… perhaps not as regulated as we have come to think of it, and it proceeded from the disorder and the general violence of society. In spite of the image of the eighteenth century as an age of politeness, duels persisted in the eighteenth … be understood without a reflection on their long history, which is also briefly sketched here. Practices > Politics & Society Keywords Antagonism Aristocracy Disorder Gentleman Honour Law Masculinity Mundanity Religion Duelling was not … perhaps not as regulated as we have come to think of it, and it proceeded from the disorder and the general violence of society. Keith Thomas has described the masculine, violent culture which presided over seventeenth-century England: …