Clerk.

A scholar. Hence, beau-clerc. (See above, Clerical Titles.)

“All the clerks,

I mean the learned ones, in Christian kingdoms,

Have their free voices.”

Shakespeare: Henry VIII., ii. 2.

St. Nicholas’s Clerks. Thieves. An equivoque on the word Nick.

“I think there came prancing down the hill a couple of St. Nicholas’s clerks.”—Rowley: Match at Midnight, 1633.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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