Date: 1691

"Why then shou'd I not pull up the stake, or get my Lock and Chain off, and scamper away in the interminable Fields of the invisible World."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"Towards the end of which Chapter Evander confesses his Wit has a little run away with him; so ungovernable a thing is towring Fancy, when not hand-cufft by powerful Reason, flying out against Learning, beloved Learning, at so Satyrical a rate as almost makes his heart bleed to read it, when he t...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"Madam, it is no small demonstration of the entire Resignation which I have made of my Heart to your Chains, since the secrets of it are no longer in my power."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

Date: 1692

"Nor would a man be willing always to be breaking his Brains to chain up the free will of his Wife, which, as some Opinions hold has a free dispensation from above."

— Gildon, Charles (1665-1724)

Date: 1724

"These were my Baits, these the Chains by which the Devil held me bound; and by which I was indeed, too fast held for any Reasoning that I was then Mistress of, to deliver me from."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1747-8

"To send a man and horse on purpose; as I did! My imagination chained to the belly of the beast, in order to keep pace with him!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1751

"I proceeded therefore--That I loved Familiar-letter-writing, as I had more than once told her, above all the species of writing: It was writing from the heart (without the fetters prescribed by method or study) as the very word 'Cor-respondence' implied"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1759

"If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)