Marchants: daughter
Marchants wife of London
From contemporary engravings by Hollar.
When a man was rich enough to set up his coach, part of the furniture was a pair of running footmen; these ran before the coach. The velocity of the machine did not make this exercise a great strain upon their activity; they stopped at the next stage and proclaimed the coming of the great man. Generally they were dressed in white; they carried a cane with a hollow ball at the end, in which was an orange or a lemon to refresh themselves with. When the roads became smooth and the carriages began to run much faster, the running footmen were gradually abolished. They remained, however, till late in the eighteenth century. Howell sends a running footman to a friend. He says:—
“You writ to me lately for a Footman, and I think this Bearer will fit you; I know he can run well, for he hath run away twice from me, but he knew the way back again. Yet tho’ he had a running head as well as running heels (and who will expect a footman to be a stay’s man?) I would not part with him were I not to go post to the north. There be some things in him that answer for his Waggeries; he will come when you call him, go when you bid him, and shut the door after him; he is faithful and stout and a lover of his master; he is a great enemy to all dogs if they bark at him in his running, for I have seen him confront a huge mastiff and knock him down; when you go a country journey, or have him with you a hunting, you must spirit him with liquor.”
PROCESSION IN THE CITY
From the Crace Collection in the British Museum.