Obs. Also 7 bernard. [app. a variant of BERNER, one who waited with a relay of hounds to intercept a hunted animal.] The member of a gang of swindlers who acts as a decoy; a lurking scoundrel, a sharper. Cf. BARNACLE sb.2 3 b.
1532. Dice Play (1850), 37. Another oily theft … is the barnards law: which, to be exactly practised asketh four persons at least, each of them to play a long several part by himself.
1562. Bulleyn, in Babees Bk. (1868), 242. With a Barnards blowe, lurkyng in some lane, wodde, or hill top.
1591. Greene, Disc. Cozenage (1859), 8. Foure persons were required … the Taker up, the Verser, the Barnard, and the Rutter. Ibid., Wks. 1885, X. 10. Comes in the Barnard stumbling into your companie, like some aged Farmer of the Countrey … and is so carelesse of his money, that out he throweth some fortie Angels on the boords end.
1608. Dekker, Belman Lond., Wks. 1885, III. 126. The Bernard … counterfets many parts in one, and is now a drunken man, anon in another humour … onely to blind the Cozen … the more easily to beguile him. [See the whole of the interesting descriptions in these works.]
