E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Swinge-buckler.
A roisterer, a rake. The continuation of Stow’s Annals tells us that the “blades” of London used to assemble in West Smithfield with sword and buckler, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on high days and holidays, for mock fights called “bragging” fights. They swashed and swinged their bucklers with much show of fury, “but seldome was any man hurt.” (See SWASHBUCKLER.)
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“There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns-of-court; and, I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were.”—Shakespeare: 2 Henry IV., iii. 2.
