[1] Sir John Coventry, M. P. for Weymouth, in the course of a
debate on a proposed levy on playhouses, asked "whether did the
king's pleasure lie among the men or the women that acted?" This
open allusion to Charles's relations with Nell Gwynn and Moll
Davies enraged the Court party, and on Dec. 21, 1670, as Sir
John was going to his house in Suffolk Street, he was waylaid by
a brutal gang under Sir Thomas Sandys, dragged from his
carriage, and his nose slit to the bone. This outrage caused
great indignation, and the Coventry Act mentioned in the text
was passed, 22 & 23 Car. II. The perpetrators of the deed
escaped.




The Life of JANE GRIFFIN, who was Executed for the Murder of her Maid,
January 29, 1719-20


Passion, when it once gains an ascendant over our minds, is often more
fatal to us than the most deliberate course of vice could be. On every
little start it throws us from the paths of reason, and hurries us in
one moment into acts more wicked and more dangerous than we could at any
other time suffer to enter our imagination. As anger is justly said to
be a short madness, so, while the frenzy is upon us, blood is shed as
easily as water, and the mind is so filled with fury that there is no
room left for compassion. There cannot be a stronger proof of what I
have been observing than in the unhappy end of the poor woman who is the
subject of this chapter.