Date: 1726

"[H]e promis'd me a thousand Fineries, gave me an handful of Gold, told me I should have a fine House of my own, a Coach and Servants, with all manner of Imbellishments to grace and adorn my Beauty; which Beauty (continu'd he) has chain'd my Heart, ever since the moment I beheld it in the Milline...

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: w. before June 1735?

"Let vows or benefits the vulgar bind, / Such ties can never chain th' intrepid mind."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1736

"To live without Restraint, is to live indeed, cry'd she, and I no longer wonder, that the free Mind finds it so difficult to yield to those Fetters, Priests and Philosophers would bind it in, and which were never forged by, nor are consistent with Reason."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1739

"Ye happy minds, that free from mortal chains, / Possess the realms where boundless pleasure reigns, / That feel the force of those immortal fires, / And reach the bliss, to which my soul aspires."

— Rowe [née Singer], Elizabeth (1674-1737)

Date: 1741

"Poor Mind, who heard all with extreme moderation, / Thought it now time to speak, and make her allegation: / ''Tis I that, methinks, have most cause to complain, / Who am cramped and confined like a slave in a chain.'"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1741

"'I've a friend,' answers Mind, 'who, though slow, is yet sure, / And will rid me at last of your insolent power: / Will knock down your walls, the whole fabric demolish, / And at once your strong holds and my slavery abolish: / And while in your dust your dull ruins decay, / I'll snap off my cha...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1744, 1753

"But this Agreement of Orgueil and his Wife, to bury Camilla's Father with Decency, by the Pleasure it gave her, renewed David's former Blindness, again enslaved his Mind to Orgueil, and fixed his Chain as strong as ever."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1744, 1753

"Thus my fancied Friends became my Plagues, and my real ones, by their Sufferings, tore up my Heart by the Roots, and frightened me into the bearing the insolent Persecutions of the others--I found my Mind in such Chains as are much worse than any Slavery of the Body."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1747

"SINCE freed from Love's enchanting Pains, / Your Heart no longer wears my Chains"

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)