Between 1682 and 1695, few actors were of greater note than luckless Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of Mrs. Bracegirdle was the unintentional cause. Handsome Will was the efficient representative of fops who did not forget that they were gentlemen. So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a lover, actresses enjoyed the sight of him pleading at their feet. In the younger tragic characters he was equally effective. His powers of mimicry won for him the not too valuable patronage of Judge Jeffries, to gratify whom, and the lord mayor and minor city magnates, in 1685, Mountfort pleaded before them in a feigned cause, in which, says Jacobs, "he aped all the great lawyers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their action and gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the stage, he was one of the most natural of actors; and even Queen Mary was constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's "Rover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelligence, and genius of Mountfort, who played the dissolute hero, sang as well as he spoke, and danced with stately dignity. But poor Will was only the hero of a brief hour; and the inimitable original of Sir Courtly Nice was murdered by two of the most consummate villains of the order of gentlemen then in town. Charles, Lord Mohun, had, a few years previous to this occurrence, been tried with the Earl of Warwick for a murder, arising out of a coffee-house brawl;[43] on being acquitted by the House of Lords, he solemnly promised never to get into such a difficulty again. But one Captain Richard Hill, being in "love" with Mrs. Bracegirdle, who heartily despised him, wanted a villain's assistance in carrying off the beautiful actress, and found the man and the aid he needed in Lord Mohun. In Buckingham Court, off the Strand, where the captain lodged, the conspirators laid their plans; and learning that Mrs. Bracegirdle, with her mother and brother, was to sup one evening at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane, they hired six soldiers--emissaries always then to be had for such work--to assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage, stationed near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th December 1692, the attempt was made; but what with the lady's screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gathering of an excited mob, it failed; and a strange compromise was made, whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in escorting her home to her house, in Howard Street, Strand. In that street lived also Will Mountfort, against whom the captain uttered such threats, in Mrs. Bracegirdle's hearing, that she, finding that my lord and the captain remained in the street--the latter with a drawn sword in his hand, and both of them occasionally drinking canary--sent to Mrs. Mountfort, to warn her husband, who was from home, to look to his safety. Warned, but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and