George Mitchell, God help him, was recently referred to in one of the papers as "a harbinger of peace". He's hardly that: a harbinger is a person or thing that goes ahead to announce the approach of someone or something: a forerunner. No matter: harbinger is an old word and its origin is pointed to in the Middle English herbengar and the Old French herbergere, provider of shelter. Its roots are Teutonic, heri, an army, and berga, protection. The word harbour is made from the same elements, and indeed harbour originally meant a place on land where an army might take refuge. Herbengar or harbinger was the man sent on ahead to find a harbour for the army, a billeting officer. Nowadays the use of the word is exclusively metaphorical.
Andy Regan, of Bishopstown, Cork, was intrigued at finding the word crowner used by Shakespeare and glossed as "coroner" in the footnotes to whatever edition he possesses. What, he asks, has either word to do with sudden death?
Both words meant simply a representative of the crown, from Latin corona through Anglo-French corouner. Richard II appointed the first coroners as keepers of the pleas of the crown: in other words, their job was to see that the crown got its financial rights and that prime boys hadn't boodle that belonged to Dick deposited on the quiet.
Richard wasn't a man for the shilly-shallying of judicial tribunals and the like: if you were caught fiddling it meant that somebody was told to sharpen the axe. A corpse, therefore, was of interest to the king's revenue commissioners, because if a successful prosecution followed treason (messing with the king's revenue was regarded as such), or murder, the miscreant's possessions went to the exchequer. The crown also had claims on treasure trove: this is why you'll still see the queen's coroners involved with cases of this nature as well.
King Richard could have ostracised the tax-dodgers, of course, instead of using the more direct method. In ancient Athens, when two politicians clashed in such a manner as to threaten the peace, a ballot was taken, and the loser left the place for a time, usually 10 years.
The votes were written on potsherds (ostraca), which has the same root as ostreon, a bone, from which we get words such as osteology and osteopath. So the process of saying bye-bye to Athens was called ostracismos, just a small step from the English word.