] In the 16th and early 17th centuries one indeed would expect a cuckloded husband to fight a duel( especially if he were of the gneteel or aristocratic class

In Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1811) Lord Delacour fights a duel with (and kills) Colonel Lawless, the supposed lover of his wife, Lady Delacour. In reality, Lady Delacour had only been using the colonel to make her husband jealous and nothing had happened other than the two of them riding in a carriage alone together very late at night. But the appearance of impropriety alone was enough, it seems.