The Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, popularly known as the Beefeaters, are ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London. In principle they are responsible for looking after any prisoners at the Tower and safeguarding the British crown jewels, but in practice they act as tour guides and are a tourist attraction in their own right, a point the Yeoman Warders acknowledge.
The Yeomen Warders are often incorrectly referred to as Yeomen of the Guard, which is actually a distinct corps of Royal Bodyguards.
Yeomen Warders in 1632[]
The Yeomen Warders were assigned to guard the Grantville delegation during their house arrest in the Tower of London; however, they were instead befriended by the delegation as the Americans provided them and their families basic health and sanitation regiment which potentially helped and saved them from an ongoing plague that was occurring in London.
After Richard Boyle's ascension to Prime Minister, Sir Francis Windebank alienated the Warders by hiring mercenaries to guard the Tower in the belief that he was liberating the Warders from their former superior. Instead the mercenaries overshadowed the Warders who, and along with their families living in the Tower, were forced out of their longstanding quarters and forced into huts in the outer ward, to make room for the mercenaries. In turn, the Warders were often looked down by their hired "help" which exacerbated the tension between them.
By late 1634, Warder Andrew Short and along with some of the other Warders, including the Short-Hayes family, decided to escape England with the American delegation in an commando operation led by Harry Lefferts. These former Warders later became the personal house-hold guards of Michael Stearns and Rebecca Abrabanel.