Blackadder vocabulary

Peasant: [...]if you'd been part of a secret committee to invite the Witchsmeller Pursuivant into town, and he'd already burnt four of your best friends, would you go telling everyone?

Blackadder: No, I suppose I wouldn't. So, is it the Witchsmeller Pursuivant who burned her?

Peasant 2: He's guessed!

BBC. Blackadder, season 1: The Witchsmeller Pursuivant

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Through the negligence, real or assumed, of the housekeeper, the poursuivants and constables had already entered with drawn swords.

Antonia Fraser. Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, p.32 (1996)

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The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.

James Joyce. Ulysses