1692 C. Gildon Post-boy rob'd of his Mail I. lv. 175 His Lordship..asked me what ill bred Clown I kept Company with? I told him a Country Cousin that was not yet polish'd enough for his Lordship's Conversation.

1707 S. Centlivre Platonick Lady i. 5 I wrack my poor Brain in finding out why you spend so much time with your Country Cousin, Mrs. Dowdy.

1770 S. Foote Lame Lover ii. 42 Pester'd at table with the odious company of..country cousins.

1806 J. Beresford Miseries Human Life I. vii. 171 Escorting two or three coaches full of country-cousins, on their first importation into London.

1829 Young Lady's Bk. 337 No drops, or, as our country cousins designate them, kisses, will fall in the passage of the wax from the taper to..the seal.

1887 T. A. Trollope What I Remember I. ii. 31 One of the sights of London for country cousins was to see the mails starting.

1922 ‘K. Mansfield’ Garden Party 193 This is my little country cousin Leila. Be nice to her.

1950 D. Thomas Let. 26 Feb. (1987) 750 We drove around the city, me gawping, like the country cousin I am, at this..soaring Babylon, everything monstrously rich and strange.

1976 Scotsman 20 Nov. (Weekend Suppl.) 4/1 Capes and ponchos,..are more at home on town birds than country cousins.

1991 N.Y. Times Mag. 20 Oct. ii. 30/2 The houses of the local nobility, awkward but charming country cousins to the great Baroque palaces of Noto and Palermo.

2011 D. Holly Delicious Darkness 3 Dad..shipped me off to my country cousins where the atmosphere would be pure, Godly, and wholesome.

1835 Metrop. Mag. 14 217 When the introduction is made, and country cousinship is insisted on, a frank, manly air, and generosity in treating, seldom fail to establish a permanent intimacy.

1870 J. R. Lowell Among my Bks. (1873) 1st Ser. 21 The brain is often forced to acknowledge the inconvenient country-cousinship of the stomach.

1894 Western Mail (Cardiff) 29 Aug. 5/8 Captain and Mrs. Basil Mundy were second cousins before they were married on Tuesday. Their country cousinship has now ended simultaneously with the minor relationships being swallowed up in the major.

1870 R. Broughton Red as Rose I. 139 They are fine, and inclined to ‘country cousin’ me.