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It was such an attack in the Tower of London, for example, which first prompted judges to produce a definition of manslaughter. One evening in 1707, two friends, drummer John Mawgridge and Lieutenant William Cope, held a drunken celebration in the Tower Guard Room. A fight broke out over a female guest, and Mawgridge ran Cope through with his sword. 99, 352pp) Mawgridge's defence — he claimed Cope had thrown a bottle of wine at him — failed to impress the judges, who set out the provoking circumstances under which a manslaughter defence might succeed. Catching a man in bed with your wife, for example, was enough to escape a murder conviction. 'Adultery is the highest invasion of property, ' said the judges. That defence was used (unsuccessfully) as recently as 1945, after a man killed his wife when she admitted an affair. Upholding his conviction for murder, the House of Lords said: 'We have left behind us the age when the wife's subjection to her husband was regarded by the law as the basis of the marital relation. '