While on the topic of late seventeenth-century dancing masters behaving badly, I came across information on one George Norton, seventeen years old, condemned to die for the murder of Thomas Harris, a dancing master whom he accidentally killed with Harris’s own sword in a street fight.

Here’s Norton’s brief confession, excerpted from A True Account of the Behaviour, Confessions, and last Dying Speeches of the Condemn’d Criminals, that were Executed at Tyburn on Wednesday the 2d. of August, 1699, by John Allen, Ordinary.

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From a book of “select and remarkable” epitaphs published in 1757:

On Mr. Maddox, a Dancing-Master, and his Wife.
They were lovely and pleasant in their Lives, and in
their Deaths they were not divided.
Hail happy Pair!  predestin’d long to prove
The chastest Raptures of connubial Love!
Who took no Step thro’ Life’s perplexed Dance,
But what would well your mutual Bliss advance!
Who figur’d not a Plan but what was meant,
Again to join your Hands with fresh Content.
Tho’ ceremonious–yet with Ease still fraught;
The very Image of the Art you taught !
Polite in all Life’s mazy Measures try’d,
As the gay Partner to his destin’d Bride.
Twice thirty Years in gentle Wedlock past,
The first was not so happy as the last !
Still each to each so complaisantly gay,
As raptur’d Lovers on their Nuptial Day !
All wing’d with Down their Years advancing roll,
And still improve this Unison of Soul!
Unvarying–courtly to his latest Breath,
He gave his Spouse Precedence e’en in Death.
The truest Honours to each other given,
He just surviv’d, then led her up to Heaven.

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