and backs is the ] Union Rose, ensgned with. the Crown Royal embroidered with gold" The rose was combined with the thistle af- ter the accession of James l., and the | shamrock was added to both in 1902, ] after the union with Ireland Their