1620. Percy, Folio MS., p. 197. … He light in a hole ere he was aware!
1647–80. Rochester, Poems. Thou mighty princess, lovely queen of holes.
d. 1649. Drummond, Posthumous Poems, ‘The Statue of Alcides.’ Fair nymph, in ancient days, your holes, by far, Were not so hugely vast as now they are.
1719. Durfey, Pills, etc., iv., 72. It has a head much like a Mole’s, And yet it loves to creep in holes: The fairest She that e’er took Life, For love of this became a Wife.
2. (old).—A cell; cf., Hell, sense 1.
1540. Lindsay, Thrie Estaits, line 1016. Wee have gart bind him with ane poill, And send him to the theifis hoill.
1607. Miseries of Enforced Marriage, iii., I. (Dodsley, Old Plays, 4th ed., 1875. ix., 514). If you shall think … it shall accord with the state of gentry to submit myself from the feather-bed in the master’s side, or the flock-bed in the knight’s ward, to the straw-bed in the hole.
1607. Wentworth Smith, The Puritan, iii. But if e’er we clutch him again the Counter shall charm him. Rav. The hole shall rot him.
1657. Walks of Hogsdon. Next from the stocks, the hole, and little-ease.
1663. Killigrew, The Parson’s Wedding, iv., 2 (Dodsley, Old Plays, 4th ed., 1875, xiv., 482). Make his mittymus to the hole at Newgate.