1. Formerly the dress of servants and the lower orders; hence of almoners and charity children.
c. 1600[?]. Distr. Emperor, I. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., III. 169. Thou that has worne thy selfe and a blewe coate To equall thryddbareness.
1628. Earle, Microcosm., liv. 117. His antient beginning was a blue coat, since a livery.
2. One who wears a blue coat; e.g., an almsman, a beadle; a blue-coated soldier or sailor.
1591. Shaks., 1 Hen. VI., I. iii. 47. Draw men … Blew Coats to Tawny Coats.
1598. E. Gilpin, Skial. (1878), 52. A … swaggering blew-coate at an ale-house doore.
1608. Dekker, Belman Lond., Wks. 1885, III. 149. This counterfeit Blew-coate, running in all haste for his masters cloake-bag.
1699. Bentley, Phal., 222. That the fame … could so soon reach Phalaris’s ear in his Castle, through his Guard of Blue-coats.
1862. Sat. Rev., 8 Feb., 159. The admiral … became … gracious and condescending to his brother bluecoats.
b. attrib. (for quot. 1821 cf. BLUE-STOCKING.)
a. 1653. G. Daniel, Idyll, v. 115. In Blue-Coat Philosophy.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Pleas. Ep., Wks. 1730, I. 110. The blue coat infantry.
1821. Byron, Juan, IV. cix. The blue-coat misses of a coterie.
3. (More fully Blue-coat boy): A scholar of a charity school wearing the almoner’s blue coat. Of these schools there are many in England; the most noted being Christ’s Hospital in London, whose uniform is a long dark blue gown fastened at the waist with a belt, and bright yellow stockings. So attrib., as in Blue-coat Hall, Hospital.
1665. Pepys, Diary, 1 June. We … saw all the funeral; which was with the blue-coat boys and old men, all the Aldermen, and Lord Mayor.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., I. /164. Among the blew coats in Ch. Ch. Hospital.
1701. De Foe, True-born Eng., I. (1703), 13. From Blewcoat Hospitals.
1711. Lond. Gaz., No. 4920/3. A General Meeting … will be held at Blue-coat-Hall in Christ’s-Hospital.
1861. Nicholson, Annals of Kendal, 195. The Blue Coat School and Hospital…. The advancement of the Charity and maintenance of the blue-coat boys.
