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4 unusual facts about Yeomen of the Guard


Jack Broughton

Aside from his career in boxing, Broughton also served in the Yeomen of the Guard (the bodyguard of the British monarch), as a member of which he accompanied George II at the Battle of Dettingen, the last time a British monarch fought in a battle.

Yeomen of the Guard

However, their most famous duty is to 'ceremonially' search the cellars of the Palace of Westminster prior to the State Opening of Parliament, a tradition that dates back to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament.

Top left: a crowned hawthorn bush and the letters HR, representing King Henry VII and the legend that the crown was discovered by the guard in a hawthorn bush following the Battle of Bosworth.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), is set in the 16th century, an earlier era before the two corps were split apart; it concerns what are today the Yeomen Warders.



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