"Sir,
"We are willing to admonish you before we attempt our design; and provide you will use us civil, and admit us into your gallery, which is
our property according to formalities; and if you think proper to come to a composition this way, you'll hear no further; and if not, our intention is to combine in a body incognito, and reduce the playhouse to the ground; we are
"Indemnified."
Fog's Weekly Journal contains a well-written and whimsical explanation of the motives which produced the above extraordinary letter—the production, doubtless, of a Committee of aggrieved footmen, remarkable then, and certainly at present, for propriety of behaviour and modesty of demeanour.
March 12, 1737: "The footmen and other livery servants attending the nobility and gentry frequenting the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane, having (on account of their vociferations during the acts, as well as the intervals) been expelled the uppermost gallery of the house, in which they and their ancestors had sat and voted , in all affairs that came upon the Stage , time immemorial; thus, conceiving themselves to have an indefeasible hereditary right to the said gallery, and this expulsion to be a high infringement on their liberties, and to the end that posterity might see they were not wanting to vindicate the honour of their cloth, and maintain the whole body of the livery in the full and free enjoyment of all their antient rights and privileges; on Saturday night last
a great number of them, provided with staves and truncheons , and well-fortified with three threads and twopenny , assembled at the doors of the said Theatre, when their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, others of the Royal Family, and many of the Nobility, were in the house; and having made a practicable breach, entered at the same, and carried the stage-door by mere dint of oak , bearing down all the box-keepers, candle-snuffers, supernumeraries, and pippin-women , that stood in their way, in which assault 25 or 26 persons were said to be desperately wounded. Justice De Veil, luckily chancing to be present in the house (as he was once before when a disturbance of the like kind happened), immediately interposed his Magisterial authority, commanding the proclamation against riots to be read; but so great was the confusion, they might as well have read Cæsar's Commentaries. At length the disorder boding very bad consequences, the Justice, supported by the foot-guards, prudently seized some of the principal rioters, and ordered them to be reposited in Newgate, till their claims can be inquired into in a more regular and judicial way, and the whole matter set in a true light.
"The Welsh footmen are said to have been the most contumacious in this affair; for after several meetings and mature considerations had, at the Goat and Harp alehouse, they unanimously resolved
to support this essential privilege, at the hazard of their limbs and liveries; and likewise ordered a message to their brethren at the Ship victualling-house in the Old Palace-yard, Westminster, requiring the sense of that venerable body of brass-button Senators , at this knotty and critical conjuncture. Were these pertinacious gentlemen but to look into history, they, perhaps, may find by what means their predecessors forfeited the privilege of wearing swords: for Rapin and others write, "That in the fourth year of Henry VI. a Parliament was held at Leicester, which was called the Parliament of batts, because, their footmen not being allowed swords , they followed their masters to the House with batts and cudgells in their hands. And it must be allowed that they have made a pretty good use of them ever since."
Numbers of anonymous letters were thrown down the areas of people of fashion after this affair, denouncing vengeance against those who assisted in depriving them of their liberty and property, as they were pleased to term their riots and the gallery of Drury-lane Theatre. Two footmen were committed without bail or mainprize to answer for their conduct; and, while in Newgate, received supplies of every kind through the generous subscriptions of their sympathising brethren. At the same time 50 men mounted guard at the Theatre every night under the direction of Colonel De Veil.