It must be understood that the players wore swords in the streets, and used them, like gentlemen, for the destruction of one another. Thus Quin killed Will Bowen, in 1717. The former had declared that Ben Jonson acted Jacomo, in the ‘Libertine,’ better than Bowen. The latter pursued Quin to a tavern, shut the door of the room in which he found him, placed his back against the door, and threatened to pin Quin to the wainscot if he did not immediately draw. Quin remonstrated, but drew and kept on the defensive; while the impetuous Bowen so pressed upon his adversary that he actually fell upon that adversary’s sword and died, after acknowledging his own rashness. Quin was tried and acquitted. The actors however had need to wear swords to defend themselves from their noble assailants. The latter used to crowd between the side-scenes, and often interrupt the performance by crossing the stage and conversing aloud with one another. On one occasion, at the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, an earl, who was said to have been drunk for six years continuously, was guilty of this rudeness; and Rich, enraged thereat, threatened never to allow him to be admitted again, whatever he might offer for it. The Peer replied by slapping Rich in the face; and Rich returned the salute with all the vigour and rapidity that belonged to him as an accomplished harlequin. The drunken lord’s drunken companions immediately drew, and solemnly devoted Rich to death. The comrades of the latter, headed by Ryan, the ex-tailor, whipped out their swords too (some of them wore them with their court suits in Macbeth), charged the nobles, and after a bloody _mêlée_ drove them into the streets. The illustrious drunkards, brandishing their weapons, attacked the front of the house, fought their way into the boxes, proceeded to destroy the interior adornments, and would have set fire to the theatre but for the arrival of the “watch,” who captured the whole of the rioters. Justice was both lame and blind in those days, and the peers compromised the matter with the managers; but George I. was as much disgusted with the conduct of his “noble” subjects as a quiet scamp _could_ be at the peccadilloes of noisy ones. The _only_ men, not nobles, who were as great nuisances with their swords, were the Darby Captains. These were old “half-pays” or penniless “disbanded,” who used to pitch their tent at Derby’s Coffee-house in Covent-garden, and who were sanguinary in their cups. The “H. P.’s” who now meet in Ryder-street have little idea of the truculency of their predecessors, who most did congregate at the hostelrie whence they derived their name, and some pretenders their rank.