George's day annually; that the court
attended; that the _blue-coats_, or attendants, of the courtiers,
were employed and
authorised
to keep order, and drive out refractory
persons; and that on this occasion it was proper for a knight to
officiate as _blue coat_ to some personage of higher rank'.
Ben Jonson - The Devil's Association
So late as 1614 it was the custom
for fashionable gentlemen to wear blue coats on St. George's Day,
probably in imitation of the blue mantle worn by the Knights of the
Garter, an order created at the feast of St. George in 1344 (see
Chambers' _Book of Days_ 1. 540).
The passages relating to this custom are _Ram Alley_, _O. Pl._, 2d
ed., 5. 486:
By Dis, I will be knight,
Wear a blue coat on great St. George's day,
And with my fellows drive you all from Paul's
For this attempt.
_Runne and a great Cast_, _Epigr._ 33:
With's coram nomine keeping greater sway
Than a court blew-coat on St. George's day.
From these passages Nares concludes 'that some festive ceremony was
carried on at St. Paul's on St.
George's day annually; that the court
attended; that the _blue-coats_, or attendants, of the courtiers,
were employed and
authorised
to keep order, and drive out refractory
persons; and that on this occasion it was proper for a knight to
officiate as _blue coat_ to some personage of higher rank'.
In the _Conversations with Drummond_, Jonson's _Wks._ 9. 393, we
read: 'Northampton was his mortal enimie for beating, on a St.
George's day, one of his attenders.' Pepys speaks of there being
bonfires in honor of St. George's Day as late as Apr. 23, 1666.
=3. 3. 166 chaines? PLV. Of gold, and pearle.= The gold chain was
formerly a mark of rank and dignity, and a century before this it
had been forbidden for any one under the degree of a gentleman of two
hundred marks a year to wear one (_Statutes of the Realm_, 7 Henry
VIII. c. 6).
