When “Cutter of Coleman Street”[5] was first given in 1661, the characters of Cutter and Worm were ill received by the audience at the Duke’s Theatre; and, in his preface to the printed play, the author defended himself against the charge “that it was a piece intended for abuse and satire against the king’s party. Good God! Against the king’s party! After having served it twenty years, during all the time of their misfortunes and afflictions, I must be a very rash and imprudent person if I chose out that of their restitution to begin a quarrel with them.” The representation of those two scoundrels, “as pretended officers of the royal army, was made for no other purpose but to show the world that the vices and extravagancies imputed vulgarly to the cavaliers were really committed by aliens who only usurped that name.” Colonel Jolly is guardian to his niece, Lucia, who has an inheritance of five thousand pounds which, by the terms of her father’s will, is to be forfeited if she marries without her uncle’s consent. This is now a very stale bit of dramatic convention. Experienced play readers do not need to be reminded that “forfeited if transferred” is written large over the fortune of nearly every heiress in eighteenth century comedy. Colonel Jolly sees through his rascally followers, but is so reduced in purse that he offers Lucia’s hand to whichever of the two can gain her consent, on condition that the favored suitor will make over to him one thousand pounds out of his niece’s dowry. Of course she rejects both of them. This unprincipled bargain was quite properly censured as out of keeping with the character of an honorable old Cavalier gentleman who had fought for the King. And again the dramatist defends himself in his preface. “They were angry that the person whom I made a true gentleman and one both of considerable quality and sufferings in the royal party . . . should submit, in his great extremities, to wrong his niece for his own relief. . . . The truth is I did not intend the character of a hero . . . but an ordinary jovial gentleman, commonly called a good fellow, one not so conscientious as to starve rather than do the least injury.”