marshal

   In modern times this title is most used to American law officers, either of a judicial district or a city, whose duties are similar to those of sheriffs. The head of a city police force or fire department may also be a marshal in the USA. Historically, the Lord Marshal was a high officer of state, in charge of a king’s military forces. Today a Lord Marshal spends more time arranging ceremonies, such as coronations. In military circles the marshal has become the field marshal, a general officer of the highest rank. All this obscures the original meaning of ‘marshal’, which was ‘mareservant’. He was a man who had control of the royal stables and horses. He then became the man in charge of mounted soldiers, the cavalry, and from there took command of all military forces.

   The modern meanings of ‘marshal’ mostly reflect the idea of a watered down ‘state official’, watered down in the sense that a marshal today is not quite the key figure he was in medieval England. In Shakespeare’s Richard the Second (I:iii) ‘marshal’ is used vocatively to a Lord Marshal. ‘Lord Marshal’ itself occurs in Henry the Fourth Part Two (l:iii). In The Middle Man, by David Chandler, ‘marshal’ is used to a modern American official, one who speaks to a lawyer ‘with the calm assurance of a high court justice’.