I have, in my ‘TABLE TRAITS,’ alluded to the use and abuse of the sword, and therefore will not repeat here incidents already related therein; I will merely remark that the best exemplification of the career of a mere swordsman is to be found in the history of fighting Fulwood, the lawyer. This hero, ever ready to draw his blade with or without reason, while _standing_ (one night in the year of 1720), as was the custom of the pit, to see Mrs. Oldfield in ‘The Scornful Lady,’ remonstrated roughly with Beau Fielding for pushing against him. “Orlando the Fair” straightway clapped his hand to his sword; and the pugnacious lawyer, determined not to be behindhand, drew his blade, and passed it into the body of the Beau. While the latter, who was a mature gentleman of some half-century old, was exhibiting his wound, in order to excite the sympathy which he could _not_ arouse in the breasts of the laughing ladies, Fulwood, flushed by victory, hastened to the playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where he picked a quarrel with Captain Cusack, who was a better swordsman than Orlando and who stopped the lawyer’s triumphs by straightway slaying him. The sword-clubs were suppressed by royal proclamation in 1724. They had been denounced as unlawful three years previously. The object of the proclamation was to banish from civilized society the sword itself, in order thereby to check the practice of duelling, which was, at that period, exercised exclusively by means of the sword. The law became stringent, and judges merciless upon this point. This was made sufficiently clear in 1726, when Major Oneby killed Mr. Gower in a duel with swords, fought in a tavern, after a dispute over a game at hazard. The adversaries had fought without witnesses, in a room the door of which was closed. The Major, who had been both the aggressor and the challenger, mortally wounded Mr. Gower, who however declared that he had fallen in fair combat. A jury, nevertheless, found Oneby guilty of murder; the judges acquiesced in the verdict, but the Major escaped public execution by committing suicide. The law had not long to wait before other offenders were summoned for too freely using the sword. On a night in November, 1727, Savage the poet, with two companions, named Gregory and Merchant, entered a coffee-house near Charing-cross. Merchant insulted the company, a quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and a Mr. Sinclair was slain by a thrust,—it is said, but not proved, from the sword of Savage. The result of the trial that followed is well known. The verdict of _guilty of murder_ against Savage and Gregory, and of _manslaughter_ against Merchant (who was the most culpable of the three), was exacted by a villanously partial judge, evidently under pressure of the proclamation against swords.