Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Dove-cote
Boy! false hound!
If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,
That like an Eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli;
Alone, I did it—Boy!
Shakespeare.—Coriolanus, Act V. Scene 5. (Coriolanus to Aufidius.)
And made to fly like doves, whom th’ eagle doth affray.
Spenser.—The Fairy Queen, Book V. Canto XII. Verse 5. [This book of the Fairy Queen was published by Spenser in 1596, and Coriolanus not until between 1609 and 1615.]