The Humble Petition of Frances Harris (1701)

Abstract

This poem was written while Swift was in Ireland in 1701 as chaplain to the 2nd Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices appointed by the government to substitute in the absence of the Lord-Lieutenant. Chaplaincies to powerful or aspiring politicians were sought by ambitious clergymen to improve their own chances for advancement in the church; obviously, then, Swift as Berkeley’s chaplain would not be inclined to court anyone as humble as Frances Harris, who was employed as a waiting woman to Lord Berkeley’s daughter, Lady Elizabeth (the poem’s “Lady Betty”). The humor of the poem, thus, rolls out at Harris’s expense, yet Swift’s simultaneous empathy toward her is evident in his sensitive use of this ordinary woman’s style of speech.