rawing-room (the king's at Kensington Palace) that the then new art of
paper-hangings, in imitation of the old velvet flock, was displayed with
an effect that soon led to the adoption of so cheap and elegant a
manufacture, in preference to the original rich material from which it
was copied."--W.H. Pyne's _Royal Residences_, vol. ii. p. 75.

M.W.

_Black-guard._--There are frequent entries among those of deaths of
persons attached to the Palace of Whitehall, in the registers of St.
Margaret's, Westminster, of "----, one of the blake garde." about the
year 1566, and later. In the Churchwarden's Accompts we find--

"1532. Pd. for licence of 4 torchis for Black Garde, vj. d."

The royal Halberdiers carried black bills. (Grose, _Milit. Antiq._, vol.
i. p. 124.) In 1584 they behaved {269} with great cruelty in Ireland.
(Cornp. Peck's _Des. Curios._, vol. i. p. 155.) So Stainhurst, in his
_Description_, says of bad men: "They are taken for no better than
rakehells, or the devil's blacke guarde."--Chap. 8. Perhaps, in
distinction to the gaily dressed military guard, the menial attendants
in a royal progress were called black-guards from their dull appearance.

I remember a story current in Dublin, of a wicked wag telling a highly
respectable old lady, who was asking, where were the quarters of the
guards, in which corps her son was a private, to inquire at the lodge of
Trinity College if he was not within those learned walls, as the "black
guards were lying there."

M.W.

_Pilgrims' Road_ (Vol. ii., p. 237.).--Your correspondent S.H., in
noticing the old track "skirting the base of the chalk hills," and known
by the name of the "Pilgrims' Road," has omitted to state that its
commencement is at Oxford,--a fact of importance, inasmuch as that the
Archbishops of Canterbury had there a handsome palace (the ruins of
which still exist), which is said to have been the favourite residence
of Thomas a Becket. The tradition in the county thereupon is, that his
memory was held in such sanctity in that neighbourhood as to cause a
vast influx of pilgrims annually from thence to his shrine at
Canterbury; and the line of road taken by them can still be traced,
though only portions of it are now used as a highway. The direction,
however, in which it runs makes it clear (as S.H., no doubt, is aware)
that it cannot be Chaucer's road.

While on the subject of old roads, I may add that a tradition here
exists that the direct road