Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an important person or one who presumes himself to be one.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 558: ca. 1640–1750.

2. a Dutchman.

1656		Mennis & Smith ‘To Sir John Mennis’ Musarum Deliciae (1817) 112: Thou art (I heare) where thou dost play carnoggin / Thou broughst from Wales, ’gainst flute of Hogan Mogan.
c.1660		‘Dutch Damnified or the Butter-Boxes Bob’d’ in Euing Broadside Ballads No. 60: Then Hogan Mogans b’ware your Pates / For now we shall make you distressed States.
1673		M. Stevenson Norfolk Drollery 124: But are the Hogan Mogan grown so tame, / The Belgick Lyon made the Woamns game?
1674		Hogan-Moganides 4: Hogan mounting Steed of wood [...] Began his Revels in the deep.
1691		N. Ward ‘The Poet’s Ramble after Riches’ in Writings (1704) 1: I Sing of neither Hogan Mogan / Of Ancient Greek or Trusty Trojan.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Hogen-Mogen, a Dutch man.
1709		‘Canary-Birds Naturaliz’d’ Collection of Eng. Poetry II (1716) II 1: Ought not I to prefer my [...] old Friends, or even my old Shoes [...] before Strangers, Sharpers, and Intruders; Hoghen-Moghens, Hugonots, and Wooden Shoe-makers?
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy I 119: The Hogan that plunder’d our Fishing before. [Ibid.] 208: Hogan mogan biters, Who our Fish devour. [Ibid.] II 78: Hogan, Hogan, Mogan Mogan, / Sooterkin Hogan, Herring Vandunck.
1838		Carlisle Jrnl 28 Apr. 4/2: She may be the get o’ some ‘foreign hoganmogan’.
1855		Macaulay Hist. of England IV Ch. 22 🌐 This man, who [...] was described as an awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan.
1892		Aitken Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell II [notes] 125: The States General of the United Provinces were officially addressed as ‘High and Mighty Lords,’ or, in Dutch, ‘Hoog-mogenden’; hence English satirists called them ‘Hogans-mogans,’ and applied the phrase to Dutchmen in general.