I recently tried to find an example of one of those cringing addresses that appear in movies where some bootlicker is trying to ingratiate with someone who only got their position because an ancestor slept with a Harlot. After hours of searching, where it was so fruitless that I had to start wondering if disrespecting those in power was now also being censored, I found these. At least I know how to find them now.
Wherefore most gracious Sovereign, I … in my most humble manner, prostrate at your gracious feet, I only beseech your Majesty with your own high prudence and your accustomed goodness consider and weigh the matter. (TRIAL OF SIR THOMAS MORE: Letter to Henry VIII)
To the King’s most excellent Majesty: MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, We, your Majesty’s faithful subjects of the colonies … entreat your Majesty’s gracious attention to this our humble petition (US colonists to their lord and master in Britain)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows: Most Gracious Sovereign, We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament. (Gerald Kaufman – 14 May 1997)
Clearly the British and particularly the US have a particular penchant for crawling to royalty. Blackadder does a spectacular spoof of it in the Christmas Carol where he gets to see the future:
Asphyxia: …and hail to you, my Triple-Husbandoid. I summon you here to group-greet our swift imperial navies home.
Approach, Grand Admiral of the Dark Segment and Lord of the High-Slung Bottoms of Zob!
[Commander Blackadder walks forward]
Blackadder: ‘morning.
Frondo: To you, Blackadder — thrice-endowed Supreme Donkey of the Trouserpod — this much greeting [he raises a hand up to his forehead and lowers it with two and a half vertical waves].
Pigmot: [speaks with American dialect] I, too, bold navigator [he gives four vertical waves], cringe my dribblies at your resplendent pofflesnu!
Blackadder: Yes, well, that won’t be necessary, thank you.
Likewise, Jane Austin is apparently full of it:
I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh…whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her Ladyship. (Fictional – Jane Austen)
