Display of bottles of Beefeater-brand gin.
19 May 2020
Beefeater is the popular name for the Yeoman of Guard in Britain and to the Warders of the Tower of London. Beefeater started out as slang, but whether it still fits within that category is debatable; it’s certainly not an official designation. The name has a quite literal origin, that of a well-fed servant.
The name beefeater arises in contrast with the older loaf-eater, a general term for a servant, one who eats the master’s bread (cf. lord). This name is much older, going back to the Old English hlafæta. From the Laws of Æthelbert of Kent, dating to the early seventh century:
Gif man ceorlas hlafætan ofslæhð, VI scillingum gebete.
(If someone slays a churl’s loaf-eater, he shall pay six shillings.)
So, beefeater was originally a term for a privileged servant. The word first appears in this general sense in John Marston’s play Histrio-mastix, or The Player Whipt, which was first performed in 1599 and published in 1610. In one passage, a master complains about how much it has cost to feed his servants, whom he has just dismissed from his service:
Walke sirs, nay walke; awake yee drowsie drones,
That long haue suckt the honney from my hiuevs:
Be gone yee greedy beefe-eaters y’are best:
The Callis Cormorants from Douer roade,
Are not so chargeable as you to feed.
Beefeater is applied to a royal guard in John Crowne’s 1671 play Juliana, Princess of Poland, in this exchange where the guard takes the name to be an insult:
LANDLORD: There did the Beef-eaters o' the Guard and I—
GUARD: Beef-eaters you Rascal!
LANDLORD: Sit in Councel about the good o' Christendom, till at parting we did our reverences to Pope Paul, fall down and kiss his great Toe, the Spigot, and let the heavenly Benediction drop into our mouthes.
GUARD: You'd have my Halbeard drop into your mouthes, would you Beef-eater, you saucy Cur?
The word is applied specifically to the British court by 1736, when it appears in Henry Fielding’s satirical play Pasquin. In the scene, voters are lining up in an attempt to get patronage positions from the government:
1ST VOTER: Could not your Lordship provide for me at Court?
LORD PLACE: Nothing easier; what sort of Place would you like?
1ST VOTER: Is not there as sort of Employment, Sir, call’d ———Beef-Eating? If your Lordship please to make me a Beef-Eater, I would have a Place fitted for my Capacity.
LORD PLACE: Sir, I will be sure to remember you.
Fielding is clearly punning on the literal meaning of the word, and it’s clear from the context that the term was already in use.
There is a false etymology that beefeater comes from a supposed French word, *buffetier, and refers to an old function where the yeomen would serve at table, or buffet. This is simply incorrect, and there is no such French word as *buffetier. This spurious origin story has been floating about for years.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. hlaf-æta.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, beefeater, n., loaf-eater, n.
Photo credit: Maurice Enclave and D.J. Zachary, 2007. Public domain image.