James Quin (24 February 1693 – 21 January 1766) was an English actor of Irish descent. Life Quin was born in King Street, Covent Garden, London, an illegitimate son of James Quin, an Irish-born barrister, and his partner (whom he apparently never lawfully married) Mrs. Grinsell. He was the grandson of Mark Quin, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1667–8. William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, was his first cousin. He was educated in Dublin, and probably spent some time at Trinity College, Dublin. His grandfather, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who caused a sensation by committing suicide in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin in 1674, supposedly because of his wife's infidelity, was one of the richest men in Dublin. James unsuccessfully claimed a share of the family fortune, but he could not prove that his parents had been lawfully married, since his mother had a previous husband who was still alive. Soon after his father's death in 1710, he made his first appearance on the stage at Abel in Sir Robert Howard's The Committee at the Smock Alley Theatre. Quin's first London engagement was in small parts at Drury Lane, and he secured his first triumph at Bajazet in Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane, on 8 November 1715. The next year he appeared as Hotspur at Lincoln's Inn, where he remained for fourteen years. On 10 July 1718 he was convicted of manslaughter for having killed William Bowen, another actor, in a duel which the victim had himself provoked. Quin was not severely punished, the affair being regarded as more of an accident than a crime. The public took a similar view of another episode in which Quin, on being attacked by a young actor who had been angered by the sarcastic criticism of his superior, drew his sword upon him and killed him. He took leading roles in Othello and Macbeth with Anna Maria Seymour as leading actress. But if he was eager in his own defence he was no less so in that of others. In 1721 a drunken nobleman reeled onto the stage of the theatre and assaulted the manager, Rich, whose life was saved by Quin's prompt armed interference. This resulted in a riot, and thereafter a guard was stationed in all theatres. In 1732 Quin appeared at Covent Garden, returning to Drury Lane from 1734 to 1741, and in 1742 was again at Covent Garden, where he