Definition of "warder"

Kent. Mortimer, ’tis I.But hath thy portion wrought so happily?Younger Mortimer. It hath, my lord: the warders all asleep,I thank them, gave me leave to pass in peace.

1594 (first publication), Christopher Marlow[e], The Trovblesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edvvard the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, [Act IV]

Above the gloomy portal arch, / Timing his footsteps to a march, / The warder kept his guard, / Low humming, as he paced along, / Some ancient Border gathering song.

1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto First. The Castle.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, stanza II, page 24

So the guards carried him to the jail, thinking to lay him by the heels there for the night; but, when the warders saw his beauty and loveliness, they could not find it in their hearts to imprison him: they made him sit with them without the walls; and, when food came to them, he ate with them what sufficed him.

1885, Richard Francis Burton (translator), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5, 368th Night, p. 26

Nobody else spoke, but they noticed the long stripes on Okonkwo’s back where the warder’s whip had cut into his flesh.

1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 24, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959

When, lo! the king chang’d suddenly his Mind, / Casts down his Warder to arrest them there;

1595, Samuel Daniel, Civil Wars, in The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Volume II, London: R. Gosling, 1718, Book I, stanza 62, p. 25

Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.

1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene 3]

If thou dost not comply with these just demands, he defies thee to single combat to the last extremity. And so saying, the Herald cast down his warder.

1764, “Onuphrio Muralto”, chapter 3, in William Marshal [pseudonym; Horace Walpole], transl., The Castle of Otranto, […], Dublin: […] J. Hoey, […], published 1765, page 91

The conspicuous position thus accorded to the cat as a warder-off of evil fortune seems oddly paralleled, though not imitated, by the place accorded to the same animal in popular European folklore.

1876, The China Review, Or, Notes and Queries on the Far East, page 79