Duelling [ Politics & Society ]
… Quite importantly, people would only fight duels with their social equals. 5 In the Renaissance, in Italy or in France, courts of honour were set up to adjudicate in disputes. In sixteenth-century France, duels had been left to proliferate … and prevent duels from taking place. Sir Edward Coke insisted that to kill a man in a duel was a murder. In 1615, the court of Star Chamber condemned the idea ‘that the private duel in any person whatsoever had any ground of honour’ ( … after the second decade of the century’ (83). Both in France and in England, they were then revived. In England, the courtly practice of duelling was not accepted by the Puritans, and Cromwell issued a proclamation against it in 1654. …
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