Headnote

Probably composed 1732; published 1733; copy text 1733a (see Textual Account).

This satire on modern Dublin fashion is based around the genuine contemporary ambivalence towards footmen, who were regularly accused of impudence and of aping their social betters. This general attitude of dislike and suspicion is inverted into a critique of modern manners, with the earnest footmen outraged that young men about town, their alleged social superiors, are behaving like them.

Themock-solemn Humble Petition is an apparent jeu d’esprit, though there is possible contemporary political significance in the derogatory use of ‘Toupees’ (see above, p. 46, and below, notes, p. 266). Although the Humble Petition is internally dated 1732, no edition from that year has ever been found, and the first extant published version dates from 1733, printed with A Serious and Useful Scheme to Make a Hospital for Incurables, usually attributed to Matthew Pilkington.

TO THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS, &c. THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE FOOTMEN IN AND ABOUT THE CITY OF DUBLIN.

Humbly Sheweth,

That your Petitioners are a great and numerous Society, endowed with several Privileges, Time out of Mind.

That certain lewd, idle, and disorderly Persons, for several Months past, as it is notoriously known, have been daily seen in the publick Walks of this City, habited sometimes in Green-Coats, and sometimes in laced, with long Oaken Cudgels in their Hands, and without Swords, in hopes to procure Favour, by that Advantage, with a great Number of Ladies who frequent those Walks, pretending and giving themselves out to be true genuine Irish Footmen. Whereas they can be proved to be no better than common Toupees; as a judicious Eye may soon discover, by their aukward, clumsy, ungenteel Gait and Behaviour; by their Unskilfulness in Dress, even with the Advantage of wearing our Habits; by their ill favoured Countenances, with an Air of Impudence and Dullness peculiar to the rest of their Brethren: Who have not yet arrived at that transcendent Pitch of Assurance. Although, it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these Counterfeits shall happen to succeed in their evil Design, of passing for real Footmen, thereby to render themselves more amiable to the Ladies.