In 1777, the practice of duelling was so rife that Ireland had to sort out some kind of regulations. The men involved came up with an Irish Code and this was always referred to as the ‘Twenty-six Commandments’. The interesting point about that event is that the men who decided on the commandments were at Clonmel Assizes at the time. Maybe they had done the legal business and had time to spare, so they put together some rules for what had always been a chaotic affair, with insults being given and responded to in all areas of the land where the gentry and their profligate sons were active.
The problem with the duel has always been that there was no scale of insults which was generally agreed on. As the historian V G Kiernan has explained: ‘For some offences an exchange of two or more shots was held to be the minimum purgation. Cheating at cards was one of the crimes equivalent to a blow. An enlightened provision was that challenges should not be delivered at night ‘for it is desirable to avoid all hot-headed proceedings’. Irish heads were usually ‘too well heated at night with claret’.