The Carleton Bigamy Trial (Volume 97) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) 164959075X, 9781649590756

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Mary Carleton and Others

The Carleton Bigamy Trial E D I TE D BY

Megan Matchinske

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 97

THE CARLETON BIGAMY TRIAL

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 97

FOUNDING EDITORS

Margaret L. King Albert Rabil, Jr. SENIOR EDITOR

Margaret L. King SERIES EDITORS

Vanda Anastácio Jaime Goodrich Elizabeth H. Hageman Sarah E. Owens Deanna Shemek Colette H. Winn EDITORIAL BOARD

Anne Cruz Margaret Ezell Anne Larsen Elissa Weaver

MARY CARLETON and OTHERS

The Carleton Bigamy Trial •

Edited by MEGAN MATCHINSKE

2023

© Iter Inc. 2023 New York and Toronto IterPress.org All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

978-1-64959-075-6 (paper) 978-1-64959-076-3 (pdf) 978-1-64959-077-0 (epub)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carleton, Mary, 1642?-1673 author. | Matchinske, Megan, editor. Title: The Carleton bigamy trial / Mary Carleton and Others ; edited by Megan Matchinske. Description: New York : Iter Press, 2023. | Series: The other voice in early modern europe: the toronto series; 97 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Seven pamphlets related to the sensational seventeenth-century bigamy trial of Mary Carleton, who may have saved herself from hanging by her eloquent self-defense”--Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022046021 (print) | LCCN 2022046022 (ebook) | ISBN 9781649590756 (paperback) | ISBN 9781649590763 (pdf) | ISBN 9781649590770 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Carleton, Mary, 1642?-1673--Trials, litigation, etc. | Trials (Bigamy)--England--Biography. | Female offenders--England--Biography. | Impostors and imposture--England--Biography. Classification: LCC KD372.C55 C37 2023 (print) | LCC KD372.C55 (ebook) | DDC 345.42/0283--dc23/ eng/20221201 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046021 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046022 Cover Illustration The German Princess with her Suppos’d Husband and Lawyer, interleaf after A8 verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414.

Cover Design Maureen Morin, Library Communications, University of Toronto Libraries.

Contents Acknowledgments Illustrations Abbreviations Mary Carleton Time Line INTRODUCTION

vii ix xi xiii 1

John Carleton, THE REPLICATION; OR, CERTAIN VINDICATORY DEPOSITIONS

45

Mary Carleton, AN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF THE GERMAN PRINCESS

57

Mary Carleton, THE CASE OF MADAM MARY CARLETON

85

John Carleton, THE ULTIMUM VALE OF JOHN CARLETON, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE

151

F. B. Gent., VERCINGETORIXA; OR, THE GERMAN PRINCESS REDUC’D TO AN ENGLISH HABIT

211

T. P. Gent., A WITTY COMBAT; OR, THE FEMALE VICTOR. A TRAGI-COMEDY

257

THE ARRAIGNMENT, TRIAL, AND EXAMINATION OF MARY MODERS Bibliography Index

315 331 355

Acknowledgments The completion of this edition would never have been possible were it not for the many hands involved in hunting down footnotes, checking and rechecking facts and figures, correcting typos, filling in the various and extensive gaps in my knowledge whenever and wherever they arose, and finally cudgeling my prose into something approximating legible English. Thanks go especially to one person, Susan O’Rourke. Susan was tasked early on with the business of getting this project off the ground, and she single-handedly turned my endeavors from a weekend pastime into a legitimate and ongoing research expedition. Additional gratitude is due to both Janet Downie from the Classics Department, who identified, translated, and corrected passages in the Greek, providing commentary and explanation within the notes where necessary, and Ted Schienman, who handled most of the Latin. Finally, I would like to celebrate jointly all the accomplished footnote-sleuths who helped along the way, including my bibliographer, Mary Learner, who corralled my booklists into Chicago formatting, Ted Schienman, Elise Harris, Siobhan McGowan, and, once again, Susan O’Rourke. Your joint willingness to hop down any and all rabbit holes bespeaks an archival curiosity that knows no bounds. To Betty Hageman for keeping me on task and for only mildly despairing when I was later than late. I have never known a more consummate professional in any context. This volume is the richer for your knowledge and your careful eye. As my mentor for as long as I can remember, you are owed more than you will ever know. Thank you as well to my indexer, Lisa Regan, who did a superb job outlining my train of thought for readers and to Margaret English-Haskin for her amazing oversight in setting this piece to rights. Finally, to my longtime friend Reid Barbour and to my anonymous reader: this edition is stronger and far more cohesive for your many suggestions. In addition to understanding at a macro level exactly what this project needed to make it a success, you both provided the lineedit corrections that afforded me the second, and third and fourth, wind necessary to return to its beginning as many times as it took to ensure all was well. It is a gift that I will never forget. Much appreciation to the brilliant scholars who have gone before me within our community, making this pursuit part of a larger project of which we can all be proud. Within that cohort, the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women brings together scholars and teachers from every discipline who study women, celebrating their contributions to the cultural, political, economic, and social spheres of the early modern period. As a scholarly collective, the society has, since the very beginning of my career, proved a safe haven, offering me continuing support, encouragement, strategy, and stamina. Year after year, meeting after vii

viii Acknowledgments meeting, I find solace and wisdom in our joint gatherings. For it is invariably in those encounters, as one or more of my colleagues turns the discoveries of an hour into something brilliant and all together new, that I am inspired, that I remember why it is I love what I do, that I am struck again by my relationship to and with a past that teems with competent and able women. On the home front, none of this would have been possible without the continued support of my forever partner, David, my astonishing children, Erin and Marin, and the rest of our extended family. You all know who you are. You make me whole.

Illustrations Cover.

The German Princess with her Suppos’d Husband and Lawyer, interleaf after A8 verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414.

Figure 1.

“Wenceslaus Hollar’s ‘A map or groundplott of the citty of London,’” 1666 © The British Library Board; Maps Crace Port 2.53.

44

Figure 2. Mary Carleton, frontispiece, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414.

87

Prince Rupert, Elector Palatine, title-page verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; reproduced by permission, Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414.

89

Figure 4. Mary Carleton at thirty-eight, A4 recto, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414.

92

Mary Carleton, at Marriage Ceremony, A7 verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414.

94

Figure 6. The German Princess with her Suppos’d Husband and Lawyer (detail), interleaf after A8 verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414.

95

Mary Carleton, with miscellaneous men, C1 recto, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414.

106

Figure 3.

Figure 5.

Figure 7.

ix

Abbreviations BLD

Garner, Bryan A., and Henry Campbell Black, eds. Black’s Law Dictionary. 10th ed. Eagan, MN: Thomson Reuters, 2014.

OCD

Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth, eds. Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford University Press (online version).

ODNB

Matthew, H. C. G., and Brian Harrison, eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy; From the Earliest Times to the Year 2020. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Oxford University Press (online version).

TLE

Weinreb, Ben, and Christopher Hibbert, eds. The London Encyclopaedia. New York: St. Martin’s, 1986.

xi

Mary Carleton Time Line The following time line provides two separate narrative frames. (M) designates Mary’s life as she describes it. (D) designates Mary’s life as it is described by her detractors.1 16342

Mary born (D)

1642

Mary born (M)3 January 224

Mary baptized

1642–43

Canterbury Cathedral ransacked by parliamentary forces (Mary’s chorister father would lose job [D])

1644

Upon her father’s death, Mary enters convent of Santa Clara (M)

1654

Mary weds John Steadman (D)5

1654–57

Mary bears two children, both of whom die (D)6

1. For the purposes of this time line, Mary’s detractors (D) include the Carleton family and their key witness, John Knott. 2. The Case of Madam Mary Carleton highlights Mary’s birth year as a key site of evidence in the bigamy charge. According to Knott, she was nineteen or twenty when she married her first husband in 1654. Mary says that reckoning is impossible as she is “now but one and twenty” (Mary Carleton, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton [London, 1663], 136). Hereafter Case. 3. Mary says she is the daughter of Henry von Wallway, Lord of Holmstein (M), from Cologne, Germany; her detractors say she is the daughter of Thomas Moders, a chorister/fiddler, and hails from Canterbury, Kent ([D]; Case, 99 and 136). 4. Janet Todd, Mary’s ODN biographer, identifies January 22, 1642, as the date of Mary’s baptism (“Carleton [née Moders], Mary [nicknamed the German Princess] [1634x42–1673], impostor,” ODNB). In contrast, Francis Kirkman says she was born on that day (The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled [London, 1679], 9). Note that by the time that Kirkman is writing, sixteen years after the trial, the lines between supporters and detractors have blurred. Kirkman assumes Mary’s bigamy but accepts her later birthdate (or baptism). Apparently, he is willing to overlook any temporal inconsistencies that may accrue from an eleven-year-old bride. Another pamphlet, Memories of the Life of the Famous Madam Charlton (London, 1673), also provides Mary’s birthdate: April 1639. 5. Mary Carleton, An Historical Narrative of the German Princess (London, 1663), 70ff (hereafter Historical); and Case, 118ff. 6. Historical, 76; and Case, 130 and 137.

xiii

xiv Mary Carleton Time Line 1659

Princess Louise Hollandine of the Palatine begins novitiate at Cistercian Maubuisson Abbey in France (M & D) (Prince Rupert in Paris on two occasions that might put him into contact with Mary through Louise)

1662

Mary moves from the convent of Santa Clara to a private house and takes an English governess, Mrs. Margaret Hammond (M)

1663

April

Mary travels by packet boat from Gravesend to Billingsgate, arriving at the Exchange Tavern (M & D)

May 127

The Replication published (D)

June 4

Mary prosecuted for bigamy at “Justice Hall” in the Old Bailey

June 12

An Historical Narrative published (M) The Arraignment published (M) The Case published (M) The Ultimum Vale published (D) Vercingetorixa published (D) The Witty Combat published (D)

June 28 1669

October 308

1670–71

Mary writes a letter from Holland to Lord Arlington, begging restitution for abuses committed by one of his searchers (M) Mary, using multiple aliases, arrested at least four times for theft9

1671

February10

Mary is ostensibly transported to Barbados

1673

January 22

Mary hangs at Tyburn for stealing a silver cup and spoon

7. The 1663 Carleton pamphlets were published in slightly under seven weeks, running from May 12 to June 28 (Mary Jo Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern English Woman: Mary Carleton’s Lives [Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004], 21); there are sixteen of these in all (see biblio, 333—36). This time line only includes the seven pamphlets that appear in this edition. I list all of the 1663 texts, in addition to another fourteen that surface thereafter, in “Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Texts on the Carleton Bigamy Trial,” which opens the bibliography. 8. Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 166–75. 9. “Maria Darnton (horse thief), Mary Blacke (shoplifter), Mary Kirton (tankard thief) [and] Maria Lyon (part of a gang who robbed clothing shops)” (Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 195). 10. Mary’s name appears in a list of transportees (Peter Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1661–1699 [Baltimore MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1990], 186).

Introduction The Other Voice When, in The Case of Mary Carleton, the speaker, Mary, admits that “to deceive the deceiver, is no deceit,”1 we should recognize a governing principle in the writings printed in the present edition. Truth in late-seventeenth-century England was a moving target and one that Restoration writers rarely hit. Her 1663 replies to her husband, John, evocatively capture the extent to which gender informs her own moment’s complex truth wars, shaping or at least tacitly maneuvering how knowledge systems came to be and marking when and where they are likely to fall apart. Over the course of these narratives, Mary makes and breaks innumerable promises to tell us what truly transpired between her and her husband, and she is hardly alone in those double dealings. John does the same. While it is easy to say that because both disagree, one of them must be lying (he says she’s a Canterbury fiddler’s daughter; she says her father is a German doctor of civil law), the writings in this volume suggest that the nature or essence of truth is both variable and subject to gender dislocation (the truths that Mary and John know answer to different pressures, which themselves are determined by a host of criteria, paramount among them the fact that in a culture that appears to privilege all things male, one is a woman and one is a man). Writings by women have long offered the possibility of alternate truths and oppositional narratives, but their legacies have not always been easy to retrieve or, for that matter, benign in content. For example, in England as on the Continent, categories separating right from wrong, reason from fancy, and truth from error have been gendered for millennia. Rooted in Christian tradition, they stem from Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit, turning women into beings of mistrust in and of themselves, deceitful and prone to inconstancy.2 Despite such structural 1. For this proverbial commonplace, see Morris Palmer Tilley, ed., A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Collection of Proverbs Found in English Literature and the Dictionaries of the Period (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), D182. 1550 marks the first appearance in this collection. Henry Chettle’s play ’Tis No Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver carries the name; it was apparently performed in September 1598 but never printed. As noted, the comment appears in The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, 1663 [hereafter Case], 113. All subsequent citations from this and the following Carleton bigamy tracts are from the present edition and will be cited parenthetically by page number: An Historical Narrative of the German Princess, 1663 (hereafter Historical); The Replication, 1663 (hereafter Replication); The Ultimum Vale, 1663 (hereafter Ultimum); Vercingetorixa, 1663; A Witty Combat, 1663 (hereafter Witty Combat); and The Arraignment, Trial, and Examination of Mary Moders, 1663 (hereafter Arraignment). 2. In Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England, Joanna Picciotto distinguishes between Adam’s innocent and “productive” experimental curiosity and the carnal curse that eventuates in Eve’s downfall

1

2 Introduction impediments, women have struggled to reimagine truth sites that do not simply reconstitute traditional subject-selves but instead operate outside and beyond standard binaries. Rejecting the certainties of those who came before, they have laid claim to their own truth-based concepts—also good, also virtuous, and also reasonable—and have redefined those terms to suit specific “female” needs. Written in the early years of the English Restoration, the Mary Carleton trial pamphlets offer us a particularly powerful portrait of how truth fragmentation can render visible and productive gender differentiation. That portrait shows us people—ravaged by civil war, broken by political division, and rent by religious schism—desperately looking for capital T truth in a world where the very idea of what that means has been radically shattered. It is up to those same people—and, for the purposes of this volume, to women in particular—to attempt to reimagine that possibility and make it their own. Winnowing out truth from counter-truth—what women believe versus what men believe—as we pore over the seven pamphlets included here will be a decidedly complicated endeavor. Rather than offering us definitive answers to such questions, these works ask us to think instead about the problem of absolutes in any form and how to retrieve and secure a site from which to speak truly, especially in the aftermath of the English Civil Wars. The problem of unstable truths is reflected everywhere in the texts included here. Claims to authorship are merely that: claims. While Mary and her husband each claim to have authored two of the tracts published in 1663, we are unable to verify that composition. John, for example, insists that Mary’s texts were written by another.3 While we cannot presume gender, at least not explicitly, for the purposes of this volume, I am going to assume throughout that the woman Mary Carleton did in fact take up a pen and write. Whether she did or not ultimately does little to diminish the very real power that her writings had as writings presumed to have been written by Mary Carleton. And that finally is the only way that they can be read.4

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 3. John apologizes in The Ultimum Vale for writing in a more passionate style than he had in The Replication, a sign perhaps of a change in authorship as much as a change in tone. He also insists midway through that account that Mary’s writings are not her own: “For I can testify,” he assures us, “and shortly may to some purpose produce the unmannerly, base and beggarly detractor [who has written in her stead]” (Ultimum, 169). 4. Textual voice earns its power in the pact that is made between the announced speaker and the readers who read what is written. When voice announces its identity in specific ways—“I am learned”; “I am a woman”; “I am defending myself ”—its narrative changes accordingly.

Introduction 3

Mary Carleton and the Trial Sometime in the morning of June 4, 1663, Mary faced her accusers at the Old Bailey Courthouse on charges of bigamy.5 Principal among them was John, a young law student whom she purportedly duped into a faulty marriage. In his charge against her, John claimed that he was one of many, vowing that Mary had at least two, perhaps three, other husbands before him: a cobbler still living by the name of Thomas Steadman and a surgeon named Thomas Day.6 More to the point, he also claimed that she was a serial pretender.7 In marrying him, Mary had lied about her past, her prospects, and her parentage. Mary’s punishment, if she had been found guilty, would have been gruesome—to hang by the neck until dead with no possibility of parole. But that sentence was not issued. Instead, she was eventually released, the indictment against her overturned. In early modern England, criminals did not have the benefit of legal assistance to support them. While Mary had been incarcerated in Newgate Prison for several weeks prior to her trial and had been forced repeatedly during that time to parade before a crowd of curious and paying onlookers, she also managed to gather sympathetic witnesses and to arrange for a court observer to record everything that would transpire during her court appearance. Thanks, in part, to Mary’s persuasive self-defense and a rather astonishing lack of evidence, the jury ruled in her favor, acquitting her of what was in effect a mortal offense.8 Was Mary the pretender that John imagined, or was she in fact what she promised to be—a German lady of means? Which of the many truths that are 5. Central criminal court. It sat about two hundred yards northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral and adjacent to Newgate Prison, where Mary was being housed. See also Historical, 73, and Arraignment, 317. 6. The final marriage tally according to Carleton’s biographers was actually higher. A third husband, a surgeon (Thomas Day) from Dover, is mentioned in Case, 136ff., Ultimum, 194ff., and Arraignment, 328. See also Ernest Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673: A Missing Chapter in the History of the English Novel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), 1 and 14; J. L. Raynor and G. T. Cook, eds., The New and Complete Newgate Calendar: The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600–1926, vol. 1, The Complete Newgate Calendar (London: Navarre Society Limited, 1926), 250, accessed March 28, 2013, Gale 2013, http://galenet.galegroup.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/servlet/MM LT?af=RN&ae=Q4201305001&srchtp=a&ste=14. Kietzman speculates that there may have been at least one additional husband after John Carleton and before Mary Carleton resurfaced in the 70s (The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 176). See also Janet Todd, “Carleton [née Moders], Mary [nicknamed the German Princess] (1634x42–1673), impostor,” ODNB. 7. “[1.a] A person who makes a profession or assertion, esp. falsely or hypocritically; a person who lays claim to an ability, quality, skill, etc. . . . with intent to deceive; a charlatan; a dissembler. . . . [3.a] A person who claims or aspires to a title or position.” 8. For a useful overview of how the courts operated in one village, Essex, see Cynthia Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

4 Introduction promised in the Carleton pamphlets can we trust? Historians have yet to find any concrete evidence linking this young woman to the past to which John and his family had hoped to bind her. But the same goes for the claims she made for herself. Was Mary a Canterbury fiddler’s daughter or a German gentlewoman? A bigamist or a first-time married woman? Did she walk away from her trial as a successful con artist or an abandoned and vulnerable wife? Certainly, Mary was not the only pretender in this debate.9 What so fascinates about the pamphlets included in this volume is the shifting truth-value that moves within and through them. Indeed, there is so little “fact” on which both parties can seem to agree that much of what we are dealing with comes down to a matter of “pretense.” It is our task as scholars to interrogatively winnow out its various meanings. Here is the shared narrative that both Carletons embrace (more or less): Mary arrived in London toward the end of March in 1663, traveling on a river barge from Gravesend, and stopped at the Exchange Tavern. Apparently harassed by a man (perhaps a fellow cozener), ostensibly a minister, who had journeyed with her, she was “rescued” by the owner of the tavern, Mr. William King, and invited to stay.10 During their conversation, she said that she was Maria von Wallway, recently from Cologne, Germany. She claimed she was expecting some letters to arrive detailing the managing of her personal affairs. That information, along with her clothing, jewels, and bearing, gave rise to speculation as to her fortune. Mr. King arranged for her to meet his wife’s brother, John Carleton, an eligible bachelor. Believing Mary to be the orphaned daughter of a wealthy lord only recently removed from the convent that raised her, John began to woo her in secret. Mary explains the secret thus: John wanted to hide the fact that a private citizen was attempting to wed a foreign peer—something he would have had no business doing.11 Mary either went along with the charade, fanning its flames while professing a lack of familiarity with English customs, or, as she claims, genuinely did not realize what was happening. Eventually, after a period of covert wooing financed in part on the promise of the bride’s forthcoming dowry, the two were wed. When the bride’s wealth failed to materialize, a letter was discovered claiming that Mary had married several men prior to John and was an “absolute cheat.”12 9. John deserves equal billing here. Was he a dissatisfied social climber, we may ask, or an abused husband? A wealthy lord-in-hiding or an impoverish law clerk? An aspiring writer or a put-upon civil servant? In charging his would-be wife with deceit, to what extent did John cover up fictions of his own? 10. William married John Carleton’s sister, Marie, on November 5, 1657 (Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 45). 11. Mary explains that her father was Henry von Wallway, Lord Holmstein, a licentiate and doctor of civil law (Case, 99n49 and n50). There is no evidence of such a man to date. 12. “The money or property the wife brings her husband; the portion given with the wife.” For additional discussions of dowry and its opposite, dower, a widow’s share for life, of her husband’s estate, see Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993); Eileen Spring, Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 (Chapel

Introduction 5 The Carletons alleged that John’s intended wife was actually Mary Moders, born in Canterbury to a lowly chorister or church musician.13 Because they insisted that she had at least one other husband, hence the bigamy charge, the family notified the authorities, demanding her arrest and a dissolution of the marriage to their son. Mary was dragged sometime in mid-to-late May to Newgate Prison,14 where she managed to secure ardent sympathizers, including such notables as Samuel Pepys, who argued “high in the defence of her wit and spirit.”15 After several weeks under lock and key—weeks during which she was daily paraded before a paying crowd of fascinated Londoners—Mary went to trial on June 4, 1663. Testifying on her own behalf, she eloquently defended her actions, throwing her husband’s accusations of deceit and gold-digging right back at him. Her new relatives, in the meanwhile, mismanaged their portion of the testimony, failing to secure adequate witnesses or evidence. As a result of their incompetence and perhaps because of Mary’s rhetorical skills, she was ultimately cleared of all charges. The active intervention of high-ranking supporters who sought to undermine the Carletons’ efforts and bolster Mary’s case may also have played some role in securing her release. Of course, Mary’s story did not end with her acquittal. As we later discover, following a brief stint onstage in 1664 where she played herself, Mary faded from the historical record only to resurface nearly a decade later. Called again before the court, she was tried, a few more times, under a number of different aliases— “Maria Darnton (horse thief), Mary Blacke (shoplifter), Mary Kirton (tankard thief) [and] Maria Lyon (part of a gang who robbed clothing shops)”—the last for stealing silver plate.16 Apparently, the intervening years had diminished Mary’s powers of persuasion. The 1673 decision did not go her way. Sentenced again to Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Su Fang Ng, Literature and the Politics of Family in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Lawrence Stone, Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1977). The letter is quoted twice: Case, 121, and Ultimum, 187–88. John’s version cites the letter differently, calling her “the greatest cheat.” 13. Todd notes some uncertainty about Mary’s birth origin but assumes that she is English; she cites records that identify a Mary Moders baptized on January 22, 1642, and another born eight years earlier. In the Memories of the Life of the Famous Madam Charlton (London, 1673), we are told that Mary was born in April 1639. While all three avowals lead many scholars to take Mary’s English parentage for granted, the name is common and the evidence as yet inconclusive (Todd, “Carleton,” ODNB). 14. Located on Newgate Street, the prison served as the main holding area for prisoners awaiting trial at the Old Bailey Court. 15. Pepys, “7 June 1663,” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed., Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 4:177. 16. Kietzman suggests that the arrests under these aliases all took place in the 1670s immediately prior to Mary’s execution (The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 195). See also Time Line, xiv.

6 Introduction die by hanging, Mary Carleton was executed at Tyburn on January 22, nearly a decade after she first found her way into our historical sights. We know that Mary “embellished the truth.” Whether she did so at the beginning of her life or at its end, to repair an image or to make another of her own choosing, is another question entirely. She perhaps was a fiddler’s daughter, born with Canterbury Chorister aspirations. Rather less likely, she may instead have been the only child of a wealthy German lawyer who died when she was young. She may also have been married to one, two, or even, according to some of her later detractors, three other husbands besides the one who tried her for bigamy. We cannot know. But of course, it is that uncertainty that keeps us alert, that makes us return again and again to these accounts and the questions they pose. Whether and to what extent Mary’s accounts of herself are accurate remain a mystery. What is clear is that her predicament struck a chord with English audiences. In the weeks leading up to and following the 1663 trial, sixteen separate pamphlets and broadsheets appeared decrying or defending “the German princess”17 while, for the price of admission, visitors could make their way to where she was incarcerated to glimpse her in the flesh. The enigma of Mary’s past was perhaps almost as potent as the power of her present in drawing adherents to her cause. Her claims to gentle status and foreign birth and the outrage she expressed at the hands of her accusers all faired the better for the uncertainty of her origins. Mary’s ability to fashion for herself a new life and to insist that her marriage to John was the only one that mattered (if, in fact, there had been previous marriages) walked the line between pretended innocence and ironic self-awareness. The space of forward-looking self-forgetting that she was able to create became a locus of surprising power for her audiences, power that could be deployed within a variety of fields and frames. While the stories Mary wove about her life secured her advantage and maneuverability in the marriage market, they offered her readers a perhaps more elusive but still valuable consequence—the power and the promise of improvisation as an aspect of definition itself (in politics, in finance, in religion, etc.). Her narratives evoked possibility, turning their heroine into, to borrow one of our own terms, a “cult sensation” and making her trial a lightning rod for a society that had been struggling, all too recently, to articulate ideas of change and self-determination in an environment without the domestic, religious, or political vocabularies to express such transformations.

The Collapse of Truth By 1663 and the Mary Carleton bigamy trial, universalist notions of truth had suffered irreparable damage. Church and monarchy could no longer be counted on

17. That number was to jump to at least twenty-five by 1673, the year that Carleton was executed.

Introduction 7 to mean the same thing to one and all.18 People had begun to look elsewhere for answers—to the evidentiary measures premised by new science, to the fact-based correspondences of law, and to themselves and their community and the shared notions of integrity and trust that came to stand in as guarantors of good faith. Using experimentation and an ongoing process of revision, they tried to separate truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and order from disorder, often coming up short. After nearly a decade of civil war, England had been laid low, many of its foundations shattered. Even the most fundamental of institutions saw radical change in the years following the toppling of the Crown. State, church, and family were to bend, almost to the point of breaking.19 England was a monarchy; then it was not; then it was. Anglican worship, always unique in that the Church of England’s Protestantism developed separately from that of the continent, swung for a time toward a proto-Catholic ceremonialism (communion tables were placed altarwise at the east end of chancels, visually contradicting the idea that salvation comes through faith alone), then pulled back to a sparer Puritanism during the Interregnum, reminding believers that human salvation is not open to material negotiation and things of this world.20 Despite Charles II’s attempts to quell religious tension by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence that promised to offer relief to papists and sectarians alike, his first Parliament quickly passed a series of laws collectively known as the Clarendon Code that established a centralized and more punitive church government.21 The English household, governed by paterfamilias, meanwhile experienced its own mighty reformations in an attempt to consolidate the vocabularies of patriarchy and contract, as men struggled to resecure the 18. Radical reformation within the English church was not altogether unique: its theological gyrations can be pushed back as early as Henry VIII’s landmark break with Catholicism if not sooner. The point I am making here is that the English Civil Wars simultaneously dismantled political and religious foundational categories, leaving both temporarily unstable. 19. Historians are divided as to how to define the events at mid-century. While most agree that religion played a key role in the events that shaped England’s Civil Wars, scholars remain of several minds as to whether they were the result of full-blown revolution or instead intermittent rebellion. For a general historical overview, see Graham E. Seel, Regicide and Republic: England, 1603–1660, Cambridge Perspectives in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 20. Laudian additions to church practice were stripped and stained-glass windows, carvings, and sculptures that had been part of the church for hundreds of years were torn down and destroyed. 21. The Declaration of Indulgence (1662) was crushed by Parliament vote (John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 [London: Longman, 2000], 182). A series of four legal statutes, the Clarendon Code (1661–1665) reestablished the supremacy of the Anglican Church and ended toleration for dissenters. It excluded nonconformists from office, made reading the Book of Common Prayer in service compulsory on pain of forfeiting the ministry, forbade unauthorized worship, and restricted movement for dissenting priests (Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain, 1603–1714 [London: Penguin, 1996], 235).

8 Introduction definitions of family and women sought to reimagine those boundaries.22 In each of these embattled sites, what was being contested was the true form of political government, the true shape of religious worship, and the true organization of the domestic home. In 1644, John Milton reminded readers in Areopagitica that godly truth “may have more shapes than one.” Arguing for the possibility of a self-censored free press, he insisted that faithful Christians may speak their spiritual truth according to a wide range of different voices and still be talking about the same true God.23 Milton here was not separating out divisible truths in his understanding but rather speculating on one great truth in its many incarnations. By 1660, however, the idea of that whole and partible (immutable) truth had been badly shaken, if not entirely blasted apart. At the very least, it had become something beyond human ken, like Milton’s God in Paradise Lost, “thyself invisible / Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit’st / Thron’d inaccessible.”24 In contrast, human truths (faulty and incomplete), weighed down by situation and circumstance, had been shattered by years of deprivation and 22. On patriarchy, see esp. Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha; or, the Natural Power of Kings (London, 1680). Arguing that the divine right of kings derives from parental authority and that monarchs as God’s regents are subject to no earthly authority, Filmer traces everything from the first father, Adam. Filmer’s Patriarcha was published posthumously. For an earlier expression of the family as a microcosm of the state, see also his Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed Monarchy (London, 1648). For an excellent overview of Filmer’s vision, see Johan P. Somerville’s introduction to his edition, Filmer: Patriarcha and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See also early contract theorists, such as Hugo Grotius (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty [de iure praedae commentarius 1603?], prolegomena, chap. 2), who argued that all men possessed natural human rights; Samuel von Pufendorf (On the Duty of Man and Citizen [de officio hominis et civis 1675]), who argued that all men voluntarily entered into social contracts to better their lives and maintain sociability; and, of course, John Locke (Two Treatises of Government [London, 1689], second treatise), who believed that all men were free as a result of their God-given natural rights to form contracts and to dissolve them if they did not accord with God’s original intent. Locke’s first treatise was a scathing line-by-line rebuttal of Filmer’s Patriarcha. For women’s voices in these debates, see Margaret Fell, Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures (London, 1666); Bathshua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts, & Tongues (London, 1673); and Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman’s Companion; or, a Guide to the Female Sex (London, 1673). 23. When Parliament abolished Star Chamber in July 1641, it also necessarily ended censorship regulation—at least temporarily. A New Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing was instituted on June 14, 1643. It reintroduced many of the most egregious elements of the earlier regulations, including prepublication licensing; registration of all printed work; search, seizure, and destruction of any books the government deemed threatening; arrest and imprisonment of offending writers, printers, and publishers; and, finally, a monopoly for The Stationers’ Company. Milton, Areopagitica, in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003), 747. By the time that Areopagitica gets written, censorship regulation is already back in place under the new dispensation; Milton laments its return. 24. Milton, Paradise Lost, in John Milton, ed. Hughes, 3.375–77.

Introduction 9 despondency. Mary Jo Kietzman notes the truth confusion that surrounded questions of identity in the aftermath of war. Within the chaos and confusion of daily and unrelenting conflict, people had become more willing to let things slide. With destitute royals returning to claim lands and titles that had been sequestered from them, a ten-year absence made legal determinations far from easy. It was not simply a matter of who had what rights but, more pointedly, were the claimants truly who they said they were? With no genetic testing to prove lineage once and for all, a decade’s time and the losses incurred by war could pave the way for an enterprising nobody to walk into another life.25 And what if the nobody were a woman? We might recall John Ford’s presciently ambivalent pre–Civil Wars play The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck (1634). In that play, another pretender, this one royal, vowed he was Richard IV, one of the young princes supposedly murdered in the Tower of London during the reign of Henry VII. Returning to claim the throne after years of purported exile, Warbeck was eventually captured and made to confess that he was a fraud, but not before Ford had rendered him more sympathetic than the king who sentenced him to death. While the early modern theater had always been an ideal site for thinking about identity in flux, especially gendered identity,26 it was to be joined, after the wars, by almost every other social and cultural institution and their moral equivalents. Indeed, “pretense” was so epidemic throughout post–Civil War England that it infected not only claims of the flesh (pretending to be other than I am) but also and perhaps equally disturbingly promises of the soul (vowing to believe other than I know). The Carleton narratives, composed in the immediate aftermath of such epic upheavals, express the moral ambivalence of a world where the fallen, failing to heed God, might, according to the Quaker Samuel Fisher, swear “themselves To and Fro into the Favour of every Form of Government as it stands its time upon the stage”27—a world teetering between what can be seen and what cannot. It is that world that brought forth these texts; it is that world, that past,

25. Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 40. See also Natalie Zemon Davies, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). In Davies’s (fictionalized) history, a man returns home from the Hundred Years’ War to greet a wife and a village that may or may not be his. While he ends up being better at fulfilling both obligations than the man who left, he is eventually charged with that man’s murder. Many sequestered Civil War properties were not returned; they remained with their new owners. Charles II intervened only at his pleasure, as to have remanded all properties would have been too destabilizing to the economy and to his rule. 26. See, for example, Catherine Belsey’s The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (1985: repr., New York: Routledge, 2014); and Natasha Korda’s Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002). For Restoration studies, see Jean Marsden’s Fatal Desire: Women, Sexuality, and the English Stage, 1660–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 27. Samuel Fisher, Rusticus ad Academicos (London, 1660).

10 Introduction and, most especially, the women who were forced to operate at the margins of conventional categories that these works attempt to understand.

An Abandoned Wife Bigamy was and, indeed, still is a serious offense.28 In early modern England, it warranted the death penalty for the deceiving partner but was rarely prosecuted.29 The circumstances and the proceedings of the Mary Carleton trial were all the more scandalous because the criminal was a woman.30 Her actions went beyond cuckolding her spouse, behaviors generally caricatured as a common female vice in a culture that still had laws on the books regulating the hours when husbands could legally beat their wives.31 She had shattered godly covenant and betrayed at least one husband and master,32 both precepts so firmly embedded in the English constitution that to defy them seemed to break with nature.

28. Justice of the peace Michael Dalton produced one of the earliest alphabetized legal handbooks of English Common law in England. The Country Justice went through twenty editions between 1618 and 1746. Here is what Dalton has to say about bigamy: “If any Person being married, shall marry a second Husband or Wife, the first Husband being alive, etc. it is Felony; (a) except where the Husband or Wife have been absent seven years, and the one not knowing the other to be living within that Time; except also Persons divorced, etc. by Sentence in the Ecclesiastical Court; and except Persons marrying within the Age of Consent” (The Country Justice: Containing the Practice, and Duty, and Power of the Justices of the Peace, as well in as out of Their Sessions, 5th ed. [London, 1635], 363). Notably BLD’s entry on “bigamy” distinguishes between canon law and ecclesiastical offense, which is now obsolete. 29. It was not until 1603 that Parliament officially passed an act proclaiming bigamy a felony, and even here it allowed men accused of bigamy an opportunity to sue for benefit of clergy, rendering their eventual punishment not hanging but instead branding on the thumb. So too an additional clause “exempted from the provisions of the act those who were ‘divorced by sentence of the ecclesiastical court’—meaning those [who had] judicially separated from bed and board” (i.e., those elite few, again invariably male, who had sufficient connections to secure necessary legal approval) (Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England, 1530–1987 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1990], 306). These qualifications had no bearing on a case like Mary’s. Unable to sue for benefit of clergy and not officially separated from bed and board, she would hang, regardless. 30. The rarity of bigamy trials was in part due to the court’s predilection for focusing only on those very occasional cases where the wife was the offending partner. See Stone, Uncertain Unions, 42. 31. Husbands could be legally charged for beating their wives only after nine at night in London proper, as at that time they might disturb their neighbors (Sara Heller Mendelson and Patricia M. Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1998], 128). 32. Fran Dolan identifies a particularly germane set of distinctions here having to do with the case of spousal murder: wives who killed their husbands were termed “petty traitors” and husbands who killed their wives were termed “petty tyrants” (Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crimes in England, 1550–1700 [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994], 13–16). Early modern husbands, then, were legally and metaphorically their wives’ masters and lords—their petty kings.

Introduction 11 It is hard to imagine what might have prompted a woman like Mary to risk taking an additional husband, if in fact that is what she did. Early modern English wives were largely dependent on the men they married to protect and defend the few rights they had.33 Literally everything that a wife was, is, or would be had been determined by the largesse of the man that she married. Lawrence Stone puts the case baldly: once a woman was married [a]ll the income from her real estate was retained by her husband, as well as all future legacies that might come to her. All her personal property, including her future earnings from a trade and her business stock and tools, were liable to seizure by her husband at any moment. She was unable to enter into a legal contract, to use credit to borrow money, or to buy or sell property. All her savings belonged to her husband. And finally, all her children were controlled entirely by their father, who was free to dispose of them as he wished, and to deprive their mother of any opportunity ever to speak to them again.34 To make matters worse, many Restoration husbands were unwilling or unable to fulfill their obligations. Violence in marriage was as much a worry then as it is now.35 Noting the large proportion of abandoned wives on English relief rolls, Stone suggests that desertion was a chronic and troublesome social complication.36 Mary’s presumed behaviors make better sense when they are placed in context, when we attempt to see them as responding to immediate needs. When or if we posit Mary as an already abandoned wife, desperate to get ahead and left to her own devices to manage that transformation, someone who by fortune can make use of the advantages of an unexpected education, social posturing, and a 33. Debate writers such as Ester Sowernam drive home the importance of the marriage vow for women, reminding readers that only a fully witnessed marriage can ensure both legal and financial security. Because by law husband and wife become one person, a husband can sell his wife’s property at will, just as his debts become a charge on her marriage dowry. Without the safety of a binding contract, a wife forfeits autonomy and financial solvency (the end result of any realized marriage) and then remains vulnerable to destitution if a husband were to default (Ester Hath Hanged Haman [London, 1616], 7, 23, and 45.) For additional elaboration, see Megan Matchinske, “Legislating ‘Middle-Class’ Morality in the Marriage Market: Ester Sowernam’s Ester Hath Hang’d Haman,” English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994): 1–30. For a wider discussion of these ideas through the lens of the female subject self, see also Megan Matchinske, Writing, Gender, and State in Early Modern England: Identity Formation and the Female Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 34. Stone, Road to Divorce, 4–5. 35. See Fran Dolan, Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), esp. chap. 1. 36. Stone, Road to Divorce, 142.

12 Introduction good story, someone who has seen the wisdom of forgetting a cobbler who has already left to marry a lawyer who is very much present, someone who understands the very real and deadly risks but who also imagines just exactly what might be gained from those efforts, we perhaps understand. Nor do we have to look all that far to find parallels. If Mary was guilty of the charges laid against her, then she certainly was not alone, in either her propensity for multiple partners or her desire to be rid of them. All she would have had to do was copy her betters. When it became apparent that Queen Catherine was unable to have children, King Charles II began to contemplate avenues for ridding himself of an unwanted wife.37 John Manners, Baron Roos, faced a similar dilemma in 1663, obtaining a “separation from bed and board” from his wife on the grounds of adultery. When Roos attempted to divorce his wife by private bill in 1669 so that he could remarry (“separation from bed and board” merely permitted separation), Charles promoted the case, hoping to use the occasion as precedent.38 Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), the Lady Castlemaine, the most famous of Charles II’s lovers, was already well established at court by the time Mary first faced her accusers. That liaison, brazenly public despite the presence of legitimate spouses on either side, stood in for the perceived moral laxity of the Restoration court.39 Like the much-admired and notorious Castlemaine, Mary gained the attention, for a time, of the English popular imagination. Both women had come from uncertain beginnings into positions of appreciable social standing. Both, too, defied rather than conformed to gender expectation—each was, in her own way, defiant and autonomous, pushing the boundaries above and beyond expected parameters and succeeding by refusing to follow established guidelines. Indeed, it was that atypical defiance that made them so fascinating to their contemporaries.40 In Mary’s case, “success” was not without material complications. After her release from prison, two days after her acquittal, Mary was left without means. Apparently, the letters that had promised delivery on Mary’s lucrative “business 37. Stone, Road to Divorce, 274. 38. While Charles never sired a child with Catherine, he did father twelve illegitimate children among his fourteen or so mistresses. 39. Derek Wilson, All the King’s Women: Love, Sex, and Politics in the Life of Charles II (London: Hutchinson, 2003), 238, quoted in Matchinske, Women Writing History in Early Modern England, 107n12. 40. In addition to becoming one of the wealthiest women in court, thanks to the king’s largesse (she was given Nonsuch Palace), Lady Castlemaine also claimed the title of the “Uncrowned Queen,” as she had more political influence at court than almost anyone. See esp. the many mentions within Pepys’s diaries (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham and Matthews, e.g., July, 13, 1660; July 26, 1662; and May 15, 1663, among others). John Evelyn, in contrast, describes her as “The Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our nation” (“March 5, 1671,” in The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray, intro. Richard Barnett, [New York: N. W. Dunne, ca. 1901], 2.63). He is speaking of her in reference to Nell Gwen, the actress.

Introduction 13 affairs,” the same letters that had so impressed John’s family, failed to produce any material results—no retainers, no money, no goods. Still married to the lawyer, she had been abandoned by the one husband whose coverture completely defined her. His identity was her identity and yet he refused to take responsibility for her. What this meant, in effect, was that she was without repute or recognition; she had figuratively been laid bare.41 The godly precept invoked at the heart of coverture held that women were in need of protection and covering, a covering that derived initially from the first sin of temptation and continued forward through biblical example: “Abraham was to Sarah for a Covering of the Eyes, that is, her Husband to defend her from injury. Boaz was to take Ruth into his protection as the hen her chickens under her wings, signified by spreading his skirt over her, Ruth. 3.9 and 2.12. that she might be safe under the wings of her husband. A man giveth Coverture.”42 Mary, lacking her husband’s good grace, had been revealed, her “counterfeits” open to the world.43 And with that revelation came loss—all rights to personal items, inherited goods, income, or property. Children, if the couple had had any, would remain with their father.44 Even the clothes on Mary’s back were subject to confiscation: “All Chattels personal, as ready Mony, Plate, Jewels, Apparell, Horses, Kine and other goods of like nature, which a woman brings with her in marriage, or which she hath given to her during coverture, the absolute property therof is vested in the Baron, &

41. Legal state conferred upon women at marriage. Under coverture, a woman was literally subsumed with her husband’s legal identity. See John Dod and Richard Cleaver, A Godly Form of Household Government, For the Ordering of Private Families, According to the Direction of God’s Word, 2nd ed. (London, 1630); and William Gouge, Of Domestical Duties, Eight Treatises, 2nd ed. (London, 1634); see also BLD, s.v. “coveture.” Of the abandoned or rejected wife, Stone again offers a bleak summation: “Unless she was protected by a private deed of separation, she was in practice virtually an outlaw” (Road to Divorce, 4–5). See also Historical, 78n116 and 80n123, and Case, 91n22. 42. Edward Reyner, Considerations Concerning Marriage, the Honour, Duties, Benefits, Troubles of It (London, 1657), 13. 43. Mary’s parents were dead. With no living relatives to her name, Mary had nowhere to go and no family willing to claim her. Her former husband, Steadman, apparently refused to testify at the trial and had no intention of allowing her back into his household, nor would this have been permitted, as the trial most decidedly rejected the legitimacy of the earlier claim. 44. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, Mary’s writing avoids any overt discussion of procreation. While her detractors claim that she has given birth to two children, both now dead, fathered by the cobbler, Mary conspicuously avoids any discussion of maternal obligation in her defenses, focusing instead on questions of love and honor. Maternity claims here would only serve to exacerbate the criticism against her by further sexualizing and weakening her position as a chaste gentlewoman. It is not until Mary faces retrial in the 1670s and begins to appreciate the “mortal” nature of her circumstances that she “remembers” motherhood. “Pleading the belly” (pregnant women were allowed reprieve until after delivery and sometimes escaped punishment altogether) in an attempt to escape hanging, she forfeits the right to delay and is sentenced regardless.

14 Introduction though he dye they shal go to his Executors and Administrators.”45 Not until the “Married Women’s Property Act of 1870” would women win the right to be legal owners of the money they earned or to inherit property in their own name.46 What this meant for Mary was that after the trial she had to fend for herself. For a time, she undoubtedly basked in the notoriety of her own fame, living off the largesse of some of her admirers. We know that she took a turn on the Restoration stage, playing herself in a production of her story. Pepys wrote with disappointment that he went on April 15, 1664, with . . . [his] wife by coach to the Duke’s house and there saw The German Princess acted—by the woman herself. But never was anything, so well done in earnest, worse performed in Jest upon the stages. And indeed, the whole play, abating the drollery of him that acts her husband, is very simple, unless here and there a witty sparkle or two.47 As a player, even a lead, in a play that did not last out its second night on the Restoration stage, Mary would have earned nothing. One of the pamphlets tells us that she began to cross-dress at this time, and John explains in The Ultimum Vale that she set out to learn the law, but both of those pursuits (if accurate) afforded no long-term success, and we discover little that can be verified historically.48 Apparently, Mary was temporarily incarcerated six years after her trial as she tried to make her way from Harwich to Holland, her jewelry seized either as payment for earlier debts or collateral for a bribe. Writing to Secretary of State Sir Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, on October 30, 1669, she complained of her jailor.49 Her contact with Arlington, the notorious spymaster of the early Restoration, is highly suggestive, as it allowed for the possibility, however slight, that Mary might have been in the employ of Arlington, spying on behalf of the Crown. We 45. Robert Callis, The Case and Argument Against Sir Ignoramus of Cambridge (London, 1648), 21. 46. “The Married Women’s Property Act, 1870” (https://archive.org/details/marriedwomenspr01grifgoog). Given that women’s property was still forfeited upon marriage, the act did little to ameliorate the problem. 47. Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Latham and Matthews, 5:124. Francis Kirkman agrees with Pepys’s assessment, though he did not see the production himself. Those who did, Pepys says, report that “although there was a great Confluence of People to behold her, yet she did not perform so well as was expected; many have exceeded her in that particular, and that she acted much better, and more to life, in the wide World than in the Epitome” (The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, 99). 48. See, for instance, The Female Hector; or, the German Lady Turned Monsieur. With Manner of Her Coming to the White Hart Tavern in Smithfield Like a Young Lord in Man’s Apparel (London, 1663); and Kirkman, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, 163ff. 49. Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 166–75.

Introduction 15 know that Aphra Behn did this same kind of work, and she shared Mary’s unusual skill set.50 Regardless of the success or failure of Mary’s forays into espionage, if indeed such activities were part of her resume, they did not last. Living outside traditional social strictures, without settled financial backing, family support, or the coverture of a husband who was willing to own her, Mary was always open to charges of vagrancy;51 she was always susceptible to the vulnerability of the dispossessed. Ostensibly transported to the Americas, Mary, we are told, served time in Barbados for theft.52 While she was there, if she was there, we might imagine her to have taken one of the traditional jobs available to transported white women. She may have been a driver or worked in the sugarcane fields (both jobs that would, by the end of the seventeenth century, be left entirely to the African slave population), or she may somehow have maintained a more comfortable existence.53 A broadsheet titled Letter from Jamaica, written either by Mary or by another someone claiming to be her, suggests as much: I came to the desired haven with a prosperous gale. Where I no sooner arrived, but I was, contrary to expectation, treated en Princesse, and 50. Both women were well-educated, independent, and observant. Behn mentions Mary in the epilogue to her play The Dutch Lover ([London, 1673], 89): Whilst sad experience our eyes convinces, That damned their Playes which hang’d the German Princess: And we with ornament set off a Play Like her drest fine for Execution-day. 51. Solitary wandering, anonymity, an unsettled detachment from any stable community—these were the markers of the vagrant (Patricia Fumerton, Unsettled: The Culture of Mobility and the Working Poor in Early Modern England [Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006], 7). For an impassioned study of the duality of vagrancy legislation—one law to relieve the settled poor, one law to prosecute the vagrant poor—see Linda Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 15ff. See also A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England (London: Methuen, 1985). 52. “Maria ‘Lyon als. Darton als. Carlston’ ” is noted on a list of transportees for February 1671 (Peter Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 1661–1699 [Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1990], 186], cited in Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 243n11. According to at least one of the later pamphlets, Mary was transported to Jamaica not Barbados. It may be that she spent time in both colonies (News from Jamaica in a Letter from Port Royal Written by the German Princess to her Fellow Collegiates and Friends in Newgate [London, 1671]). It may also be the case that she did not leave England at all, for which see in this Introduction note 55. 53. It is likely that by 1671 Mary would have been treated far better as a white female convict than the majority of the African slaves that were being transported alongside her. Eugenia O’Neal explains that by the end of the century, many white women had been pulled from fieldwork on the presumption that they were “too fragile,” incapable of keeping up with their black counterparts (From the Field to the Legislature: A History of Women in the Virgin Islands [Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001], 3).

16 Introduction accommodated like myself. But one thing I have omitted; when I first set sail from England I was looked upon but strangely, and despised as the base brat of a country fiddler. . . . I fled to my old Asylum, the never failing refuge of a charming tongue and ready wit, and so had both my lodging bettered and my commons amended. . . . At my landing, instead of a barbarous slavery. . . . I was immediately environed with a crowd of admirers. And no sooner was my name heard there, but it echoed into the remotest parts of the island, and drew a wonderful confluence of the more vile and dissolute people to my habitation.54 By the time that Mary returned to England, a short and not entirely believable year after she had been sent,55 her abilities of persuasion had become less winsome, or she had simply started to run into the wrong people. In any event, the last years of her life, to the extent that we know them, were tenuous, the criminal indictments, frequent, and their results, catastrophically mortal.

Oath Keeping in the Aftermath of War Life imitated art in the spectacle that was Mary and John’s supposedly bigamous marriage: two grasping would-be suitors trying to win what appears to be a lucrative marital catch, each getting duped in the process, aware as well of the political and religious implications behind such posturing. Their story “performed” Restoration theater at its insalubrious best, and was all the more horrifying because the stakes were both so very real and so very deadly. Indeed, the writers of the pamphlets included here could have found the lineaments of their tale in the work of any number of playwrights—from Behn to George Etheridge. What is especially striking is that early modern readers would see in these narrative lines their own pragmatic approach to post–Civil War survival—not only or principally as wives and husbands but also as political subjects and religious believers. 54. From The Memoirs of Mary Carleton (London, 1671), 57–59. 55. As far as we can tell, Mary was back in England within a year of her transportation. Because minimum sentences for transportees usually ran between five and seven years, this shorter time frame is worth noting. Perhaps Mary managed to persuade a ship’s captain of an immediate return. Or perhaps what occurred is more fiction than fact. According to historian J. M. Beattie, penal transportation usually varied by sex and age, with sentenced women and children transportees often left in jail with their sentences unfilled or alternately whipped and discharged early. The only colony open to accepting women on a regular basis was in the Leeward Islands, with both Barbados and Jamaica routinely turning away female prisoners (Crime and the Courts of England, 1660–1800 [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1986], 481). If Mary did in fact linger in jail in England, the pamphlets and broadsheets lauding her colonial adventures were merely an Atlantic species of the trumped-up slave narratives that were beginning to be written and sold for profit in England.

Introduction 17 The Carleton scandal broke three years after England’s exiled king, Charles II, was welcomed back, and England was ripe for its own “survivalist” cynicism. The return of monarchical rule brought with it old and new problems: lords, bishops, and king came back with a reign postdated to 1649 (although the independent power of the Crown was a thing of the past). Additional taxes were levied, with the caveat that Parliament was made signatory to all such demands, and print censorship was reimposed (stricter than ever). The Clarendon Code (a series of acts passed by Parliament between 1661 and 1665) and the Test Act of 1673 tightened restrictions on Catholics and nonconformists, insisting that English subjects be more explicit in avowing their allegiance to both the state church and the monarch.56 “An Act for Preventing the Frequent Abuses in Printing Seditious Treasonable and Unlicensed Books and Pamphlets” (1662) kept printers’ decisions bound up in which books might be legally printed and which not, ostensibly silencing any that were condemnatory of or rebellious to the king’s laws.57 In a culture that had seen so much civil war and political in-fighting, clarity of conscience was a difficult thing to find: In a climate where the majority of Charles’s newly appointed advisers were more likely to have tacitly supported the beheading of the old king than to have experienced exile with his son, where conforming Anglicans might just as easily be papists or puritan dissenters in disguise, and where wives and mistresses were often interchangeable, commitment was a vague term. And that uncertainty bred nonchalance, an indifference that promoted flexibility and improvisation; semper incerta [ever uncertain] defined this world not semper fidelis [always faithful].”58 The frontispiece to The Case brings out the ambiguities of the situation most clearly. We see an engraving of Mary’s face. Under it a caption reads, “Behold my 56. The latter statute (1673) excluded from public office anyone who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, refused communion according to the rites of the Anglican church, or refused to renounce the Roman Catholic faith. The language surrounding the oath became more exacting as authorities tried to ensure that no verbal slippage or equivocation occurred as the result of unclear wording. 57. Charles II, “An Act for Preventing the Frequent Abuses in Printing Seditious Treasonable and Unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for Regulating of Printing and Printing Presses” (14 Car. II. C33) (Statutes of the Realm: 1628–80 [London, 1819], 5:428–450. Similar in tone and provisions to the 1637 Star Chamber order that provoked Milton’s wrath in Areopagitica, the new regulation reinstituted full licensing and press oversight to the Stationers’ Company. 58. Megan Matchinske, “Receptive Readers: Dissimulation and Historical Truth in Mary Carleton’s Bigamy Trial,” in Women Writing History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 129.

18 Introduction innocence after such disgrace / Dares show an honest and a noble Face. / Henceforth there needs no mark of me be known / For the right Counterfeit is herein shown.” “Counterfeit”59 is an interesting choice. Is Mary’s face honest and noble, or is it, in fact, merely counterfeit? “Seems, madam? Nay it is, I know not seems,” Hamlet insists to Gertrude, avowing that what seems actually is when it comes to the well of his grief and that what he feels is deeper and more profound than sight alone can prove.60 Obsessed with the problem of discernment, early moderns frequently worried over how to read the truth behind the mask. Hamlet promises greater depth, but the opposite might just as well apply. Is the speaker warning us not to meddle in those things for which we have no access? “Hence-forth,” she writes, “there needs no mark of me be known,” advising us that the portrait of the woman Mary would be better left alone. Perhaps, she advises, there is nothing behind the mask? Mary Jo Kietzman and Janet Todd both note that Mary’s sensationalism— her popular appeal—appears particularly disproportionate given that other female criminals, confidence operators, and trial accounts about them were circulating contemporaneously in the English press.61 Something about this particular case gripped the English cultural imagination. I would argue that Mary’s attraction stems in part from her ability to navigate ironies systemic to her situation, thus paving the way for a widespread response to religious, historical, and political hypocrisies of all kinds—an easing of social discipline that had specific and powerful repercussions throughout domains of obedience. The popularity of Mary’s narratives revels in the patent absurdity of what the English populace had been asked to do. Still reeling from an untenable demand made by its new governors to swear absolute allegiance to a monarchy they had at the very least passively abandoned two decades before, the English people must have recognized what a truly impossible promissory bind they were in.62

59. “A 1. Made in imitation of that which is genuine; imitated, forged. . . . Obs. 4. Represented by a picture or image. . . . 7. Of persons: a. That pretends or is falsely represented to be (what is denoted by the noun); sham, pretended; †b. Pretending to be what he is not; false, deceitful. . . . †9. Imitated or represented in a picture or image (or transf. in writing or literary art); portrayed. B. n. †2. a. One who imitates another for whom he passes himself off; a pretender, an impostor.” For the text and image, see Case, 87, fig. 2, in this volume. 60. Shakespeare, Hamlet, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 7th edition. (London: Longman, 2013), 1.2.76–86. 61. Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 4; and Todd, Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mal Cutpurse + The Case of Mary Carleton (New York: New York University Press, 1994), xxviii. 62. In 1663, the inability to claim undying fealty to any cause or person rendered all such judgments absurd. By 1673 (when Mary is executed), that cynicism, far more corrosive in its objects, had become too painful to lampoon. Embittered in all likelihood by the ongoing sexual and political scandals of

Introduction 19 The enigma of Carleton’s multiple marriage vows (did she make them, or did she not?) mimics the problem of divided allegiance during England’s turbulent political and religious upheavals, especially in the early years of the Restoration, a period both long on promises and short on an ability to keep them. Bigamy within the language of serial oath-promising becomes a metaphoric stand-in for other matters, mundane and monarchical. By exaggerating political realities, Mary’s multiple marriages, and the way she is able to shed them when they no longer suit, come to stand for the fickle and exceedingly fragile vocabulary of political and religious failure in the aftermath of the English Civil Wars. In an age of divine right kingship,63 or at least its vestiges, we might ask ourselves how English subjects managed to navigate the minefield of earlier sworn allegiances—allegiances that were no longer tenable. In a world where divorce was taboo, it made all kinds of sense to pretend that one had never “married” in the first place, especially if the oath of fealty was not to a husband but a king, and the king in question was Charles I, the same Charles I who lost his head January 30, 1649, ostensibly for crimes committed against his own people. Indeed, for English subjects, the problem of fidelity was both epidemic and irresolvable. How could English subjects continue to uphold obligations to state or church (or family) when each new promise compromised those that preceded it? In some cases, officeholders or men of prominence might have been required to take up to ten conflicting oaths of loyalty between 1640 and 1660.64 For the trial’s readership, then, the marriage oath, a once sacramental and irrevocable bond, like the vows that it so obviously mimics in the political and religious realms, might have begun to look a little frayed around the edges.65 Mary’s “unproved” the court, English audiences of the 1670s were far less willing to joke about hypocrisy, their own or anyone else’s. 63. Unlike its Continental cousins, England was from its earliest moments never an absolutist monarchy. 64. Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), 409. 65. Thanks to the Protestant Reformation, marriage was, for the English, no longer considered a sacrament, having lost that status well over a hundred years previously. Martin Luther explained: Not only is marriage regarded as a sacrament without the least warrant of Scripture, but the very ordinances which extol it as a sacrament have turned it into a farce. . . . We have said that in every sacrament there is a word of divine promise, to be believed by whoever receives the sign, and that the sign alone cannot be a sacrament. Nowhere do we read that the man who marries a wife receives any grace of God. There is not even a divinely instituted sign in marriage, nor do we read anywhere that marriage was instituted by God to be a sign of anything. To be sure, whatever takes place in a visible manner can be understood as a figure or allegory of something invisible. But figures or allegories are not sacraments, in the sense in which we use the term. (Luther, “Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Hull and William R. Russell, 3rd ed. [Minneapolis, MN: For-

20 Introduction bigamy charge speaks directly to the problem of how to navigate no longer viable, advantageous, or legitimate allegiances (in a culture where divorce or breaking an oath is inexcusable) and how to forgive wayward subjects for having taken such vows in the first place. In an environment where all oaths were sacrosanct and divorce was forbidden, we need look no further than Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce to recognize how directly such oaths were linked: “He who marries, intends as little to conspire his own ruin as he that swears allegiance: and as a whole people is in proportion to an ill government, so is one man to an ill marriage.”66 That Mary’s forays into political and religious oath breaking are explicitly and expressly sexual is no mistake either. Restoration oaths, whatever their form, were tied to Charles II’s court and to its peculiar ideological proclivities. That means they derived from the same set of values that condoned adulterous practices, that recognized sexual partners as interchangeable, and that placed contemporary self-interest before any transcendent or timeless ethos of promise keeping or fidelity (either contractual or inspired by God). In The Case, the speaker appears to politicize her allegiances; they are royalist, they are Roman Catholic, and they are noble.67 Promising to be a native of Germany, the very same Germany that had so recently survived the Thirty Years’ War, she tells her readers that she saw firsthand the innate gentility of England’s displaced court and wanted to mimic it: “for by those gentlemen that then attended the king I measured his kingdom” (Case, 98).68 “Those were persons of tress, 2012], 36.92) 66. Mary’s trial made headlines like no other, but that did not mean it was unique. Lawrence Stone documents another case of multiple marriages during the same period involving a woman by the name of Mary Stenson. Married to three men, Jonathan Troope, William Hensworth, and finally Gilbert Mundy, Stenson took advantage of the conditional and unwitnessed nature of the first two couplings to navigate from one advantageous relationship to another, eventually securing a legitimate and legally proven claim to the last (Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England, 1660–1753 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], 37–43). Olga Valbuena compellingly argues how divorcive metaphors structure vocabularies of political and religious change from England’s break with Rome during the reign of Henry VIII to Milton in his divorce tracts and Paradise Lost (Subjects to the King’s Divorce: Equivocation, Infidelity, and Resistance in Early Modern England [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003]). See Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in John Milton: Complete Poems, ed. Hughes, 700. 67. The subtext of libertinism that we find throughout Carleton’s tracts, with its promise of social mobility through sexual conquest (from cobbler’s wife to lawyer’s), an association Carleton works both to celebrate and vilify, suggests an attachment to courtly ideologies that is directly invoked within The Case in Carleton’s admiration of the exiled Charles and in the tract’s dedication to his second cousin, Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Cumberland, the retired general who played a key role in the first civil war defending the Crown. 68. 1618–1648. The Thirty Years’ War and the instability it provoked encompassed much of central Europe. It likely would have been a subject for dinnertime conversation, as Mary’s father was of an age to be involved in some form or another.

Introduction 21 such winning and obliging carriage, of so easy and familiar address, and yet of that generous and regardful demeanour, that I was hugely taken with such sweet conditions, and . . . thought of passing over to that country, for a fuller satisfaction and delight” (Case, 98). Mary’s sympathetic identification with England’s exiled court underscores the truth of noble carriage outside and beyond the formal trappings of Whitehall.69 It also reiterates at a domestic level an understanding of and support for historical winners and a willingness to remake oneself in the image of the hour, whatever that may be—lawyer’s wife over cobbler’s, king’s courtier over protectorate bureaucrat, churchgoing Anglican over separatist dissenter. More significantly, however, Mary’s royalist sensibilities situate the matter under discussion, the recent past of her under-siege marriage, squarely within the social memory of other Interregnum injustices.70 Like the embattled and displaced courtiers that she describes, Mary is suffering from the effect of a derailed social, religious, and political network. It is worth noting here that in 1663 nobles were not yet required to swear to the oaths that beleaguered their countrymen. Instead, their word of honor was accepted. It was not until the Test Act of 1673 that oaths were “statutorily demanded of all [male] peers.”71 This distinction may further explain Mary’s insistence on noble status in making her claims. She continually relies on double entendre, at one point refusing to divulge her past to John’s mother as a matter of good breeding and avoiding an outright lie in the process; her word of honor ought to be enough.72 The connections then between domestic, religious, and political bigamy and a comfortable forgetting of all three are hardly accidental or haphazard either. So, too, the popular willingness to overlook or disavow Mary’s potential indiscretions becomes on a broader level a self-imposed historical amnesia. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed into law on August 29, 1660, offers a particularly resonant example of this kind of conscious forgetting. Laying blame only on direct regicides, it released the majority of English subjects from any complicity in treasons against the state; if they had sworn an unfortunate allegiance, all would be forgotten.73 The jurors’ ready acceptance of Mary’s erased bigamy, if that indeed 69. Much like the “innately virtuous” Mary, England’s peers remain noble even outside the formal structures that announce their breeding. 70. Playing to a Restoration audience, some of whom are royalists newly reinstated to power, Mary actively recalls earlier slights. 71. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, 408. 72. Open to two (or more) interpretations, one of which is often provocative or sexual in nature: “My Lord, I desire your lordship not to come near me anymore. I will not lie under such questioning and scrutiny. Your lordship will be safe in following my advice in not coming at me anymore” (Historical, 69; and Case, 116). 73. The Interregnum lasted for ten years, and its government functioned with the assistance of both royalist and parliamentary support. Trying to ferret out and prosecute all those who had defied the late king or served the opposition would have been the most ridiculous of ventures.

22 Introduction is what is happening here, mimics the government’s willing disremembering of its own earlier bonds, underscoring the direct and potent connection between family and state politics.

Generic Precursors of the Tracts Given the increasing popularity of a relatively new news market, a growing appreciation of life stories, especially notorious (criminal) life stories, and a heightened awareness of the importance of evidence and accuracy in reporting, Restoration writers, printers, and booksellers were encouraged to work together to uncover the “facts.”74 The Carleton pamphlets are something of a generic hybrid. Part criminal biography or rogue literature (pseudo-documentary), part newsletter (“ ‘letters of news’ or of ‘intelligence’ ” that were issued periodically over time), and part romance (fiction/literature), the narratives derive from and depend on new formal categories of print and new popular audiences to succeed.75 They also pave the way for novelistic forms as we know them today.76 74. Barbara Shapiro, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Steven Shapin, The Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); and Fran Dolan, True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 75. Rogue literature becomes a genre unto itself. See, for instance, Pamela Brown, “Laughing at the Cony: A Female Rogue and ‘the Verdict of the Smock,’ ” English Literary Renaissance 29, no. 2 (1999): 201–24; James Caulfield, Blackguardiana; or, a Dictionary of Rogues, Bawds, Pimps, Whores, Pickpockets (London, 1793); Craig Dionne, “Fashioning Outlaws: The Early Modern Rogue and Urban Culture,” in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Steve Mentz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Craig Dionne, “Playing the ‘Cony’: Anonymity in Underworld Literature,” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 30, no. 1 (1997): 29–50; Patricia Fumerton, “Making Vagrancy (In)Visible: The Economics of Disguise in Early Modern Rogue Pamphlets,” in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Mentz; Adam Hansen, “Rogues, Writing, and the Early Modern Urban Environment,” in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Mentz; Thomas Harman et al., The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads Telling of the Lives and Misdoings of Vagabonds, Thieves, Rogues and Cozeners, and Giving some Account of the Operation of the Criminal Law (London: Routledge, 1930); Jeffrey Knapp, “Rogue Nationalism,” in Centuries’ Ends, Narrative Means, ed. Robert Newman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 138–50; Tina Kuhlisch, “The Ambivalent Rogue: Moll Flanders as Modern Pícara,” in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Mentz; Melissa M. Mowry, “Thieves, Bawds, and Counterrevolutionary Fantasies: The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 5, no. 1 (2005): 26–48; John L. McMullan, The Canting Crew: London’s Criminal Underworld, 1550–1700 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984); John Rietz, “Criminal Ms-Representation: Moll Flanders and Female Criminal Biography,” Studies in the Novel 23, no. 2 (1991): 183–95; Martine van Elk, “The Counterfeit Vagrant: The Dynamic of Deviance in the Bridewell Court Records and the Literature of Roguery,” in Rogues and Early Modern English Culture, ed. Dionne and Mentz; Harold Weber, “Rakes, Rogues, and the Empire of Misrule,” Huntington Library Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1984): 13–32; Barbara A. Babcock, “ ‘Liberty’s a Whore’: Inversions, Marginalia,

Introduction 23 Rogue literature, with its heyday in England in the mid-to-late seventeenth century, provided readers with accounts of criminals and the crimes they committed. Ostensibly focused on confession and repentance, these accounts generally concentrate their attention on problems of incorrigibility and the lurid and gruesome details of misbehavior, on a criminal’s refusal to submit or beg forgiveness, or on the horrendous nature of the crimes that he or she carried out.77 Criminal biography described people and events contemporaneous with the behaviors narrated or the trial and execution of the condemned, though some of it too had its origins in jestbooks and other lighter fare.78 It paralleled the newsletter in both the apparent “truth” of the matter it detailed and the subject-worthy nature of its telling—the circumstances being narrated were invariably accompanied by some sort of moral reflection on the perils of criminal conduct. People were being reminded that the law was inviolable. The newsbook format, in contrast, grew out of the political climate of civil war. Like the criminal biographies, it drew its matter from current events, but it broadened and refocused those events to include important meetings, battles, votes in Parliament, and, of course, the all-important business of rumormongering. What set the news gazettes off from earlier general information broadsheets was their periodical nature, the fact that they were serialized and started reporting news over short time spans. Vercingetorixa, with its cagey references to the royalist mercuries, a collection of newsbooks that sprang up during the Civil Wars and became the voice of the court party in exile, may even have developed as a sideline

and Picaresque Narrative,” in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, ed. Barbara A. Babcock (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 95–116; and Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature. See also J. B. Williams, A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (London, Longmans, 1908), 1. See also Joseph Frank, The Beginnings of the English Newspaper, 1620–1660 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); H. R. Bourne, English Newspapers: Chapters in the History of Journalism (London, 1887); Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966); Donovan H. Bond and W. Reynolds McLeod, eds., Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism (Morgantown: West Virginia University, 1977); Walter Graham, The Beginnings of English Literary Periodicals: A Study of Periodical Literature, 1665–1715 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1926); and David Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). 76. Kirkman’s The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled has been hailed as one of the first novels in English literature (Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673). 77. See esp. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars. Focusing specifically on the problem of domestic violence, Dolan offers a number of compelling accounts drawn from popular ballads, scaffold speeches, and executions. 78. Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature, 80ff.

24 Introduction enterprise, something to occupy the press between more explicit political news mongering.79 The romance aspects of the Carleton accounts appear profoundly in Historical Narrative and The Case.80 In both, Mary styles herself a lady in need of the gallant assistance of the knight errant. Giovanni Boccaccio’s framed tales offer her an explicit example of love’s vagaries: indeed, in The Case she asks readers to “cast a favourable eye upon these[ events] . . . of my life, not much unlike those of Boccaccio” (93). Acknowledging that her account, like Boccaccio’s framed stories, will be quest-like and adventure-filled, she seems to position herself as a romance heroine tested by trial and tribulation.81 Insisting at one point that she “might as well have given lustre to a romance as any any any of those supposed heroinas” (Case, 109), Mary imagines for herself the most providential of story lines. The Carleton narratives are technically all one-offs. Unlike the newsbooks, they do not share a byline or running title that remains consistent over several issues.82 They do not report the latest details of this or that event, nor do they claim the pedigree of a news-gatherer, and yet they nevertheless offer up a serial or recursive overview of a salacious trial and its various outcomes.83 More pointedly, they all lay claim to an attribute that two of the three genres value—the belief that people are hearing something authentic. John’s Replication and Ultimum Vale ground their authority in biblical and classical precedent.84 And Mary’s Historical 79. See, for instance, editor John Crouch’s Man in the Moon (in which the Carleton drama is replayed); editor John Birkenhead’s Mercurius Aulicus; and anonymously edited Mercurius Elenticus. John Wright and Thomas Bates, their parliamentary rivals, edited Mercurius Civicus. Marchamont Nedham notoriously swapped sides three times, moving from the parliamentary backed Mercurius Britanicus to the royalist supporting Mercurius Pragmaticus and then finally to the state-sponsored Cromwell newsbook Mercurious Politicus. For information on the underground world of popular royalism, see Lois Potter’s Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Jason McElligott and David L. Smith, eds., Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Jane Smith, “Commonwealth Cavalier,” Studies in Philology 114 (2017): 609–40. 80. Vercingetorixa and Witty Combat can both be said to possess anti-romantic elements. 81. Boccaccio, The Decameron: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); and, for the same as archetype, Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 186–205. 82. Williams, A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette, 6. 83. In their earliest incarnations, such news gatherers might self-identify as royalists or as supporters of the New Model Army. 84. William Camden’s Britain; or, a Chorographical Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1610) illustrates many of these new historiographical flourishes in its preface. As an antiquarian, Camden saw his work as part of an ongoing process of historical collection and recollection. He published his first edition of the Britannia in Latin in 1586

Introduction 25 Narrative and The Case also take full advantage of fledgling documentary protocols to legitimate their claims.85 They use verbatim excerpts from other accounts, trial transcripts, a list of jurors who attended the hearing, judge’s instructions on the rules of evidence, dates, place-names, and eyewitness reports. In both of her pamphlets, Mary worries over those pieces of documentation that have been destroyed or are outside her grasp (letters that her in-laws have stolen, missing jewels that define her gentle status, and confiscated clothing that verifies the violation of her person). At one point, Mary even explains that her husband, upon visiting her at Gatehouse prison,86 “sent me a letter, which is the only paper I have by me of his, the other amorous and loving scribblings being lost and taken from me, the same time that they plundered me of my jewels” (Case, 125). In both An Historical Narrative and The Case, she includes John’s letter “Verbatim,” explaining in the former that that letter “which I have now by me . . . [I] shall keep . . . as a relic” (Historical Narrative, 72). While the Carleton narratives invite comparison to other works written at mid-century, they also actively extend the boundaries of both the criminal biography and the newsbook, drawing in readers and opening additional vistas in publication possibility.87 Indeed, some would argue that by the time Mary writes The Case, she comes close to composing one of the first novels ever written. Borrowing from crime biography and newsbooks, its narrative seems primed for reproducing seemingly authentic experience in a “realistic” manner. So, too, focused on the intimate goings-on of one woman’s individual life story, the private and romantic elements of domestic distress also lend it novelistic veracity.88 Internally, then, the tracts borrow from more than one novelistic precursor, something Mary readily acknowledges. Repeatedly describing the “storied” nature of her life, she reminds her readers that her experiences are as much narratives as they are lived moments. When, in The Case, she draws a comparison between Boccaccio’s 100 tales and her own experiences, she calls the matter that she writes about “these Novels of my life,” opining that her tales are in fact “more serious and tragical” than are those of and continued revising it throughout his lifetime. It was not until 1610 that the first English language version appeared, translated by Philémon Holland. 85. Shapiro locates this formulation within a “culture of professional success,” noting that competence and expertise were both essential and to some extent status-dependent criteria (A Culture of Fact, 141). 86. A prison built in 1317 and located in what is now Broad Sanctuary. Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned there on the eve of his execution. 87. Todd notably juxtaposes Mary’s Case with The Life and Death of Mol Cutpurse (Counterfeit Ladies). While Lincoln B. Faller identifies the appearance in print of criminal biographies as early as the 1590s, it is not until the middle of the seventeenth century that we can begin to see the publication of multiple accounts each year. From that point on, the genre seems to grow in popularity, with occasional periods of intensity (Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenthand Early-Eighteenth-Century England [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 286ff). 88. Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673, 3ff.

26 Introduction the famous Florentine author (93). In contrast to the narrative-driven husbandwife accounts (Replication, Historical Narrative, Case, and Ultimum Vale), The Arraignment, purporting to be a “true transcription of the words and events as they occur in the courtroom during the trial,” approaches in its exposition the modern-day court transcript recorded verbatim and accorded full legal status by a certified court reporter.89

Readerly and Writerly Communities Later pamphlets about the trial rely on their predecessors as writers and booksellers read one another. On the surface, we may begin to draw up a set of loose connections and distinctions between pamphlets on the basis of these publishing communities in dialogue. The Case and to a lesser degree An Historical Narrative display the wit and literary style we are apt to recognize as readers in the present moment. They feel “modern,” taking full advantage of double entendre and irony, of dialogue and description, to set the scene and pull us in. On the other hand, The Replication and The Ultimum Vale illustrate their academic credits, flaunting knowledge of grammar-school Latin. All four texts are rollicking good fun to read, because Mary is a playful and witty writer;90 her husband, an earnest and indignant respondent. Anticipating early novelists in her sense of her own life as a story waiting to be told, Mary has a keen notion of timing as well a light comic touch. Worthy of being considered with some of the best satirists of her moment,91 she is able to capture the perfect turn of phrase to put her detractors at humorous disadvantage, to use double entendre to both say and unsay at the same instant. At one point during her courtship with John, Mary mentions a conversation she has with John’s sister, Mistress King, that illustrates her refusal to commit: “he loves you.” “Loves me, for what, Mistress King?” Mary replies. Mrs. King answers, “for your great parts and endowments.” And Mary responds, “I asked her how my lord could tell that I had either. She said my lord could see within me. I answered that my lord must have very good eyes, if he could see within me, or else I must be very transparent.”92 Playfully admitting that 89. Thomas Gurney had been appointed by 1748 as the first official to write shorthand for the Old Bailey. He also practiced in other courts of justice within the Cities of London and Westminster, including the Admiralty Courts, the Courts-Martial, and the House of Commons. Verbatim reportage of the trials he attended was written up and published in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers (Page Life, “Gurney, Thomas [1705–1770], stenographer,” ODNB). 90. Lilley, noting this capacity for formal maneuvering, calls The Case, “a substantial, sophisticated and sexually suggestive first-person narrative that moves skillfully between different generic registers” (“These Novels of My Life: Mary Carleton’s Crimes,” Australian Feminist Studies 25 [2010]: 272). 91. Aphra Behn, Laurence Sterne, and Jonathan Swift come immediately to mind. Though we can see in her use of dialogue some hints as well of an early Jane Austin. 92. Historical, 69. See also Case, 115.

Introduction 27 John cannot, in fact, see inside her, cannot, in fact, love her for “great parts and endowments” that she may not have, Mary invariably keeps her readers guessing. Like so many things that John has assumed about his bride-to-be, Mary’s “gifts” clearly begin and end in John’s monetarily inflamed imagination. The first four tracts in the present edition offer evidence that their authors both have had access to formal education. An Historical Narrative alludes to literary antecedents that suggest classical training. So, too, The Case displays some Latin background. But in each of these instances, the references are popularly inflected. In contrast, we get the sense that the quotations from John’s Ultimum Vale and Replication come from more formalized training and repetition. Not that they are explicitly learned; they are not. But what they do show is a familiar and wide-ranging educational background.93 Young boys like John, who did not have the luxury of private tutors at home, were probably trained in endowed grammar schools, which required fees and taught Greek and Latin grammar and composition, rhetoric, oratory, logic, and letters, sometimes with brutal efficiency and via painfully exhaustive repetition. These schools varied considerably depending on their masters, but many instructors inveighed against the teaching of profane and pagan writing, rejecting exposure to the likes of Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, and Martial.94 From that early education, many young boys would go on to the universities, Cambridge and Oxford, or, if, like John, they were not quite so fortunate in birth or privilege, they would make their way to the Inns of Court where they would be trained to law. These were either the second and third sons of the privileged few or a particularly competent child of an aspiring family on the brink of gentle status, anticipating return on their investment.95 Education was not solely the province of young men. Women also had access to some forms of schooling.96 Mary claims that she was educated first by the 93. Kenneth Charlton, “The Educational Background” in The Age of Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century Literature, ed. C. A. Patrides (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), 104. 94. Charlton, “The Educational Background,” 103–4. 95. Here taken to mean the group or category of people determined by rank immediately below nobility and of landed status, in possession of a tract or estate that is significant enough to be self-sufficient. John was admitted to Middle Temple on August 8, 1663, but as far as I can tell he was never called (“Registers of Admissions,” 1651–1750, middletemple.org.uk). 96. See Thomas Elyot, Defence of Good Women (London, 1540); Juan Luis Vives, The Instruction of a Christian Woman, trans. Rycharde Hyrd (London, 1529?); and Jon Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic (London, 1631). For recent critical work on women and education in England, see Elizabeth Mazzola, Learning and Literacy in Female Hands, 1520–1698 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013); Ulricke Tancke, “Like Mother, Like Daughter? Women Teaching Girls in Early Modern England,” in Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance, ed. and intro. Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn R. McPherson (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011); Kenneth Charlton, “Women and Education,” in A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Anita Pacheco (Malden, MA:

28 Introduction sisters Clare, in the Catholic “Nunnery of Sancta Clara,”97 and later by a governess, Margaret Hammond, a gentlewoman with whom she traveled after she left the security of the convent. If she was, as she said, the daughter of a wealthy man, we might very well imagine her receiving some sort of private tutoring within the walls of the convent, tutoring in languages, perhaps, in reading and writing, sewing, dancing—skills that would prepare her eventually to marry. Even were she destined to remain cloistered, her German father’s landed status would probably ensure that she would receive sufficient education for her to one day step into the shoes of a prioress or perhaps an abbess. It is not outside the realm of possibility to imagine a chorister’s daughter getting an education as well. There were a few village “petty schools” where young girls were taught reading and writing in addition to the more traditional “feminine arts.”98 But these were still atypical, which is one of the reasons why, if Mary is indeed playing a role, she manages so successfully. John is persuaded because Mary is multilingual, learned, and ladylike; it appears that she has had the education proper to a young girl of an elite background. Mary claims to have received her English instruction from Hammond, while the two were traveling together, but she speaks many tongues, in addition to the German or Dutch she claims as her own: “I would have my adversaries know . . . the several languages I have ready and at my command, as the Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English, and something of the oriental tongues, all which I pronounce with a Dutch dialect and idiom, are not common and ordinary endowments of an English spinster, no not of the best rank of the city” (Case, 111). John is in fact so taken with Mary’s eloquence that he references her linguistic skills repeatedly throughout his pamphlets. He notes that her bilingual and accented English helped to deceive him. In Ultimum Vale, he recounts that “she would act and speak so modestly and majestically as could be expected to maintain and make her pretences seem real, and she used good language, though in a broken tone” (163). Her careful, non-native attempts at speaking his language Blackwell, 2008); Caroline Bowden, “Women in Educational Spaces,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villages in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 97. Case, 100ff. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), along with Francis of Assisi, was the founder of the order of Franciscan nuns known as the Order of Saint Clare or the Order of the Poor Ladies (often known simply as the Poor Clares). Certain convents served as both homes for religious women and schools for young women more generally. School boarders did not necessarily join the order. While Mary does not specify where exactly she resided, it may be that she was housed in the Convent of Santa Clara in Cologne. As far as I can gather, the convent was associated with Cologne’s Franciscan Church of St. Clare, now deconsecrated and demolished. 98. Charlton, “The Educational Background,” 110–12; and Bowden, “Women in Educational Spaces,” 88–89.

Introduction 29 reinforce the authenticity of the words that she utters. Here German/Dutch intrusions and accenting serve as markers of status, civility, and truth. She would not be able to move between her native language and English so effortlessly, especially as a woman born, were it not for her elite birth and the education that accompanied it. Indeed, she repeatedly uses specialized/unavailable language to access authority, and she relies on its disappearance or absence to protect herself in times when she must fall back on more conventionalized gender categories. While John frequently reiterates the fact that her German/Dutch helped to persuade him, he likewise insists that she falsified a “language barrier” whenever anyone challenged her story. Language became a tool of manipulation as “she would seem to be so angry with herself, because she could not express herself in our tongue to that height as she would” whenever she was confronted (163). Like John’s education, Mary’s schooling, and the verbal facility it imparted, marks her texts in indelible ways, underscoring both their gender- and status-specific valences. The three pamphlets that follow John’s and Mary’s accounts, Vercingetorixa, A Witty Combat, and The Arraignment do not allude to an educational or lettered past so much as a series of discrete apprenticeships. Vercingetorixa’s author, F. B., slyly references both the law courts and the coffeehouses, aligning itself with other early Restoration, royalist-inspired political poetry. His one thousand plus–line poetic send-off dutifully models the bouncy, eight-syllable, heroic couplet lines and heavy-handed comic rhythms of its most obvious and successful progenitor, Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, and like Butler’s poem, it relies on a classical tradition of satire inherited from Horace and Juvenal and penned by a cadre of proto-Tory poets whose work shares common formal attributes and stylistic flourishes. Some of these lessons may have been learned inside a classroom, but it is rather more likely that they were acquired from the residue of a coterie culture99 that had at one time actively and routinely encouraged the exchange and rewriting of such poems between men within a wide and interconnected network as a sign of status and now is using the same methods of exchange to build, in fairly short order, a dedicatory poetic community on a “hack” deadline. A Witty Combat’s T. P. also borrows from both an earlier era and the contemporary Restoration stage. He aligns his play with city comedies like Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World (1608), Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fayre (1631), and Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633), all plays that precede his work generationally, and he appears to find common ground with William Wycherley in The Country-Wife (1675), William Congreve in The Way of the World (1700), and Aphra Behn in The Rover (1677). T. P. foregrounds Mary’s role, affording her a surprising portion of his play’s sympathies and notably assigning the only blank verse in Witty Combat to her character—a nod to her stature as 99. See Arthur F. Marotti, John Donne, Coterie Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986).

30 Introduction the play’s heroine.100 While Mary’s legal grappling is explicitly omitted from this production, her witness-stand eloquence nonetheless echoes in an ability to spar verbally with her opponents. Such interactions recall earlier “victorious” women whose success has to do with their uncanny ability to speak effectively, often in legal contexts. Think, for instance, of Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1600) or Vittoria in John Webster’s The White Devil (1612).101 T. P also sacrifices all of the male characters as dupes to Mary’s greater wit, sharing his culture’s fascination with Jacobean “gossip” chains—the periodic conversational world that we find inhabiting so many plays of the late teens and early twenties.102 But Witty Combat is also very much of its moment. It documents the Restoration cynicism for anything approximating love without some consideration of estate or revenue attached to its barely beating heart. Unlike its predecessors, the last pamphlet in the edition, the anonymous Arraignment, gestures forward not back. In fact, there is no single date at which we begin to see fully realized serial court transcripts from the Old Bailey Proceedings Online that match it in depth or particularity. Retrieval availability for online archives currently begins in the year 1674. While “Proceedings” commentaries can “vary in length and detail, from reports of a few dozen words to detailed transcripts,”103 most accounts, especially for the seventeenth century, tend to be brief in the extreme. The Arraignment is an unusual and singular document in its presumed coverage of an entire trial proceedings, start to finish. It begins with the opening “Oyez” and calling of witnesses and traverses several hours of testimony, moving between multiple jurors until the verdict is announced. Explicitly not a part of the Old Bailey Proceedings, it nonetheless apes them in what ought to be their most idealized form. The Arraignment, then, more than any other text in this edition, can be said to be at the forefront of its own composition history.104

100. Witty Combat portrays Mary as a cheat with designs on the Carletons; she triumphs in that her victims are similarly ready to entrap her and are far more buffoonish in their maneuverings than she is. 101. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, ed. Bevington; and John Webster, The White Devil, ed. Stephen Purcell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 102, See, for example, Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy. Acted in the Year 1614 (London, 1631), and The Devil is An Ass: A Comedy in the Year, 1616 (London, 1631). 103. See https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/crimin al-court-cases-old-bailey-the-central-criminal-court/. 104. J. H. Langbein suggests that modern stenographic trial transcripts do not become a feature of the Old Bailey Sessions Papers until the 1730s (“The Criminal Trials before the Lawyers,” University of Chicago Law Review 45 [1978]: 271).

Introduction 31

Licensing and the World of Print The unauthorized105 and ephemeral nature of the Carleton bigamy pamphlets offers us an opportunity to think a bit about the haphazard recovery of earlymodern tabloid news in general and the methods used to control unwanted information.106 The Carleton pamphlets were printed quickly and cheaply. They had to be written fast to ensure their currency, with a shelf life that derived from the limited attention span that drove consumer spending. That they are here and intact and that they make up one of the most vivid and self-conscious encounters that we have on early modern domestic and political transgression makes them all the more fascinating for us. If they were more common, then they would probably be less interesting. Only one out of the seven printed works included in this volume, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, found its way through formal channels and into early modern England’s official record book. The Case was entered in the Stationers’ Register on June 26, 1663, less than one month after Carleton had been released from Newgate Prison.107 Listing sermons, plays, pamphlets, and broadsheets printed in England from 1554 to 1708, the register was maintained by the Stationers’ Company in London and awarded its privileges by royal charter.108 It hosts thousands of titles. It does not, however, include the majority of pamphlets 105. Unlicensed. 106. Main insists that another work, A Vindication of a Distressed Lady, should also be identified as Mary’s, noting that it appears to precede her trial and provoke John Carleton’s Replication (“The German Princess,” 170). John makes direct reference to A Vindication in the closing lines of The Replication and seems uncertain as to the legal outcome of the trial (suggesting a publication date before June 4); other snippets of The Replication’s argument and dialogue appear to have been lifted verbatim from Historical Narrative, suggesting either that John’s Replication is a piecemeal reworking of several pre- and posttrial pamphlets including Mary’s own or that his Replication and her Historical Narrative were both “in process” during the weeks leading up to and in the immediate aftermath of the trial, borrowing indiscriminately from all the available texts. The Arraignment also relies on Mary’s interventions. 107. Eyre and Rivington, Transcript of the Registers, 2:324. Carleton was released on June 6, two days after her June 4 acquittal (Kietzman, Self-Fashioning, 221). 108. A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, 1640–1708 A. D., 3 vols. (London:  Priv. Print,  1913–14;  New York, NY:  Columbia University Libraries,  2007). Edited by G. E. B. Eyre and G. R. Rivington, the Transcript is a continuation of Edward Arber’s A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A. D., 5 vols. (London, 1875–1894). The Stationers’ register “ostensibly” required every printer to identify the works that he or she intended to print. Obviously, that did not happen, at least, not as often as it ought to have. Each listing in the register demanded that the printer pay a small fee. Once the fee had been paid and the titled recorded, the official citation in the register served as both a means to verify printing rights and foreclose publication by other presses (an early form of copyright) and a means to regulate and monitor publication in England (only registered printers could apply for rights and gain press access).

32 Introduction that focus on Carleton’s bigamy trial. Why is that? While we cannot know exactly which works were chosen, above and beyond the usual rubrics (registered printers, first editions, established venues), the fact that six of the seven pamphlets in this edition are unauthorized presents an interesting conundrum.109 The trial’s apparent erasure, lacking for the most part the official imprimatur from the Stationers’ Company, speaks not simply to the erratic and as yet largely irregular nature of press regulation in the early years of the Restoration110 but also and more intriguingly to the salacious and impromptu nature of the Carleton scandal itself. Ephemeral by nature, the pamphlets were for the most part one-offs, intended to last only as long as did the interests of London’s scandal-buying readership. In fact, this style of news reporting lent itself marvelously well to a rather different kind of print regulation, one that depended on after-the-fact charges of libel rather than before-the-fact text censorship and evoked punitive charges only to already printed works.111 So, too, it was not until after the licensing act of 1662 that 109. While Maureen Bell estimates that roughly 75 percent of all publications went through official channels (“Entrance in the Stationers’ Register,” The Library 16 [1994]: 50–54), she notes that our numerical estimates may be compromised by the fact that Wing counts (the numbers upon which we make that assessment) are at best inaccurate as a result of the intractable nature of the database— some of those records may inadvertently have been counted many times over (Maureen Bell and John Barnard, “Documents and Sources: Provisional Count of Wing Titles, 1641–1700,” Publishing History [1998]: 89). For additional materials on the London Book trade from the period, see volume 1 of A Chronology and Calendar of Documents Relating to the London Book Trade, 1641–1700, ed. D. F. McKenzie and Maureen Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 110. D. F. McKenzie suggests that the lack of official recognition in this instance may in fact result from a more common and more complex set of circumstances, which included the type and size of publication: “The effects of the Licensing Act are only partly reflected in the imprimaturs and Stationers’ Register. Only 52 books bear some form of licence; there are only 79 entries for the year [1668] in the Register. . . . [L]icensing could be safely neglected for non-controversial books; and . . . it had to be evaded for controversial ones. But both licensing and registration are also a function of size. . . . [L]arge books involved large investment and it was better to play [it] safe; pamphlets cost less, were more easily dispersed, and their authors and printers were harder to detect.” So, too, trial pamphlets like the Carleton accounts were only as good as they were current. When production had to happen quickly, licensing on occasion might take a back seat (“The London Book Trade in 1668,” in Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays, ed. Peter D. McDonald and Michael Felix Suarez [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002], 118–19 and 119). Apparently, disagreements between the two houses of Parliament over the rights and perquisites of the Licensing Act of 1662 (which ostensibly required renewal every two years) kept both groups postponing renegotiation until 1679, while the act itself lapsed for good in 1695 (Anastasia Castillo, Banned Books: Censorship in Eighteenth-Century England [Germany: GRIN Verlag, 2009], 24). 111. Castillo, Banned Books, 24–25. The 1662 Licensing Act (14 Car. II. c. 33), “An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses,” was for all intents and purposes a carbon copy of the Star Chamber decree of 1637 against which Milton wrote his Areopagitica.

Introduction 33 the council of state even bothered to issue general search warrants to hunt down prepress sedition.112

Seven Pamphlets Tessa Watt reminds us that chapbooks, small pamphlets like the Mary Carleton pamphlets in this edition, were likely sold by ballad mongers; they were cheap, popular, and readily available.113 While religious works could always count on markets, newsbooks brought in audiences as well.114 Successful print runs catered to current events, especially scandalous events.115 Published in some cases within days of one another, the Carleton tracts not only relay news of the trial and its aftermath; they also address, augment, and correct those that precede them, mutually referencing one another. They appealed jointly—as a collection—and likely drew their readers from that shared reference. But it was in isolation where they gained their credibility, each of them insisting that hers alone was the story that spoke its solitary truth. While The Case was the only licensed trial pamphlet on record, it was, however, not the earliest of the texts to be published.116 The author herself purportedly produced at least one additional version a few days prior. Mary’s first overt attempt at narrating her story, An Historical Narrative, appeared almost immediately after her trial ended, its prologue giving it a date of June 12. Her husband’s initial response, The Replication, falls even earlier, sometime before Mary’s acquittal. The Case and The Ultimum Vale follow both of these works in quick succession (with all four published within the matter of a few weeks).117 Given the parallels 112. J. Walker, “The Censorship of the Press during the Reign of Charles II,” History ns 35, no. 125 (1950): 222. 113. Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety: 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 280ff. 114. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 280ff: esp. psalms, hymnals, and prayer books. 115. “Seriality” is an anachronism here. The first literary usage was coined in 1835. These pamphlets serve as uncanny precursors not simply to that initial, incremental definition of a serial work as anything published in short installments at regular intervals but also to our more contemporary and multivalent understanding of the term, coincident with the shift in registers that happens between episodes, the uncertainty that occurs in the narrative retelling of events as writers/witnesses/reporters cover the same circumstances from different perspectives. 116. Bernbaum locates the first reference to the Carleton scandal in a report from the erratically published royalist news periodical the Man in the Moon; an issue appeared on May 18, six days after Carleton’s arrest, mocking John as “ ‘some poor Clark’ gulled by ‘an Impudent piece of Mortality’ ” (Man in the Moon, 14–15, cited in Main, “The German Princess,” 171). Bernbaum discusses the piece at some length; see esp. his The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673, 16–19. 117. John Carleton recorded a date of July 7 in his epistle to the reader, placing The Ultimum Vale as the final direct response from the couple themselves. While I am fairly certain the order of all four texts

34 Introduction between Mary’s accounts and those of her husband, I have arranged the first four texts in the edition in a call-and-response format, ceding initial rights to John’s Replication, with Mary’s two self-authored defenses and her husband’s final retort following in short order.118 While it is tempting to read this grouping of texts in isolation, as a perfectly contained debate, we must remember that each of the accounts is responding not only to the others that accompany it in this edition but also to a score of pamphlets that were published alongside it during the scandalladen weeks from May 12 through June 18, 1663.119 Mary’s and John’s pamphlets beg to be read side by side. So alike, at times all four seem as if we are reading duplications. But we are not. These works are, in fact, different. Two openly lament an unwary bridegroom’s marriage to an unwanted wife, ruing the fact that the fraudulent bride failed to get her comeuppance. What this means, and we ought not to forget the material reality of such desiring, is gruesome. A guilty verdict in the Carleton trial would have secured death by hanging for the bigamous partner, and in at least one of the pamphlets, The Replication, the verdict was as yet unknown. John may on occasion borrow Mary’s language, as he argues his points, but he employs her words to radically different ends. Discovering the ironies and misfires between pamphlets as writers spar back and forth, bickering about the events surrounding the trial, is the pleasure and provocation set forward in this edition. Similarities between the “he said” “she said” texts challenge us to dig deeper, to try harder to discover differences. Mary’s and John’s forays into their recent past ask of readers a forensic and aesthetic willingness to distinguish between competing truths and to attempt to understand the different mindsets that may have shaped them. Two literary responses to the Carleton bigamy trial were published during the same fraught weeks of publication between May 12 and June 28, the first, a mock-heroic verse narrative titled Vercingetorixa, and the second, a play titled A stands as I have arranged it, I cannot be sure. We cannot organize the pamphlets according to the dates they were registered (only The Case has been formally noted). In any event, those calendrical listings would tell us nothing about the actual time at which a text is printed. Our best evidence (aside from the direct mention made in An Historical Narrative) is internal, by looking at passages that are referenced from one text to another. And as you might imagine, duplication tells us only one thing—that an author saw another text at some point, not necessarily after it was printed. 118. Many pamphlet writers who attacked Mary Carleton rejected her claims of authorship in An Historical Narrative and The Case, imagining both to be ghostwritten by an educated “Grub Street hack” (while the term is premature here, the street was already associated with writers and printers by the early years of the Restoration; see note 124). Bernbaum smugly notes evidence in An Historical Narrative of the writer’s obvious familiarity with the classical tradition, citing Diogenes, Themistocles, and Epimenides, among others (The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673, 20–21). 119. These accounts, some as brief as a broadsheet and some stretching to several quires, also included A Vindication (London 1663), itself responding to John Johnson’s account, The Lawyer’s Clerk Trepanned by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury (London, 1663).

Introduction 35 Witty Combat. We have no way of knowing the exact dates they were available for sale or whether they were on the scene when the husband/wife pamphlets made their appearance.120 While it is evident from the inconclusive ending of the first and the poor reviews of the second that neither ever achieved the kind of standalone success its author had hoped,121 they together illustrate the range of concerns within the popular imagination that might inspire poetry or provoke performance. In more capable hands or perhaps timelier, both works might have become familiar sights within traditional literary canons. Is Samuel Butler’s Presbyterian knight simply a more suitable target of ridicule than F. B.’s milquetoast bridegroom and his gold-digging bride-to-be?122 Or is Butler just better with Hudibrastic verse (heroic tetrameter)? The aesthetic question is worth pondering. What is at stake when we talk about “good” writing, and why should we attempt to evaluate texts outside or beyond such realms? As a satiric poet, F. B. joins the ranks of writers like Jonathan Swift, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.123 While F. B. seems to draw his commendatory citations from the law courts and travels in markedly different circles than either the earl or the duchess, he likely sees his writing within a similar tradition, taking advantage of the public’s craving for news of the princess with a familiar poetic form, heroic verse satire. As a “popular” incarnation of that endeavor, broadside doggerel, Vercingetorixa may even have earned him a new sobriquet as a “hack-poet.”124 As Mary Learner usefully argues, popular literature, the business of this edition, is essential. Students of the early modern period have no better guide to the culture or its people. Pamphlets like the ones we find here provide students an opportunity to encounter material that early moderns would have read on a day-to-day basis . . . [and such work] 120. A Witty Combat, if it is more or less the same script as A German Princess, is probably a later version on the basis of internal evidence and a noted disinterest in the relevant facts of the trial. 121. F. B. made mention of a continuation that never got written (Vercingetorixa, 255, line 1034ff.), and Pepys found the reprised version tiresome (Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed., Latham and Matthews, 5:124). 122. See Butler, Hudibras, ed. J. Widden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). 123. See, for example, Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing-World. Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess the Duchess of Newcastle (London, 1666), whose Lucianic-Menippean prose piece, A New World Called the Blazing-World offers readers a topsyturvy view of her own Restoration England. See also Swift, Ub—Bub—A—Boo; or, the Irish Howl. In Heroic Verse (London, 1735); Dryden, Mac Flecknoe; or, a Satire upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T. S. (London, 1682); and Wilmot, “The Disabled Debauchee” (ca. 1675), in The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. and intro., David. M. Vieth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). 124. The OED awards this naming to Alexander Pope’s Dunciad in 1728. The term derives from “hackney”—a carriage or coach readily available for public hire.

36 Introduction was not limited to a few; anyone could (and did) read, write, hear, modify, and circulate these creations and adaptations. Paying attention to popular literature—and setting aside modern evaluations of aesthetic merit—is essential to the project of understanding how people reacted to social, religious, and political upheavals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It offers us unique insight into the experience of daily life and reflects the variety of literacies in the period.125 I would like to extend Learner’s argument about active readership to suggest that even works that were planned but never written can tell us much about a culture—about what it cannot or will not see, about the limits of its own perspective. Vercingetorixa made a return appearance in occasional form upon Mary’s execution in 1673,126 so it clearly had poetic legs. Pretty poetry was clearly not the deciding factor in ultimately reproducing F. B.’s text, yet it spoke, and what its words had to say may be just as important as what they did not. Knowing when to look and how to look: that is what reading these texts can teach us; that is what they can help us learn. We have no direct evidence that the printed pamphlet A Witty Combat was ever performed. In its stead, we hear of the production of a play titled The German Princess, authored by the playwright John Holden.127 No printed play by that name or authorship exists. Like other early Restoration plays, the staging of The German Princess included female players, and Mary Carleton performed in its lead.128 Issuing a royal patent in 1662 to render official what had already been going on in practice,129 Charles II had decreed that all female roles should henceforth be taken by women. It is likely that The German Princess followed a similar if not identical script to A Witty Combat. But if backers were hoping that the appearance of the real Mary Carleton would offer their production a more lasting success than its earlier staging (if indeed there had been one), such was not the case. As noted earlier, the play apparently did not outlast its second night. The story audiences encountered at the theater had changed markedly. Both the marriage and the trial—the most sensational aspects of the case—occurred offstage. Instead, as Kate Lilley points out, the play concerns itself with “the nature and stratification of spectatorship . . . the ‘motley’ character of news, and its swift passage from live 125. Learner, “Material Sampling and Patterns of Thought in Early Modern England” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2022). 126. Vercingetorixa’s text was included almost unabridged in Kirkman’s The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. 127. Pepys also names another Holden play, The Ghosts, this one quite “simple,” which he attended at the Duke House on April 17, 1665 (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed., Latham and Matthews, 6:137). 128. See Witty Combat, 257. 129. Charles Spencer, Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), 315.

Introduction 37 currency in the circuits of discourse” to secondhand or superseded accounts.130 Like an early modern game of “telephone,” the play’s various plots lampoon the way news reports lose value as they morph in meaning the more speakers and listeners they are required to cycle through. By 1664, Mary’s trial was old business, but perhaps, tellingly, it was also not. The Arraignment stands by itself, as it offers a fairly explicit overview of the trial. While it has been cited in The Case and so obviously precedes it, I left it for last for two reasons. As I stated earlier, I chose to organize John’s and Mary’s presumptive first-person pamphlets using a call-and-response format, as they are speaking to one another so directly. Introducing The Arraignment into the mix would interrupt that frame. Leaving a pseudo-trial record as the final word on the Carleton bigamy case allows readers to reflect more deeply on the various “truths” that the authors have attempted to put forward in their “debating” accounts. As one of the first attempted “transcriptions” of early modern trial proceedings, The Arraignment anticipates the legal veracity of court reporting and needs to be examined independently on that basis, as it bears resemblance for modern readers to a more familiar and powerful generic form—the court transcript. In that capacity, the text presumably speaks to us in a documentary style that we may recognize. Even if we have not participated in a trial ourselves, we have heard snippets of court records read to us in films and on television. Court transcripts would seem to proclaim a kind of truth, as they purport to record exactly what has been said. Court reporters today require licensure and training in procedure, stenography, foundations in medical and legal understanding, and communication and dictation skills.131 The job did not exist in 1663.132 That does not necessarily mean we are looking at fraud. At a minimum, there is a degree of expertise involved here that we cannot fail to recognize. Mary could not have “recreated” this account alone or by simple recall. Someone had to be in attendance taking it all down. By leaving The Arraignment for last, I hope to give readers a grounding point, however fraught,133 a site to which they can return, among so many competing voices. But I also want readers to realize the “madeness” of that presentation as a non-legalistic artifact, how it beguiles us with its formal and, for 130. Lilley, “These Novels of My Life,” 268. 131. While we may be inclined to trust absolutely the “truths” that are uttered within the courtroom, they are not color- or gender-blind; they accommodate themselves to a wide range of cultural pressures. See, for instance, Christina Accomando’s “ ‘The Laws Were Laid Down to Me Anew’: Harriet Jacobs and the Reframing of Legal Fictions,” African American Review 32 (1998): 229–45. 132. For some early modern forays into experimental shorthand and its uses, see Timothie Bright’s Characterie (London, 1588); Henry Dix’s A New Art of Brachygraphy (London, 1633); Thomas Shelton’s Tachygraphy (London, 1641); and William Mather’s The Young Man’s Companion (London, 1692). Pepys wrote his diary almost entirely using Shelton’s tachygraphic system. See also Job Everardt, Epitome of Stenography (London, 1658). 133. The Arraignment is clearly “skewed” toward Mary’s perspective.

38 Introduction us, contemporary familiarity. It is an estranged piece of history hovering between two very different moments—a fitting site on which to end.

Afterlives of the Texts Like the flurry of pamphlets that accompanied the first trial proceeding against Mary in 1663, a second spate of writings134 occurred immediately following Mary’s execution in 1672. Many rehearsed the original trial matter, extending its narrative to include criminal accounts of Mary’s later adventures in London and Barbados. Francis Kirkman’s The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled,135 published in 1673, the year after Mary’s death, juxtaposed an in-depth account of her life with oddly revealing moments of self-disclosure. By moralizing on Mary’s personal failings, Kirkman revealed to readers his own ability to impersonate and counterfeit. Over a decade after her death, “The German Princess” was still enough of a marketing sensation to claim title to the adventures of yet another serial pretender, Jenny Voss (d. 1684).136 Connecting the two in appearance and act, the anonymous The German Princess Revived (1684) juxtaposed the machinations of Voss, a crossdresser who was also deported and executed, with those of Mary. Poor Robin’s Almanack, a series of parodic yearly almanacs, reporting both insignificant and consequential events of the day and published from 1673 to 1707, took advantage of Mary’s notoriety as well, satirically reminding avaricious readers of money’s lure: “the German Princess for thee plaid her part, / Though afterwards it brought her to the Cart.”137 That series began in 1675 and continued through 1707. Many of the accounts that relied on Mary’s popularity followed conventional rogue motifs, using established gallows caricatures in their depictions 134. See, for instance, News from Jamaica; The Deportment and Carriage of the German Princess (London, 1672); An Elegy on the Famous and Renowned Lady, for Eloquence and Wit, Madam Mary Carlton, Otherwise Styled, the German Princess (London, 1673); An Exact and True Relation of the Examination, Trial, and Condemnation of the German Princess, Otherwise Called Mary Carlton (London, 1672); J. G., The Memoirs of Mary Carleton, Commonly Styled, the German Princess (London, 1673); Francis Kirkman, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. Being a Full Account of the Birth, Life, Most Remarkable Actions, and Untimely Death of Mary Carleton, Known by the Name of the German Princess (London, 1673); The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders, Alias Mary Steadman, Alias Mary Carlton, Alias Mary—The Famous German Princess (London, 1678); Memories of the Life of the Famous Madam Charlton, Commonly Styled the German Princess (London, 1673); Memoirs; or, the Life and Death of the Famous Madam Mary Charlton: Commonly Styled the German Princess, 2nd ed. (London, 1673); and Some Luck, Some Wit, Being a Sonnet upon the Merry Life and Untimely Death of Mistress Mary Carleton, Commonly Called The German Princess (London, 1672–1696?). 135. Kirkman, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. 136. Barbara White, “Voss, Jane [alias Jane Roberts] (d. 1684), highwaywoman and thief,” ODNB. 137. Quote from Poor Robin’s Almanack, cited in Suzuki, ed. The Early Modern Englishwoman: Mary Carleton, 6:xi.

Introduction 39 of “The German Princess.” They also positioned her various escapades within a collection of similar “cheats.” Pamphlets continued to appear throughout the eighteenth century, rehearsing Mary’s criminal disposition. In 1714 Alexander Smith published “The German Princess, A Cheat, Jilt, and Thief.” This work was part of a larger compendium of rogues, The History of the Lives of the Most Noted Highwaymen.138 Another edition (a reissue from 1678) surfaced in 1732, titled The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders, a third in 1755, the anonymous Lives and Adventures of the German Princess, and a fourth in the 1790s, James Caulfield’s Blackguardiana.139 In addition to attention by writers of pamphlet literature, Mary’s narrative received mention by those more directly involved in literary pursuits. Pepys noted her in his diaries, and she came to the attention of the London stage, as discussed earlier. She was also later referenced by two other writers, one a playwright and one a novelist. The first, Behn, identified Mary in the epilogue to her play The Dutch Lover: Whilst sad experience our eyes convinces That damn’d their Playes which hang’d the German Princess And we with ornament set off a Play Like her drest fine for Execution-day And faith I think with as small hopes to live Unless kind Gallants the same grace you’d give Our comedie as Her, beg a Reprieve.140 The second, Daniel Defoe, imagined his heroine Roxana as a doppelgänger of “The German Princess” in his novel with the same name (Roxana, 1724): “I might as well have been the German Princess,” he had her explain.141 Defoe’s narrative also explored what it might mean to create those terms from scratch, as Roxana pieced together the elements that transformed her status from serving girl to peer (her exoticism, wealth, etc.). Defoe returned to another aspect of Mary’s persona in Moll Flanders (1746). In Moll, Defoe’s title character, we find echoes not only of Mary Carleton, the “Kentish Moll,” but also of Mary Frith, aka “Moll Cutpurse,” 138. Alexander Smith, “The German Princess, A Cheat, Jilt, and Thief,” in The History of the Lives of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Footpads, House-Breakers, Shop-Lifts and Cheats, of Both Sexes, 2nd ed. (London, 1714), 1:236–57. This text basically summarizes Kirkman’s The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. 139. The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders, Alias Mary Steadman, Alias Mary Carleton, Alias Mary—the Famous German Princess (London, 1732). [Reissue from 1678]; Lives and Adventures of the German Princess, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Joan Philips, Madame Churchill, Betty Ireland, and Anne Hereford (London, 1755); and Caulfield, Blackguardiana. 140. Aphra Behn, The Dutch Lover (London, 1673). 141. Defoe, Roxana, 1724 (Cambridge: Chadwick-Healey, 1996), ebook, 334.

40 Introduction and Elizabeth Adkins, aka “Moll King.” All of these women rewrite the otherwise straightened circumstances of their lives to take control of their destinies.142 Mary did not surface again until her rediscovery at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1914, Ernest Bernbaum argued that her accounts were central to the development of the novel, and so he generated her first official biography, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673. In 2004, nearly a century later, Kietzman published a second monograph, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman. Where Bernbaum’s study recognized Mary’s status as a woman only secondarily, noting the problems she faced in being denied rights that had been accorded to men, Kietzman’s account foregrounded that fact, at all times attempting to recover the female experiences that may have shaped Mary’s life. Amid a growing interest in recovering feminist forbearers, historians and literary critics of the late twentieth century began to reprint Mary’s writings. Published in 1989, Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by SeventeenthCentury Englishwomen, edited by Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby, and Helen Wilcox, offered readers the first excerpted edition of The Case.143 For those without access to Early English Books Online, that venue and others like it proved invaluable.144 In 1994, Janet Todd and Elizabeth Spearling augmented Graham’s initial foray by providing an uncut but sparsely edited version of the same text in their Counterfeit Ladies: The Life and Death of Mal Cutpurse/the Case of Mary Carleton. By juxtaposing Mary’s life story with that of Mary Frith, the “Roaring Girl,” those editors foregrounded common attributes between the two women and their moment. Almost a decade later, in 2000, Mary had finally arrived. Betty Travitsky and Anne Lake Prescott’s Female & Male Voices in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing paired Carleton’s Arraignment with works by Thomas Whythorn and Robert Spencer to investigate women’s status within early modern law courts.145 Four years later, in 2004, the second edition of The Longman Anthology of British Literature included a short selection from The Case, reiterating Mary’s newly canonical importance as both an early female writer and

142. See The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith. Commonly Called Mal Cutpurse (London, 1662); and The Life and Character of Moll King, Late Mistress of King’s Coffee-House in Covent-Garden (London, 1747). 143. Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century English Women, ed. Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby, and Helen Wilcox (London: Routledge, 1989), 129–44. 144. EEBO microfilms issued by University Microfilms International (UMI). The collection was digitized by ProQuest in the 1990s. 145. Betty Travitsky and Anne Lake Prescott’s Female & Male Voices in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 387–417.

Introduction 41 a proto-novelistic writer.146 When Mihoko Suzuki edited a volume for The Early Modern Englishwoman series in 2006, she included lengthy facsimile excerpts from The Case, The Arraignment, The Replication, A Witty Combat, Vercingetorixa, and The Memoirs of Mary Carleton. In that volume, Suzuki provided useful introductions to each of the works, as well as appendices that supplied additional seventeenth- and eighteenth-century references to Carleton. A facsimile edition, Suzuki’s contained no editorial apparatus. Scholarship on Mary and her detractors has been equally rich and varied. Studies have located the trial within myriad contexts, ranging from domesticity and the marriage market to crime and juridical practice. They have noted how the accounts seek to unsettle social hierarchies and perform and destabilize subjectivities.147 Evident throughout all of the investigations is a recognition of the 146. David Damrosh, ed., The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1C, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 2004). 147. For scholarly evaluations of the Carleton trial and especially Mary’s part in it, see, already mentioned, Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673; Kietzman, The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman; and Todd, “Carleton [née Moders].” See also Hero Chalmers, “ ‘The Person I Am, Or What They Made Me to Be’: The Construction of the Feminine Subject in the Autobiographies of Mary Carleton,” in Women, Texts, and Histories, 1575–1760, ed. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (London: Routledge, 1992), 163–92; Jody Greene, “Francis Kirkman’s Counterfeit Authority: Autobiography, Subjectivity, Print.” PMLA 121, no. 1 (2006): 17–32; Mary Jo Kietzman, “Publicizing Private History: Mary Carleton’s Case in Court and Print,” in The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in Early Modern England, ed. Paula R. Backscheider and Timothy Dystal (London: Routledge, 2013), 105–33; Christine Shojaei Kawan, “Legend and Life: Examples from the Biographies of ‘A’ishah bint Abi Bakr, Mary Carleton, and Friedrich Salomo Kraus,” Folklore 116, no. 2 (2005): 140–54; Kate Lilley, “Mary Carleton’s False Additions: The Case of the German Princess,” Humanities Research 16, no. 1 (2010): 79–89; Kate Lilley, “The German Princess Revived: The Case of Mary Carleton,” in Expanding the Canon of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Paul Salzman (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 113–24; Lilley, “These Novels of My Life”; C. F. Main, “The German Princess; or, Mary Carleton in Fact and Fiction,” Harvard Library Bulletin 10 (1956): 166–85; Megan Matchinske, “When We Swear to Tell the Truth: The Carleton Debates and Archival Methodology,” in The Cambridge History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 83–99; Matchinske, “Receptive Readers,” 103–35; Mihoko Suzuki, “The Case of Mary Carleton: Representing the Female Subject, 1663–73,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 12, no. 1 (1993): 61–83; Mihoko Suzuki, The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, Printed Writings, 1641–1700, Anne Lake Prescott, gen. ed. Volume 6. Mary Carleton, ed. Mihoko Suzuki (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Janet Todd, “The German Princess: Criminalities of Gender and Class,” in Narrating Transgression: Representations of the Criminal in Early Modern England, ed. Rosamaria Loretelli and Roberto De Romanis (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 103–12; Janet Todd, “Marketing the Self: Mary Carleton, Miss F, and Susannah Gunning,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 217 (1983): 95–106; Todd, Counterfeit Ladies; Geraldine Wagner, “The Staged Self in Mary Carleton’s Autobiographical Narratives,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 7, no. 3 (2005): n.p.; Valerie Wayne, “Assuming Gentility: Thomas Middleton, Mary Carleton, and Aphra Behn,” in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, ed. James Daybell

42 Introduction fractured site of absolutes of any sort. Despite avowals to the contrary, Mary and John, and the various lives they offer to readers, seem unable or unwilling to pin down any final or lasting truths.

Note on the Texts The texts used for this edition have been selected from various source copies, all available through Early English Books Online (EEBO). The Replication, An Historical Narrative, The Ultimum Vale, and A Witty Combat have been transcribed from EEBO copies reproduced from the Harvard University Library; The Case is from the Newberry Library EEBO copy; and Vercingetorixa and The Arraignment are from the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery EEBO copies. I have not collated separate print copies.148 To maintain some original flavor for readers, I have tried to leave sentences as intact as possible. I have also retained grammatical structures and punctuation as long as they do not impede easy reading. I have, however, broken up lengthy sentence chains and provided paragraphing where necessary for twenty-firstcentury readers. The decision to leave words as they are involves preserving the traditional English spelling over American (“honour” vs. “honor”) and a “time appropriate” use of commas and semi-colons. Dashes have been retained in their original form to convey emphasis. I have also chosen to forgo quotation marks in direct dialogue and to honor italic and roman font choices throughout.149 Despite (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 243–56; and Barbara White, “Jenny Voss: The Fantasy of Female Criminality,” in Writing and Fantasy, ed. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (1999; New York: Routledge, 2013), 167–86. 148. The Replication, Wing C585A; An Historical Narrative, Wing H2106; The Ultimum Vale, Wing C586; The Case, Wing C586A; Vercingetorixa, Wing B64; A Witty Combat, P2998; and The Arraignment, Wing A3764. The Wing numbers included here refer to listings in the four-volume Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641–1700, compiled by Donald Goddard Wing (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1974–1998). Wing’s catalogue postdates another bibliography, generated by Alfred W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave that focuses earlier, on the period between 1475 and 1640 (numbers preceded by STC) (2d ed. rev. & enl. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and Katherine F. Pantzer [London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–]). There are eleven extant copies of Arraignment; seven of Case; five of Historical Narrative; seven of Ultimum Vale; four of Replication; seven of Vercingetorixa; and fifteen of Witty Combat. 149. Typographical decisions within the texts are always the culmination of a number of disparate forces. They may derive from the author’s own “foul papers,” from a fair copy that has been corrected by any number of hands and/or from the various typesetters and book sellers that have brought a pamphlet to press. Some of these interventions may be intentional and still others, accidental. We can never access absolutely those correspondences or what they might have meant. While that should not foreclose attending to typographical decisions, we should, nevertheless, be wary in drawing absolute conclusions.

Introduction 43 these few concessions to early modern usage, I have modernized the text, replacing obsolete spelling (for example, changing “then” to “than”), and replaced all Roman numerals with Arabic numbers. In such cases where archaic policies make for confusion and/or incoherence, passages have been silently emended and/or glossed. Major editorial clarifications have been noted in square brackets, while omissions of confusing or repetitive articles have been indicated with ellipses. Alterations include adding, deleting, or emending punctuation where necessary (always silent),150 adding additional words to aid in comprehension, also in brackets, correcting obvious typographical errors (marked and footnoted with angled brackets, “” for “”), and expanding abbreviated names (Thomas for Tho.) and conventional early modern contractions (“happened” for “happnd”; mayest for may’st; and “it is” for “’tis”; also silent). Additionally, and again following Other Voice conventions, I have regularized the letters: i/j, u/v, vv/w and long s and transcribed “&c” as “etc.” Where copy pages have bled through, been blotted, or otherwise defaced, leaving the text illegible, I have made some attempt to decipher and correct, indicating with ellipses and angled brackets () any missing or destroyed words (usually in footnotes). Where early modern usage splits reflexive or compound words apart (“any thing” vs. “anything”) I have combined them silently. The spelling of proper names has been regularized throughout, as have honorifics, while nouns beginning with capital letters have been returned to lower case according to modern practice (except in titles, direct honorifics, and speech openings; and these have been regularized within tracts). All foreign language passages have been retained, with translations in footnotes, unless they have been translated by the authors themselves. Where possible, allusions to classical and early modern works have been identified and, in some cases, corrected, with commentary and explanation within the notes. The seven tracts included in this edition all speak to one another directly. They also refer to shared events, persons, places, and situations. To help readers locate common details within pamphlets, I have inserted cross references throughout, sometimes repeating information and in other instances emphasizing slightly different contexts and providing alternate readings to aid in the comprehension of particular passages. Because online sites and access are constantly updating, I have kept frequently cited digital resources simple and clean; several are noted in the front of this volume under Abbreviations. All English word definitions are taken from the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Biblical citations are from the King James Version of the Bible, first printed in London in 1611, while Greek and Roman sources are cited from volumes in the Loeb Classical Library. 150. For example, both of the pamphlets purportedly written by Mary exhibit a fairly pronounced antipathy for periods, tending to string together entire paragraphs using colons and semicolons. That being the case, I have regularly inserted periods, breaking commentary in more easily digestible chunks and allowing modern readers a chance to breathe.

Figure 1. © The British Library Board; “Wenceslaus Hollar’s ‘A map or groundplott of the citty of London,’ ” 1666.

John Carleton The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions (1663) The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions, published sometime between May 12 and June 4, 1663, is the first of two pamphlets defending the honor of John Carleton, alleged victim and martyred second (or third?) husband to Mary Carleton, bigamist. In this account, ostensibly authored by John, the author relates the circumstances of meeting Mary, their marriage, and his discovery of Mary’s deceit: He describes her arrival in London and the events that occurred that gulled he and his family into believing she was an independent woman of fortune. Taken by her virtuous behavior and gentle carriage, he consoles her, then woos and weds her. Shortly thereafter, John discovers that Mary is already married and not who she claims. John and his family put her on trial for bigamy, hoping to annul the marriage. “The law must punish her,” John avows, insisting that it were good if she hang herself (53). The Replication is the only pamphlet included in this edition that appears to be written prior to Mary’s acquittal. In The Replication, John acknowledges but will not directly confront what he calls a vast swirl of “Rumours,” the “Reports, Stories, Fancies . . . Fables, and Proteus Shapes” (47) that surround the events leading up to the trial. John’s referencing reminds us that we are breaking into an ongoing conversation even as the pamphlet begins. He recognizes that his circumstances are widely known and that it is his responsibility to correct the misapprehension of London’s citizens. He promises that he is more concerned for the reputation of his fellows than he is for his own good name and insists that he acts only as it behooves a gentleman to act. While public duty underpins the foundation of John’s text, grounding its supposed purpose, he seems intent both in this pamphlet and in his later Ultimum Vale to establish his reputation as a skilled and talented satirist—a nuanced role that he believes himself particularly able to inhabit, despite his recent drubbing in Mary’s con. Thus, we see how the seating and unseating of social and domestic categories frame much of the animus surrounding the trial proper. We also see how John’s intention to restore truth amid a swirl of rumor (proving Mary’s guilt) simultaneously constructs the characteristics of both his literary and his gentlemanly identity. The Replication has been transcribed from the EEBO copy reproduced from Harvard University Library.1

1. See Introduction, 42.

45

46 JOHN CARLETON

THE REPLICATION, or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions Occasioned by way of Answer, to the Various Aspersions, and False Reports of Ignorant and Malicious Tongues, and the Printed Sheets and Pamphlets of Base DETRACTORS, Concerning the Late Acted CHEAT.2 Written by John Carleton of the Middle Temple,3 London, Gent. Printed by the Author’s Appointment in the Year, 1663.4

2. Referring here to Mary’s wedding to John and the “cheat” she has performed by marrying him under false pretenses. The Replication was surreptitiously stolen and reprinted almost immediately with only minor changes under another title, The Articles and Charge of Impeachment Against the German Lady (Main, “The German Princess,” 172n12). 3. In London, one of four societies (Inner, Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, and Middle) responsible for educating students in English common law; the Inns had exclusive privilege to bring candidates to the bar. See also Ultimum, 151, and Vercingetorixa, 236, line 452. 4. The printer of this tract is unknown.

The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions 47 Judicious Reader, I am not ignorant (though I have been willingly silent) of the various rumours, reports, stories, fancies, daily increasing fables, and Proteus5 shapes wherein the different humours and dispositions of the world bring forth the late acted project and cheat. And though I might be justly angry with some, yet I scorn to take notice of any. For should I begin to undress all these prodigious shapes and set them out singly in the naked truth, into what a confused chaos should I bring myself? How endless should I make my sufferings? How many years might I lead my life in discontent before I could hear, answer, and satisfy the many niceties, questions, curiosities, and objections of the giddy-headed vulgar? Qui non ad veritatem rei, sed ad opinionem prospiciunt.6 I am satisfied, that as a little time will make a distinction between the report and the reality, so it will put a conclusion to both, by burying them in Oblivion. I shall not give myself the trouble to recollect and declare the several motives, Acts, Inducements, and protestations so often and so highly expressed, by that (wise enough indeed but) deceitful woman, that provoked and stirred up that faith and credit in me as to enter the list7 of sacred matrimony. Neither shall I go about to vindicate myself much (for that the law will do) or greatly to vilify her—that, her infamous Actions will best make appear. Nor shall I endeavor to procure a great Credit in anyone, especially in such whose narrow soul and single-threaded8 faith cannot believe the vindicative9 oath of a Christian; Which I dare take to any assertion that I shall modestly and, I protest, without anything of singularity or affectation hereafter lay down, concerning the reality of my intentions and actions. Neither will my troubled thoughts, (Courteous Reader) give me leave to look at the lofty style, nay not time to salute the garment, of that noble pleading and worthy orator Cicero.10 And indeed it best becomes truth to be naked, and glosses of eloquence, in some peevish humours, might invoke jealousies11 of the intended reality; but as I respect the least approbation of the wise and judicious, so I neglect and disdain the greatest censure 5. Greek god of the sea, renowned for being a shape–shifter. 6. Those [i.e., the vulgar] who pay heed not to the truth of the thing but to base opinion. Perhaps in imitation of Thomas Aquinas, recalling his CAPUT 3, De disputatione sophistica, in De falaciis. For a more closely contemporary English source, Francis Bacon frequently opposes veritas and opinio in his writings. See esp. his idols in Novum Organum (The Instauratio Magna: Part II. Novum Organum, ed. G. Rees and M. Wakely, The Oxford Francis Bacon, gen. ed. Graham Rees, Lisa Jardine, and Brian Vickers [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 11: Aphorisms 39–44). 7. “A catalogue or roll consisting of a row or series of names, figures, words, or the like. In early use, esp. a catalogue of the names of persons engaged in the same duties or connected with the same object.” 8. John is here alluding to one of the three fates (Clotho, the spinner; Lachesis, the measurer; or Atropos, the shearer). That Mary’s faith or that of her supporters is “single-threaded” suggests the failure of its weave—its insubstantiality. 9. “Characterized by a desire for, or the exercise of, revenge.” 10. Roman orator, philosopher, politician, and lawyer (106 BCE–43 BCE). 11. Might make readers aspire for what might be and not for what is.

48 JOHN CARLETON of the ignorant and malicious. I seek for no one’s soothing applause, nor I care for no person’s rigorous censure; I only beg every ingenious reader (to whose settled and discerning judgements I submit) to make a charitable construction12 and to pass by all errors you may without doubt find in this little book, which my discomposed judgement will not at this time permit me to see; And I may say of these lines, as discontented Ovid13 said of his verses: Lib. 1. Eleg. 1; Ovid Tristia

Carmina proveniunt animo deducta sereno, Nubila sunt subitis, tempora nostra malis.14

But I hope and wish for a greater serenity and do expect a calm after this storm and then (Worthy Reader) I shall be ready not only to acknowledge and blush at all faults but [also] to correct and amend them. Qui non est hodie, cras magis aptus erit.15 Yours in all friendship,

JOHN CARLETON. •

Cicero was wont to say, Non recte amat uxorem, qui corpus amat potius quam animum. That is, He doth not love his second self rightly that loves the parts of her body rather than the gifts of her mind. Marriage is my theme, and I cannot but look at happiness, and I think it is a very great blessing when the hand of Providence bestows on mortals a suitable conjunction of virtuous and good conditions in wedlock, without which parity none can be really happy therein. And they know not what marriage is that only know how to lust. I shall not stand to comment but will come nearer to my present condition. I was unwilling to write at all, but I will not write much. It was my 12. Tolerant or forgiving explanation. See also Ultimum, 207n384. 13. Roman poet (43 BCE–16/17 AD) best known for his Metamorphoses. The Tristia (“Sorrows” or “Lamentations”) is a collection of letters written while the poet was in exile (Ovid, Tristia; Ex Ponto, trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler, rev. G. P. Goold, 2nd ed., no. 6 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988]). 14. “Delicate poetry comes from a serene mind.” John is here quoting Ovid’s excuse for not having written the Tristia more eloquently. 15. “He who is not prepared today will be more so tomorrow.” John borrows and inverts this Latin maxim from Ovid’s Remedia Amoris (“Remedies for Love”): “qui non est hodie cras minus aptus erit” (He who is not prepared today will be less so tomorrow) (Ovid, “Remedia Amoris,” in The Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. H. Mozley, rev. G. P. Goold, no. 2 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988], 185).

The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions 49 happy, unhappiness, about the 25th day of March last, accidentally to happen into the house where that (in some things worthy) unworthy woman was, she being in the company of a person or two of honour of whose being there, when I was informed, I was willing to return an acknowledgment of my gratefulness for then late received courtesies, it being the first opportunity that was offered to me after the receipt of them, among whom also I was willing and did spend some time for a diversion. She, as she hath protested to many persons several times since, at my entering of the room, was suddenly possessed with a strange kind of an affectionate passion and could not satisfy herself till she had made a strict enquiry who I was. Nor did it cease there, for presently after she employed a friend of mine to desire the continuance of my company as she hath since declared. Here I thought good to insert the original of our acquaintance, that the world may the better perceive her cheating design: though it hath pleased the scurrilous scribbler that either hath no name or else is ashamed of it in a late pamphlet to demonstrate a very great friendship to that Distressed Lady, as his pedantic16 pen terms her. And though he speaks without book,17 as most if not all do besides him, yet he endeavours to make it credible that it was she that carried on a humour and my relations with myself a design,18 which I deny on both sides and here attest, that not any of them to whom I owe the duty of a son or the love of an own brother did ever see her until many days after contraction,19 nay, not until three days before marriage and then never entertained any discourse to promote but rather to hinder the proceedings. For she of her own accord, upon a visit she gave them, told them of her affection and intention and did politicly20 and freely declare to them her great birth and fortune.

16. “Pedagogic, schoolmasterly; of or relating to teaching.” 17. “Without the aid of a book, from memory, by rote; (fig.) without authority.” 18. He believes that she was led by fancy and I, by purpose, into this relationship. 19. “The action of contracting or of establishing by contract; spec. the action of contracting marriage; †also, betrothal (obs.).” 20. Shrewdly.

50 JOHN CARLETON But to return to our first acquaintance, I, understanding her fancy21 and finding those excellent parts22 she was possessed with could do no less than poise23 things in my mind and, considering her endowments, supposed that she wanted24 nothing that might cause a liking nor had she any defect that might procure a loathing. I pressed her to the reason of her fancy. She replied, love gives none. I minded her of the inequality between mine and her then-thought high-descended birth and fortune. She answered, Love knows none. I objected again (she telling me that she ever related to me the least of both) and put cases25 of great danger, to be called in question beyond all law; she replied, Love knows no laws [and asked that I] let her judgement alone to secure both. Her wit did more and more charm me. Her qualities deprived me of my own. Her courteous behaviour, her majestic humility to all persons in all her actions, her emphatical speeches, [her] kind and loving expressions, and, amongst other things, her high detestation and checks to an untruth though jestingly uttered by any, her great zeal to her religion, her modest confidence and grace in all companies, fearing the knowledge of none, her variety of tongues, her neat limned26 and ready answers to all and all manner of objections, that I, or the most critical person in the world (without disparaging anyone’s judgement), could in point of honour make and put to her whereby to discover her, she would so nobly and seriously salve27 that she left no room for suspicion, which did not only work the belief in me (that hath wrapped me in this present misfortune), but also in many persons of great wisdom, gravity, and quality;28 all which in a growing acquaintance and conversation did increase our credit. 21. For a working definition of “fancy” in relation to other psychological faculties, see generally Todd Butler, Imagination and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008). Notoriously unstable, “fancy” served a variety of epistemologically gendered functions for early moderns, all of them female and all of them diametrically contrary to “reason.” Cavendish embraced and celebrated fancy for precisely those attributes that enabled its maker-like status (James Fitzmaurice, “Fancy and the Family: Self-Characterizations of Margaret Cavendish,” Huntington Library Quarterly 53 [1990]: 199–209). 22. “A portion of a human or animal body” or “an aspect or constituent of a quality or action, considered apart from the whole; a point, a particular; a respect.” This passage is embellished in both Historical (62n23) and Case (115n149). John later rues those repetitions in Ultimum, 166n103. 23. Weigh. 24. Lacked. 25. “Chiefly Brit. to put (also †set) the case . . . (in later use) to present a set of facts or arguments in support of a particular . . . course of action, or version of events.” 26. “Illuminated (obs.); painted, depicted, portrayed.” 27. “To save (the appearances, the phenomena), i.e., to frame a hypothesis which will account for all the observed facts of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies. Hence gen., to account for, explain by hypothesis.” 28. See Mary’s Case, 124.

The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions 51 She desired nothing of me but my love (and that, as she told me and others, was always her intention to marry a private gentleman whom she could love that she might oblige him highly to love her by her nobility and estate29—an excellent bait indeed). And I thought she did nobly deserve that. She ever protested a fervent love, and I could not promise an unfaithful [love]. And finding in her so noble a perfection, who could mistrust a real affection and intention? None but did esteem her peerless in all qualities of mind. Who could have called her honour and honesty into question, when they both (I must say seemingly) were so great? But the scene was soon changed, though I could not so soon believe it. And in a strange manner there was a sudden discovery of the truth, which is too long a story to insert here though in a short time it was made appear that she was such a cheating person as before a magistrate she was proved to be. Such a sudden alteration might (like those that looked on Medusa’s head30) have turned me into a stone; I could hardly put out my former belief. Nay, I protest, when I seriously reflect on all the passages of her former expressions and actions (not in the least thinking of the last act) I can believe still. For what person living that is a Christian, or bears the name only, or knows the meaning of that title (which she in a high manner did own), nay, what Turk, Jew, infidel, or heathen31 that sees, wonders at, and worships the sun, moon, and stars and that never heard the name of the great Jehovah could counterfeit and religiously gloss over so many heinous and detestable crimes, without fear of a sudden and mighty judgement? Sure, she thought to hoodwink Divine Providence. The Devil himself, that old sophister,32 might be cheated by her, but that33 he is so well acquainted with her; without doubt he would have trembled to have invoked those direful judgements which she wished might befall her, upon clearing some doubts, if such things were not true, which are as false as God is true. And amongst all her protestations I will name only one, which was the only thing we desired to know the truth of, that was this, upon the attestation of one or two strangers to us, who upon the first sight knew her, she having lodged at their houses, they related of her several husbands she had living. We pressed her 29. 30. The Medusa of Greek myth had hair of serpents and a face so terrible that onlookers were turned to stone. According to legend, she was beheaded by Perseus, her countenance eventually borne on a shield carried by Athena. 31. John’s litany of non-Christian infidels includes both those (“the Turks”) that the English fought during the crusades and those (“the Jews”) that had only been allowed in England since 1659, having been outlawed since 1290 when Edward I issued his Edict of Expulsion. 32. “In ancient Greece, one specially engaged in the pursuit or communication of knowledge; esp. one who undertook to give instruction in intellectual and ethical matters in return for payment; in the latter sense contrasted with philosopher, and freq. used as a term of disparagement.” 33. “But that prep. introducing a consideration or reason to the contrary: Except for the fact that, were it not that.”

52 JOHN CARLETON to speak the truth, and in the presence of several persons upon her knees, she wished for a sudden judgement to befall her and that she might eternally hang in Hell (for so were her words) if ever she was contracted, married to, or knew any man besides myself. Oh, miserable creature! I hear so many things daily of her truth, enough that I think she hath the best part of a score34 and she hath cheated the best part of a hundred persons of good worth and others; I dare not say35 what, lest I run into extremes. It is enough, I now find her honour, dishonour, her protestations, pretences, her faithfulness, fickleness; and, though her policy did undermine me, her practices will overthrow herself. Who would have imagined that deceit, the Devil’s great bait, should have lodged here, or that so noble a mind (though she hath basely acted) should descend of such an ignoble race, or that so great and discerning a capacity should proceed of so base and undeserving progeny? Base indeed, for her father-in-law (her grand agent and factor)36 did in the presence of a person of quality and another gentleman, and myself, upon our entering into discourse of the news of London when we left it and of the great cheat, and so proceeding in the story of it, he fell into such great rage and said, it was no news to him, for he was in town all along and was with her in the prison that day she was committed and declared her name and that she was his daughterin-law, for it will be known, said he.37 That unworthy low-spirited,38 though hot sottish-headed39 fellow deserves a further strict examination. I need not relate where he lives nor what he is, former prints speak truth in that.40 But to return to her, the world still finds in her the same wit, and they will shortly find less honesty than any did imagine. Would she had less wit, and I better fortune; but though my 41 affections have stung myself and fortunes, they shall kill neither. Had she been but honest, I should have taken her discourses of nobility and wealth but as a neat romance to gloss over the want of a happy being, which my relations and myself did really inform her, she should have, could she vindicate and prove her honesty. Would her high-pretended honour had been 34. “The sum recorded to a customer’s debit in a ‘score’ (sense 10); the amount of an innkeeper’s bill or reckoning. Also, †a debt due to a tradesman for goods obtained on credit (obs.).” 35. 36. Mary’s father-in-law by her purported marriage to Thomas Steadman, Richard Ford. See also Historical, 63n25, Case, 124, and Ultimum, 172n45. 37. Mary refers to this passage in Historical, 63 and 186. 38. “Mean in spirit; abject, base, cowardly, paltry.” 39. “Foolish, doltish, stupid: a. Of persons, or their faculties.” 40. John’s description of Steadman senior as “unworthy,” “hot,” and “sottish-headed” perhaps underscores some of the credibility issues that the Carleton family may have faced in bringing forward Mary’s purported in-laws as witnesses. The reference to “former prints” here reminds us how newsworthy this case really was. 41.

The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions 53 but real-intended honestly. I am not alone in the cheats of marriage (for I believe scarce one in twenty proves true and answers all expectations) though perhaps not in so high a nature. There are many precedents higher than this, nay more than I mean to recollect: Menalaus42 after his ten-year’s war won but a strumpet. There is nothing new under the sun43 though new to them that suffer it. I can now shake hands with my old grand-sire Adam,44 and say with him, “The woman beguiled me, and I did, etc.”45 I could pity her rather than punish her, and yet the law must punish her because she did not pity herself, knowing how narrowly she hath escaped the execution of judgement after her former trial. The fairest fly is soonest taken in the spider’s web.46 Indeed she weaved a fine one to catch me; it is well if she hangs not herself in it. I, trusting to her outward was betrayed by her inward treachery. But though she on me, she hath not overcome me; and the chiefest victory will be that I can overcome myself and prevent the dangerous consequences and sad effects that unhappy accidents and discontents might cause. My soul though it be angry, I can salve it; And indeed, as it argues much folly in any person to let the afflictions and censures of the world come so near one’s heart as to set out or inflame one’s blood, so it is a great part of wisdom in my estimation to suffer admittance so near as to raise one’s spirits to understand an affliction by a serious consideration and reflection. How mixed with mercies, and in the highest way we mortals can retaliate (if I may so speak) to return and express a holy gratitude to Divine protection: for we must so bear our afflictions that as our grief may not utterly deject us, so we must have the sense to feel and apprehend it. All the actions of a man’s life, are mixed with bitter ingredients, like chequer-work,47 black and white. There is no armour against our fates, and they are as uncertain as inevitable. I am contented with mine, and I hope, now the bitter part of my fortune is past, I may once taste 42. Helen’s husband and the king of Mycenaean Sparta; her abduction by Paris led to the Trojan War. Note the two versions of this tale: in the one John uses here, a wily Helen seduces Paris; in the other, she is an innocent victim. 43. “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). 44. According to the Bible, the first human that God created. Adam’s wife, Eve, succumbed to temptation by eating the forbidden fruit; as a result, the two were cast out of the Garden of Eden. 45. Genesis 2:12 and 13. John has muddled his biblical citations here, blending Eve’s avowal of guilt with that of her husband: “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” The confusion is particularly germane given the mutual recriminations that occur throughout this debate. 46. John may be referring here to the proverb that laws, like the spider’s web, catch the fly (Tilley, ed., A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, L116). 47. “Work arranged after the pattern of a chessboard; work chequered in pattern.”

54 JOHN CARLETON the sweet; if not, I shall be contented, knowing from whose hand it comes. I am satisfied that as I have done nothing dishonestly, so I care for no reports. Cic. Qui injuriam faciunt infæliciores sunt quam qui patiuntur.48 It is better to be passive than active in an injury. But I have exceeded my intention, and unless I mean to make a chronicle of the whole must stop all further expression. And here I would end, but upon second thoughts, in point of reputation, I find myself engaged highly to take greater notice of abuses done to others [of] my acquaintance than to myself; and now I must be angry, for it concerns me to be so, and it should quickly be seen that the fancy pen of that audacious and injurious libeler should soon be cut by several persons, were it but known where that corrupted and diseased soul hath its being, which shall not want for a strict enquiry. I wonder how he durst presume to insert in his libel termed The Ladies Vindication49 the name of that virtuous and noble lady,50 which I will not here denominate. The salt-water,51 grave52 cox-comb53 hath published it too much already; or that his confidence should permit him to discover anything of her actions in Hyde Park,54 which though there may be some little thing of truth, yet it is falsely set out. And indeed, I am much troubled that 48. Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputations, ed. and trans. J. E. King, rev. G. P. Goold, no. 18 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945), 5.19: “Accipere quam facere praestat injuriam.” See also Pseudo Bede, “Infeliciores sunt qui faciunt, quam qui patiuntur iniuriam” (Commentary on Proverbs, in Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, ed. and trans. J. E. King, rev. G. P. Goold, no. 246 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988]); and Boethius, “Infeliciores sunt qui faciunt, quam qui patitur iniuriam” (Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, rev. G. P. Goold, no. 74 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973]). 49. Vindication of a Distressed Lady in Answer to a Pernitious, Scandalous Libelous Pamphlet; Intituled, the Lawyers Clarke Trappan’d by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury (London, 1663). 50. This sentence is a bit unclear. Although he seems to refer to “that virtuous and noble lady” (possibly Lady Bludworth), John may also simply be defending the titular notion of a “lady” that appears in the pamphlet’s title from the aspersions that it suffers through comparison to a woman like Mary. For details on Bludworth, see Case, 119n173. 51. “Salt-water, adj., c. Applied to the sea. Hence, a jocular [or in this instance derogatory] form of address to a sailor.” 52. “Physically ponderous, heavy.” 53. “A fool, simpleton (obs.); now, a foolish, conceited, showy person, vain of his accomplishments, appearance, or dress; a fop.” 54. A large park in central London, Hyde once contained Kensington Gardens. For Restoration playwrights like William Wycherley and William Congreve it became the go-to site for romantic assignations and hidden trysts—a place to see and be seen, esp. on May Day (Jacob Larwood, The Story of London Parks [London, 1872], 2:88; and TLE, 400). See also Historical, 71n78, Case, 120n174, and Vercingetorixa, 235, line 425 and note 154.

The Replication; or, Certain Vindicatory Depositions 55 that deceitful woman, to whom I then thought myself related, knowing her own condition, should offer to play upon that worthy lady’s civility. And I cannot but take notice that this base detractor should be so impudent as to throw a dart against that deserving gentleman my friend that performed the sacred office of matrimony. I am not willing to insert any one’s name; you may understand me by description. Who prompt him to insert the report of a double marriage? And that politic lie of so great a gratuity as fifteen pounds; I will not satisfy his weak brain what it was, it is enough to let him know that my friend was satisfied, and I did so much as became a gentleman. Lastly, I will clear but one thing more as to her name, by which she was contracted and married to me, which was Henrietta Maria De Wallway,55 though she hath since learned so much confidence as to deny it or else someone for her; and here I make a full stop, wishing all the world better fortune. Si populum vult dicipi Decipiatur.56 FINIS.

55. John is calling into question Mary’s authorship of the text and perhaps mocking as well her selfnaming, as Charles I’s queen bears the same first name. 56. Cardinal Carlo Carafa, legate and nephew to Pope Paul IV (1555–1559), acquired a reputation for duplicity, avarice, and cruelty. He is said to have used the following expression in reference to devout Parisians: “If the people wish to be deceived, let them be deceived.”

Mary Carleton An Historical Narrative of the German Princess (1663) An Historical Narrative recalls the same chain of events that is recited in The Replication. In both works, Mary comes to London claiming to be a German-born woman of means. John learns of her arrival and maneuvers her into marriage before she is discovered by other fortune-seeking Englishmen. The two spend a few weeks of bliss waiting for her riches to arrive. When her funds do not appear, a letter is discovered announcing her bigamy, and she is thrown in prison. While Mary readily admits that she is not the wealthy heiress that John took her for (that was his imagining, not her speaking), she insists that she is not a bigamist, having never married before their wedding night. Vindicated, Mary reminds John of his obligations, and she asks him, in closing, to return to her as a true and honorable husband. An Historical Narrative appears to be written by a talented and eloquent woman in a time when few women had the luxury, incentive, or skill set necessary to carry out the task. John seems intent, given those odds, to impugn Mary’s abilities, casting aspersions on her authorship of this text and the next.1 John’s barb likely directs readers to a more traditionally learned—read male-educated— writer. He may question the classical learning he finds in the opening paragraphs of An Historical Narrative, where Mary references authorities like Epimenides, Chilo, and Anaxarchus.2 But the uncertain authorial claims that worry Historical Narrative cast shadows beyond its borders. We can never be certain of questions of ascription, regardless of content. While scholars pay careful attention to style, speech patterns, and other markers that might offer hints to authorship and identification, qualifiers can tell us only so much. Because source study proofs are invariably limited (and sit somewhat uncomfortably in an edition like this devoted to unstable truths), we may be better served to pose our questions not with an endpoint toward a single text or author but rather toward some general insights. Why, for instance, is it broadly useful for authors to claim female identity in making an argument? How much different might it be for Mary to raise a claim to a particular voice than for John to do so? How do strictures of obedience in marriage and more general presumptions of early modern culture admonishing chastity, silence, and virtue complicate the way that pamphlets bearing her name can employ different generic or formal styles (wit, irony, pathos)? On the other hand, how might those same rubrics amplify and exaggerate the power of 1. “For I can testify, and shortly may to some purpose produce the unmannerly, base, and beggarly detractor [who has written in her stead]” Ultimum, 169. 2. In The Case, Mary attests that she has been taught “Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English, and something of the oriental tongues” (111).

57

58 MARY CARLETON transgression to render more powerful the elements of humor and force that she controls? Very much from the point of view of the criminally accused and eventually acquitted Mary Carleton, this account also claims authorship from that voice. An Historical Narrative has been transcribed from an EEBO copy reproduced from the Harvard University Library.3

3. See Introduction, 42.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 59 An Historical NARRATIVE OF THE German Princess, CONTAINING All material PASSAGES, from her first arrival at Gravesend,4 the 30th of March last past, until she was discharged from her imprisonment, June the sixth instant.5 Wherein also is mentioned, Sundry private matters, between Mr. John Carleton and others and the said PRINCESS: Not yet published. Together with a brief and notable STORY, of Billing the bricklayer, one of her pretended husbands, coming to Newgate6 and demanding of the keeper her deliverance, on Monday the eighth instant. Written by herself for the satisfaction of the world, at the request of divers persons of honour7 London, printed for Charles Moulton,8 1663 4. Roughly thirty miles east of London and located on the south bank of the Thames, this town served in the seventeenth century as the main port for those traveling by sea to and from England. See also Historical, 66n50, Case, 111n124, and Ultimum, 157n36. 5. “Said of the current calendar month; now ellipt. as in the 10th instant, i.e., the tenth day of the current month. Abbreviated inst.” See also Case, 139n274, and Ultimum, 187n242. 6. A prison in London adjacent to the Old Bailey (the central criminal court of England). See also Case, 108n108, and Ultimum, 192n276. 7. While we cannot identify any specific patrons by name, Mary’s reference here suggests that hers was a cause célèbre that had already received the notice of London’s privileged class. 8. Bookseller who published two tracts on Carleton, this one and A True Account of the Trial of Mrs. Mary Carlton, at the Sessions in the Old Baily (London, 1663). See Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1641 to 1667 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1968), 133; and Donald Goddard Wing, comp., Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed

60 MARY CARLETON Most Noble, Generous, and Virtuous LADIES and GENTLEWOMEN, I am not ignorant what great advantage the frequent false reports of my actions and demeanours hath given to the dishonour of our sex. Let me tell you I had rather choose to be dissolved into atoms9 than justly to deserve to be the occasion of any such thing. I therefore adventured upon this collection, to evince to the world, the falsehood and insufficiency of the designs against me.10 There is no person of understanding, but may easily discern and conclude as much as I desire for vindication of myself from those things my enemies aspersed me with, or that have lately been upon the stage.11 He12 who was first contriver and promoter of the false suggestions against me, coming to visit me within one hour after the just sentence of NOT GUILTY, I in Other Countries, 1641–1700, 4 vols. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1972–1998), 4:634. Joad Raymond provides a useful shorthand for the various relationships between printers, booksellers, and undertakers (money-men) that we are apt to find on the title page of early modern books or pamphlets: “printed for [bookseller or undertaker]”; “printed by [printer] for [bookseller or undertaker]”; or “printed by [printer, and, probably, undertaker]”; and finally, in some instances, a coda: “and are to be sold by [the wholesale bookseller, if not the undertaker]” (Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 65–66). See also Marjorie Plant, The English Book Trade: An Economic History of the Making and Sale of Books, 2nd rev. ed. (Crows Nest, AU: George Allen & Unwin, 1965). 9. Mary references here a familiarity with atomist thought—the notion that all of nature consists of atoms and void. Contemporary English women who share this fascination include Lucy Hutchinson, who translated Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, Volume 1: Translation of Lucretius, ed. Reid Barbour and David Norbrook [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012]); Margaret Cavendish, whose early forays in natural philosophy would come out the following year with her more formal Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy two years later in 1666; and Aphra Behn, who wrote a commendatory poem to Thomas Creech for his verse translation of the same: “To the Unknown Daphnis on His Excellent Translation of Lucretius” (London, 1683). For men interested in atomistic and vitalist thinking, see also Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hariot. 10. Mary claims narrative rights to this piece, asserting sole authorship, despite John’s assertions to the contrary. For his claims, see his Ultimum, 169. 11. Likely a reference to Witty Combat, printed sometime after the scandal broke and ostensibly performed during Whitson week (beginning the seventh Sunday after Easter), 1663. See this edition. When Mary took to the stage, she either performed in a version of the play that was differently titled (The German Princess) and attributed (John Holden), or she acted in an entirely different play. Samuel Pepys records in his diary seeing her on stage on April 15, 1664: “with my wife by coach to the Duke’s house and there saw The German Princess acted—by the woman herself. But never was anything, so well done in earnest, worse performed in Jest upon the stages. And indeed, the whole play, abaiting the drollery of him that acts her husband, is very simple, unless here and there a witty sparkle or two” (Pepys, Diary, 5:124). See also The New and Complete Newgate Calendar: “The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600–1926,” ed. J. L. Raynor and G. T. Crook (London: Navarre Society Limited, 1926), 1:254 and 326; and Vander Motten, “Porter, Thomas,” ONDB. 12. Mary’s father-in-law, George Carleton.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 61 told him if the modesty of my sex would permit me, I would require the combat of him to appear in the field. I looked upon him but as a base detractor. I required his retiring from my presence. He obeyed. His looks represented his guilt. I could mention him, but it’s below me to take notice of him further than to know him for a villain. But it being the opinion of all philosophers and Divines, as well ancient as modern, that detraction is the chief branch of envy, which is nourished by lying, by which people of honest conversation are grievously wounded. ---Diogenes the Cynic,13 being asked what beast bit most deadly, answered, Amongst furious and wild beasts, none like the detractor ---- and amongst tame and gentle beasts, none like the soother and flatterer. ---- Themistocles the Thebane,14 upon the same occasion, said, There was no greater pain nor misery in the world than to behold the honour or credit of an honest or good man or woman to be in the mercy of a venomous tongue and to be tortured by detracting speeches. A Spanish author15 that I have seen, hath this saying, that all nations do observe it as a law that a dissolute life in men is not held to be such a vice as in women: that let a report pass of a woman, true or false, irreparably she lieth under infamy.16 Therefore I do imagine, that our ancestors were so prudent, that in the instituting of several orders of knights they had still in charge, that they should defend innocent ladies. And I never read of any knight that undertook a distressed lady’s quarrel, but he vanquished and overcame. [Take] that example of Valentinus Baruthius, a native of Toledo in Spain, in his history17 wherein he mentioneth a daughter of one of the kings of England that was married to the duke of Saxony and prince of Piedmont. She, not yielding to the immodest solicitation and request of Pancalier, whom the duke her husband had left as his lieutenant in his absence, whilest he was busied in the wars of France, the count imposed on her, the crime of adultery. For confirmation (wanting other proof) he required the combat of any that should gainsay his assertion; the which was accepted by a knight of the noble house of Mendoza, who slew him, notwithstanding many disadvantages of a late sickness or his long travel and [the] disproportion of his strength and stature, etc. 13. Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 404 BCE–323 BCE), a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynicism. See also Ultimum, 169. 14. An Athenian general and politician (ca. 514 BCE–449 BCE). Mary may have found this assertion in The History of the Peloponnesian War by the noted historian Thucydides. 15. Mary could be referring here to Lope de Vega’s La Discreta Enamorada (1604). 16. This is one of the many double entendres that occur throughout Mary’s writing. Here the maligned woman lies (resides) in infamy and lies (deceives) in infamy. Mary may also be alluding to the charge of bigamy here, in which case the maligned woman lies (has sexual intercourse with her current husband) in infamy. 17. Mary may be referring here to Matteo Bandello’s The Moste Notable Historie of John Lorde Mandosse Translated from the Spanish by T. de la Peend (London, 1565). While she has some details wrong, the story and Count Pancalier’s place in it do suggest a match.

62 MARY CARLETON Francis the first of that name, king of France, granted the combat to Castaigneray and the Lord Jarnac;18 Castaigneray having by words dishonoured a lady that was by blood allied to Jarnac. In the opinion of all persons, Castaigneray by reason of his often combats, strength, judgement in arms, and the use of weapons, would be too hard for the Lord Jarnac, yet the Lord Jarnac slew him; the which convinced all the spectators that the innocency of the lady influenced the sword of Jarnac. Many other stories of like nature I could instance, but I shall conclude with this: Sure there is none will a Woman deprave, Unless he be a Coward or a Knave. I do not mention these stories to reflect upon any of the English gallants, for not taking part in my cause. I at first apprehended I needed it not and now do much less need it; for that my enemies by their insufficient prosecution, made way for the world to conclude my innocency. But I may in some sort complain of my husband, who wore a sword by his side and yet could suffer me to be stripped of my necessary raiment.19 But instead of the civil defence,20 the least of kindnesses he might have afforded me, that had enjoyed all Hymen’s21 rites with me so lately before that tragic-part, he encountereth me with a volume of one sheet in quarto,22 wherein he hath these passages, that I by my parts23 deluded him. In answer to which, he deluded me by his pretences.

18. A celebrated duel between the Baron de Jarnac and the Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie of 1547. Mary may have gotten her information from either the talked-about-but-as-yet-unpublished memoirs of French historian, soldier, and biographer Pierre de Bourdeill, whose first edition appeared in 1665 (“Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de”), or the chronicler Marcus Vulson de la Colombière, whose Le vrai Théâtre d’honneur et de chevalerie, ou le miroir héroïque de la nobless was published in Paris in 1648 (ARMA: The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts, http://www.thearma.org/essays/ DOTC.htm [accessed June 27, 2013]). Both narratives recount the combat between the nobles Guy Chabot, Baron de Jarnac, and François de Vivonne, Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie, in defense of a woman’s honor. 19. “That with or in which a person is arrayed or attired; †ornament, adornment (obs.); clothing, dress, apparel.” 20. John refers to this passage in his tract. See Ultimum, 170n128. 21. An invocation of the Greek god of marriage. His name derives from an old marriage song: the cry hymēn ō hymenaie was supposedly sung as a mock lament for the loss of bride’s hymen on the wedding night. See also Case, 93n28, Ultimum, 170n129, and Witty Combat, 306n142. 22. Mary is referring to The Replication. 23. “A portion of a human or animal body” or “an aspect or constituent of a quality or action, considered apart from the whole; a point, a particular; a respect.” See also Replication, 50n22, Case, 115n149, and Ultimum, 166n103, for variations.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 63 Reader, thou shalt receive them from his own pen. In his epistle to the said work, he hath this passage: I shall not give myself the trouble, to recollect and declare the several motives and inducements that deceitful but wise enough woman used to deceive me with, etc. In page the 4th he saith, her wit did more and more engage me and charm me: her qualities deprived me of my own: her courteous behaviour, her majestic humility to all persons, her emphatical speeches, her kind and loving expressions; and amongst other things her high detestation of all manner of vice, as lying, etc. Her great pretence to zeal in her religion; her modest confidence and grace in all companies, fearing the knowledge of none; her demeanour was such, that she left no room for suspicion, not only in my opinion, but also in others both grave and wise.24 Some other things he insists upon, as his undertaking to tell the story of the management of the business betwixt us, in which he is so far from doing me justice therein, that he wrongeth me and his own soul by lying. For confutation of which, I refer the Reader to the ensuing discourse. Only there is one passage that I am unwilling to let slip, that is in page the 6th; he saith, that my father was in town upon my commitment, and did acknowledge me to be his daughter, and that I had played many such tricks.25 It’s strange this father of mine could not be produced at the trial,26 if that had been true; as strange it was, that the juryman himself (that was one of the jury upon the trial of Mary Moders) that they produced, who seemed to be a man of conscience and judgement, could not swear nor say that I was the Mary Moders alias Steadman. But I waive all, and make it my request to all ladies and gentlewomen, seriously to consider the whole ensuing discourse: the which, if done, I may rest confident, that there is none but will set a hand to the erecting my reputation to a higher pitch, than from whence my detracting enemies endeavoured to depress it. From my Lodging, Ladies and Gentlewomen, June 12, 1663. Yours in all Submissive Observance, Mary Carleton. •

24. Mary here intertwines her own summary with “borrowed” quotations from the Replication (47). See her later inclusion of this material in an abbreviated letter in Case, 124. 25. John asserts in the Replication that Mary’s “father-in-law” from her first marriage recognized her (52n37). 26. According to John (and, of course, this makes perfect sense), Mary denies Ford’s legitimacy. See his Ultimum, 172n45.

64 MARY CARLETON Epimenides,27 the philosopher being asked by the Rhodians,28 what that virtue called truth was, answered, Truth is that thing, whereof (more than all others) the gods do make profession,29 and the virtue that illuminateth the heaven and the earth, maintaineth justice, governeth, preserveth, and protecteth a state or kingdom, and cannot endure any wicked thing near it; also it maketh all doubtful and ambiguous matters clear and apparent. The Corinthians30 also demanded of Chilo31 the philosopher, what truth was? He said, it was a sure gauge and standard, to measure all things by it who neither diminisheth at one time, nor increaseth at another; it’s a buckler, a shield that can never be pierced, it’s an army never daunted, a flower that never faileth, [and] a haven that none shall perish in or suffer peril. The Lacedemonians,32 inquisitive after this rare virtue, importuned Anaxarchus33 to delineate truth to them; he drew its portraiture in these faire lines,

27. A Cretan philosopher and seer who lived in the sixth century BCE. Diogenes Laertius mentions three men named Epimenides: see Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I, ed. and trans. R. D. Hicks, no. 184 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 121. John refers broadly to this discussion in Ultimum, 169ff. 28. People of Rhodes, a Greek island in the south Aegean. 29. Mary may be using these philosophers to complicate and expand what counts as true. Epimenides, a Cretan himself, is known for making the paradoxical claim that all Cretans are liars. The philosopher ostensibly insists all that his countrymen prevaricate because they swear to have mortally entombed the god Zeus. Epimenides’s compromised status as a lying Cretan renders his assertion neither true nor false. Our evidence for reading the Epimenides paradox as a faith-based understanding of the truth in cases of heresy (Zeus cannot die because he is the One True God, therefore his body may both inhabit his grave and not) comes from a biblical scholar writing at the turn of the twentieth century: see articles by J. Rendel Harris in The Expositor: 7.2.4 (1906): 305–17; 7.3.4 (1907): 332–37; and 8.4.4 (1912): 348–53. In Titus 1.12, Paul appropriates Cretica’s verse, and Aratus further revises its last line in his Phaenomena (in Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams: Lycophron: Aratus, ed. and trans. A. W. Mair and G. R. Mair, no. 129 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921], lines 1–5). 30. People of Corinth, a Greek city-state, known from St. Paul’s biblical letters and from its eventual status as a provincial capital. 31. One of the seven sages of Greece (sixth century BCE). 32. People of Lacedaemonia, more commonly known as Laconia, a region in Greece whose capital is Sparta. 33. A fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher and companion to Alexander the Great. Closely attracted to both Democritean atomism and the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Anaxarchus attacked the validity of truth claims by likening real-life objects to scene paintings and arguing that both were equivalent to the experiences of madmen and dreamers (Sextus Empiricus, Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians, ed. and trans. R. G. Bury, no. 291 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935], 1.88).

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 65 viz.34 Truth is a perpetual health and welfare, a life without ending, an unguent35 that healeth all misfortunes, a sun always shining that never suffereth by eclipse, a gate never shut, [and] a journey in which none can wax weary. It’s a virtue, without which all strength is feebleness and infirmness itself; wisdom, [both] folly and madness; without it, patience is but a counterfeit, and liberty but a prison.36 Augustus Caesar,37 in the triumphs38 that he made for Mark Anthony,39 and Cleopatra,40 brought with him to Rome a priest of Egypt, aged 60 years, that was famous for not telling a lie in his whole life;41 the senate ordered his statue to be erected and himself to be high priest. In the time of the Emperor Claudius,42 there died at Rome one Pamphilus,43 that was upon good ground suspected never to have told truth all the days of his life; he, by the emperor’s order, was denied burial,44 his house to be razed, 34. Latin: “videlicit, that is to say; namely; to wit: used to introduce an amplification, or a more precise or explicit explanation, of a previous statement or word.” See also Case, 113, and Arraignment, 317. 35. “An ointment or salve.” 36. A nineteenth-century American self-help book contains almost identical references in the same order, suggesting that Mary’s citations come from one source (either that or Northrup is citing her). See Henry Davenport Northrup, “The Cardinal Virtues,” in Character Building: Or Principles, Precepts, and Practices Which Make Life a Success (Philadelphia, PA, 1896), 226–28. 37. First emperor of Rome (63 BCE–14 AD). 38. S.v. “ ‘triumph.’ [T]he procession of a Roman general who had won a major victory to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The word came to the Romans from Greek (thriambos) via Etruscan and appears in Etruscan form (triumpe) in the Carmen arvale” (OCD). Augustus Caesar (Octavian) made triumphal marches against both Mark Antony and Cleopatra; see Cassius Dio, Roman History: Books 12–35, vol. 2, no. 37, ed. and trans. Earnest Cary, ed. Herbert B. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 19.1 and 6 and 21.6–9. 39. Roman politician and general (83 BCE–30 BCE). Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus comprised the Second Triumvirate and ruled Rome; the triumvirate eventually dissolved, however; and, after Augustus defeated Antony, he and his lover Cleopatra committed suicide. 40. Last pharaoh of ancient Egypt (69 BCE–30 BCE); Cleopatra chose suicide once she realized Octavian would grant her no reprieve; her lover, Mark Antony, had already taken his own life (note that Shakespeare takes some liberties here). 41. Anecdotal; the priest is nameless. 42. Roman emperor (10 BCE–54 AD) from 41 to 54. 43. Anecdotal account by the perhaps similarly spurious historian Spartianus of a habitual liar who was thrown to the dogs for his continual dishonesty (Franz Hunolt, The Bad Christian, or Sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins, New York, 1887). 44. In Rome, those who were denied burial were left exposed to the mercy of wild animals; in addition, presumably, to the outright liar mentioned here, they included suicides, prostitutes, criminals, actors, undertakers, and contract gladiators. Such actions offered evidence to survivors of a total severing of ties with the marked dead and to the souls of those abused corpses that they would never find rest (F. P. Retief, “Burial Customs and the Pollution of Death in Ancient Rome: Procedures and Paradoxes,” Acta Theologica Supplementum 7.26.2 [2006]: 137).

66 MARY CARLETON his goods confiscated, in detestation of so venomous a beast, who was so suspected, that when by accident he did speak truth, the hearers suspected their own knowledge. I am not to insist upon this theme; but truth is an amiable and delightful thing; it hath been no less my deliverer, than it was my sanctuary. Its precepts will I observe in this ensuing discourse, that as to matter of fact I will have due regard, that time nor envy shall have no advantage against me, to detect me in any particular or material circumstance. My ambition never tempted me to write a history of my life, but my necessity hath constrained me to give you a history of part of my life; that is to say, from the first time of my first45 coming into England; for that the world yet never had an exact account of what passed between me and Mr. John Carleton, now my husband, by the law of England, unto which we are both subjects.46 I, having been at Cologne,47 the place of my nativity, from thence for dispatch of some affairs of mine I went to Utrecht,48 from thence to the Brill,49 where I took shipping in a small vessel bound for England and landed at Gravesend50 the 30th of March last past in the evening, and came in the tilt-boat51 from thence to London, betimes the next morning: In the company that were passengers, there was one a parson, for so his habit did bespeak him, who offered me the civility of a glass of wine; but, it being so early, we passed several taverns, and could not procure admittance, from Billingsgate,52 until we came to the Exchange Tavern53 45. 46. Mary’s insistence upon the binding nature of their union under English law seems to reflect her fascination with oaths and contracts. 47. An important German town located along the Rhine River. See also Case, 97n41, Ultimum, 164n92, Vercingetorixa, 221, line 45 and note 60, and Arraignment, 328n64. 48. Dutch religious center. 49. Fortified seaport in Holland; in English possession from 1587 to 1617. 50. The trip from Gravesend to London was served by tiltboats and tide-coaches. Both were cumbersome and slow moving, but tiltboats were safer as they escaped the predations of highwaymen. 51. “A large rowing boat having a tilt or awning, formerly used on the Thames, esp. as a passenger boat between London and Gravesend.” Tide- or stagecoaches timed land departures to the tides. 52. District in southeast London abutting the Thames originally known for the quayside gate where the inland fish market was located. Raphael Holingshed notoriously made the term a byword for foul language, lamenting in his recitation of the anonymous King Leir that the messenger had “as bad a tongue . . . as [hath] any oyster-wife at Billingsgate” (The Chronicle History of King Leir: The Original of Shakespeare’s King Lear, ed. Sir Sidney Lee [New York: Duffield & Company, 1909], 3.5.76–77). 53. Against the stocks, between Poultry and Cornhill (and literally within the quadrangle of the Royal Exchange) the tavern and inn was destroyed by fire on January 10, 1838 (Burn, A Descriptive Catalogue of the London Traders, Tavern, and Coffee-House Tokens Current in the Seventeenth Century, 194). See also Case, 111n125, and Ultimum, 158n46.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 67 against the stocks, kept by one Mr. King. The door being open, and Mr. King in the bar counting of brass farthings,54 the parson asked him, if we might have a pint of wine; Mr. King replied that we might. A pint of Rhenish wine,55 and a pint of sack56 was called57 for; and during the drinking of it, the parson offering to kiss me, I refused. Mr. King, perceiving that I did not much like the parson’s company, came in, and entertained me in discourse, [and] asked me, if I was a stranger. I told him, Yes, I came from Cologne in Germany; and Mr. King said, since it was so early, that I could not go with conveniency to seek a lodging, if I pleased to repose myself for a time, his house was free; that although it was a public house, yet he had not overmuch to do in it;58 I might be assured, it was a civil house, and that he had a kindness and a pity for strangers. And moreover [he] added, to his courteous discourse, his care of me, saying that if I had a charge,59 I should have a care, for the town was full of wickedness, and that I might have some trick put upon me. I thanked him and told him that I had a charge, that I was so much a stranger, that I had nowhere to go unto that I knew of at present; but wherever I went, I had wherewith to defray my charges. Mr. King said, His house should be at my service. I answered him that I looked upon him as a civil person. I took my leave of the parson, and upon Mr. King’s invitation, went to my chamber, [that] parcel of his house that he had allotted me for my apartment. Returning Mr. King many thanks for his civility, I took my leave of him also. He told me that his wife should wait upon me when I rose. Let the world judge if it be probable that I could design anything to ensnare Mr. Carleton, when at my accidental60 coming into that house, nothing could be more remote from my thoughts or apprehension than he was or than that which happened afterwards. By what I shall further say, I doubt not but to undeceive the world, and demonstrate, that they designed against me. And whether I have that estate they dreamt of, it is not material; I am not much to be blamed, if I have it, and conceal it, since they have pursued me in that envious sort, of which the world is witness.

54. Equal to a quarter of an old penny, a very little amount of coin. 55. A sweet white wine from the Rhine valley in Germany. Mary may insert this detail to develop or enhance the persona of the German princess she created for herself. See also Case, 111n128. 56. An English white wine fortified with brandy (i.e., sherry). 57. 58. King’s reassurance is a bit enigmatic here. He may be alluding to his own gentility (i.e., he needn’t maintain the house as a public inn, but he chooses to do so anyway). 59. “Pecuniary burden, expense, cost.” 60. The issue of “accident” or “accidental” here is an interesting one that changes markedly over this period, as early moderns begin to test the boundaries between providential and circumstantial forms of evidence. Note, too, the frequent use of the term “probable.”

68 MARY CARLETON Well, when I rose about 11 of the clock, Mistress King, the mistress of the house, attended me. I was furnished with all respect with what I asked for, or what was necessary. After which, I applied myself to writing of my letters, sent them away by the post beyond the seas, wherein I gave instructions, for the managing of those affairs that concerned me. Wednesday the first of April, Mrs. King made a great feast, where were divers persons of quality, as she said, amongst the rest, her brother Mr. John Carleton. At this entertainment, Mrs. King did advise me to call her cousin,61 the which I did. Thursday the 2nd of April, Mr. John Carleton came in his coach, with two footmen attending of him, calling him My Lord, and Mrs. King did also call him My Lord. With that I asked Mrs. King, if it was not the same person that dined with us yesterday. She said, true, it was so, but he was in a disguise then, and with all, that in a humour he would often do so. But, saith she, I do assure you he is a lord. Upon that I replied, then his father must be an earl, if living. She affirmed, that he was a person of great honour. The same time my lord presented me with a rich box of sweetmeats.62 I could do no less than thankfully accept thereof. My Lord came every day afterwards to Mr. King’s, and by his importunity would carry me abroad in a coach to Holloway and Islington.63 Mrs. King would often ask me, what my lord did say to me. I told her, nothing that I observed, but his lordship abounded in civility mixed with compliments. How, said she, Madam, he loves you. Loves me, for what, Mistress King? I replied. She said, For your great parts64 and endowments. I asked her, How My Lord could tell that I had either. She said, My Lord could see within me. I answered that My Lord must have very good eyes, if he could see within me, or else I must be very transparent. After which, I did order the matter so, that his access to me was not so easy. Mistress King importuneth me to admit My Lord to visit me. I told her plainly, That I did not understand his Lordship’s meaning. He provided me a great banquet at which his lordship’s mother was very fine dressed, who questioned what I was. I told My Lord that I had received civilities from him, and he had the like from me, and that I had no necessity to give any account to any person what I was, for anything that I intended; and that if any design or affair of his required any such thing out of conveniency or otherwise, he might forbear it. His lordship excused his mother’s inquisitions, by saying, she was his mother, and that parents did think themselves concerned, in looking after the good of their children. But (said he), 61. The original spelling that Mary uses here, “cozen,” is interesting. While calling someone “cousin” implied close familiarity and identifying another as “kinsman or kinswoman, a relative,” the term “cozen” is also defined by the OED as a verb meaning “to cheat, defraud by deceit.” 62. Sweetmeats are a type of confection made from candied or honeyed fruits. 63. Outside. Holloway is a district within the London borough of Islington. 64. “A portion of a human or animal body” or “an aspect or constituent of a quality or action, considered apart from the whole; a point, a particular; a respect.” See also Case (115n149). John refers to this quote in both of his tracts (Replication, 50n22, and Ultimum, 166n103).

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 69 Madam, waive all this, however I will marry you tomorrow. What (said I), My Lord, without my consent? My Lord, I desire your Lordship not to come near me anymore, I will not lie under such questioning and scrutiny: your lordship will be safe in following my advice in not coming at me anymore.65 Upon this his lordship wept bitterly. I withdrew myself from his presence. He writ a letter of high compliments to me (the which letter perished in the storming and taking of my outworks,66 by the forces of Mr. George Carleton, my husband’s father). At the same time, I had a gown making upon my own account by Mrs. King’s tailor in the Strand.67 I took a coach and went thither. All this while the young lord, not knowing where I was, remained impatient until my return, where I found him standing at the bar (not the bar his lordship was afterwards pleased to be one of the instruments to make me stand at)68 at the Exchange Tavern. Suddenly [he] clasped [me] about my middle and violently carried me to my chamber. I asked his meaning. He answered that I had forbid him my presence, that it had almost made him mad, that he desired nothing more of me than but to let him look upon me. Upon that he did, with a very strange gesture, fix his eyes upon me. In compassion to him, I asked him what his lordship meant and intended. He replied in a kind of discomposed manner, I would have you to be my wife. I answered him, My Lord, I rather think you have courted me for a mistress than for a wife: I assure you, that I will never be a mistress to the greatest of princes, I will rather choose to be a wife to the meanest of men. Upon which, he uttered divers asseverations in confirmation of the reality of his intentions, and earnest desire of the honour in making me his wife, without any respect to what I had. The next day being Saturday Easter Eve, the tailor brought me my gown to my lodging. I being dressed and adorned with my jewels, he again renewed his suit to me, with all importunity imaginable; and, a little before that time, having 65. . One of the most ironic double entendres in Mary’s writing: “as a gentlewoman Mary will not allow herself to be subjected to Lady Carleton’s boorish interrogation, interrogation that calls into question her virtue and integrity: “[she] will not lie under such questioning and scrutiny.” That said, readers must simultaneously embrace the obviously equivocal nature of Mary’s reply. Refusing to “lie” when she is questioned by offering up specific evidence of her noble birth and breeding that is probably untruthful, she also provides his “lordship” with an explicit warning. He would do well to keep his distance; he will be the safer for it, both financially and rhetorically” (Matchinske, Women Writing History in Early Modern England, 116). 66. “Any part of the fortifications of a place lying outside the parapet; any detached or advanced work forming part of the defence of a place; an outer defence. Also (and earliest) in extended use.” See also Ultimum, 173n154. 67. A major thoroughfare in central London, running from Temple Bar gate to the door of Westminster Abbey. According to John Taylor (the “Water Poet”) it might carry as many as 560 fares a day in Hackney coach business (The World Runnes on Wheeles; or, Oddes Betwixt Carts and Coaches [London, 1623], Br). 68. Mary is here punning on the “bar” as both the railing that divides those on trial from those in attendance and a tavern counter where food and liquor are served.

70 MARY CARLETON intercepted my letters, and understanding how my estate did lie, he and all his friends renewed their suit to me, to give my consent to marry the young lord. His courteous mother is now most forward, pressing me to consent, by telling me, that she should lose her son and he his wits, he being already impatient with denials and delays, adding withal, that he was a person hopeful, and might deserve my condescension. I withstood all their solicitation, although they continued it until 12 of the clock that night. The young lord, at his taking his leave of me, told me he would attend me betimes the next morning, and carry me to St. Paul’s church,69 to hear the organs, saying, that there would be very excellent anthems performed by rare voices, during which time, young Captain Sackville70 whom they had made privy to their undertaking, out of some discontent, threatened to discover the whole business. But he was promised 200£ to be silent and plied closely with sack, [so] that he was dead drunk that night. The morrow being Saturday, the 19th of April last, in the morning betimes, the young lord cometh to my chamber door, desiring admittance, which I refused, in regard I was not ready. Yet so soon as my head was dressed,71 I let him have access. He hastened me, and told me his coach was at the door; he carrieth me to his mother’s in the Greyfriars, London,72 where I was assaulted by the young lord’s tears and others to give my consent to marry him, telling me that they had a parson and a licence ready. So I, being amazedly importuned thereunto, did then and not before, give an amazed consent. To the church of Great St. Bartholomew’s73 we are carried, married by one Mr. Smith, from thence we travelled to Barnet,74 that it might not be known at court, that he had married a foreign princess. He lieth75 with me Sunday and Monday night, we 69. The principal church in London and the seat of the Anglican bishop. Sitting atop Ludgate Hill, the church that Mary describes here was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and rebuilt by Christopher Wren. Wenceslaus Hollar’s 1666 map of London (Figure 1) illustrates the damage caused by the fire. The area burned has been indicated in a lighter tone. See his “A map or groundplott of the citty of London,” London, 1666. 70. It is worth noting that Mary opted not to call on Sackville to speak at her trial, as he would appear to have been an ideal witness for her as to her in-laws’ various deceptions. See also Case, 113n139. 71. “To comb, brush, and do up (the hair).” See also Case, 118n162. 72. Greyfriars, London, was a Franciscan monastery that became the Anglican Christ Church. Located in what was the Parish of St. Nicholas of the Shambles (The Great Fire damaged much of the church— at the corner of what is now Newgate and King Edward Street (C. L. Kingsford, “History of Greyfriars: The site and buildings,” Grey Friars of London [1915]: 27–52). 73. The Priory Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great is an Anglican church in West Smithfield, London (Case, 118n166, and Arraignment, 318n18). 74. A small market town northwest of London, now incorporated into the city proper. 75. Another example of the use of double entendre with the concept of lying. Here John Carleton “lieth” (has sexual intercourse) with her and “lieth” (deceives her) by having sexual intercourse with her under the pretence that they are husband and wife; according to Mary’s account, they did not in fact obtain a legal marriage license for their first “marriage” at Greyfriars.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 71 return to St. Bartholomew’s again, and were there married again the second time with a licence (they having before falsely pretended a licence) that there might be no defect or flaw in the marriage. On Friday following, being the 24th of April, lodgings are taken for my lord and myself in Durham Yard,76 and much state and grandeur is used for the credit of his lordship. The next Friday following, being May Day,77 his lordship with great state carrieth me into Hyde Park,78 where I was accommodated by the courteous respect of divers persons of quality, with great rarities. My husband, by this time, publicly owned the title of lord, by the which title privately, he carried on his design upon me. He being one day in company with some of his old acquaintance, they hearing him boast of the fortune he had matched, they told him, that they might possibly commit an error, in calling him Mr. Carleton, that they should readily give him his due, by what title soever was proper to him, and that they knew not better how to be instructed than from himself, who they thought would be least guilty of flattery in that case. Why truly, said he, My Princess calleth me Lord. Upon that, he took upon him the acceptation of the title, publicly as well as privately. The first time he came to me, he pretended to be a lord, the which title he could not well maintain, as the case stood, unless he made me a princess. Now let but the world judge how devilishly I had been cheated, if I had been a princess; I had no reason to undeceive them in their wilful mistakes, when I saw by their practices, how much I was deceived, and disappointed. For now by this time, Mrs. King calleth me sister, and I come to understand that his lordship was a young clerk. His father, finding that his lordship’s concealed honour had taken air, addresseth himself to me, lest I might take dislike thereat, in finding myself so palpably deceived: and by all means I must make over my estate unto my husband, saying unto me, Daughter, you will do well to settle your estate upon my son; it will satisfy the world and redound to your honour. I told him I saw myself deceived, and that although I could not keep my affections from him, I would keep my estate until that I did die.79 I cannot but make a stop here, when I remember 76. A bordered outdoor area in London between the Thames and the Strand, known at one time for its elegance, by 1660 it had suffered the effects of war and misuse (Weinreb, ed., TLE, 244). See also Case, 120n179, and Vercingetorixa, 248, line 808 and note 236, and Witty Combat, 309n148. 77. Celebrated on the first of May to give thanks for the return of spring, May Day was a day of festivities celebrated throughout much of northern Europe (esp. Great Britain and Ireland). Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans banned May Day celebrations, but the festivities were reintroduced with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. 78. A large park in central London. It became the go-to site for romantic assignations and hidden trysts—a place to see and be seen, esp. on May Day (Larwood, The Story of London Parks, 2:88; and TLE, 400). See also Replication, 54n54, Case, 120n174, and Vercingetorixa, 235, line 425 and note 154. 79. This version, apportioning prior cause directly (I won’t give over my estate because my in-laws have duped me—“I saw myself deceived”) appears in this instant to be better informed than The Case. For

72 MARY CARLETON how violently they lately did prosecute me, without all peradventure this saying of mine animated them to seek my life so vigorously. This was the cause of my first breach with them, and the cause of my troubles that did immediately ensue. In one or two days, the scene alters, and a letter from Dover80 is contrived, to be a discovery of me; For an account of which, I refer you to my speech in my trial, for vindication of myself in that particular.81 My husband’s father cometh to my lodging in Durham Yard, with Mrs.82 Clark, and my husband and others; called me cheat and harlot, violently stripped me of all my apparel and jewels, pulled off my silk stockings from my legs, cut the lace of my bodice, and scarce left me anything to cover my nakedness with. [They] hurried me before a justice where the father and the son are bound to prosecute me for having of two husbands. They press me to confess the truth.83 I did insist upon no other justification than my innocency, the which at last was my security and refuge, against their malicious and unnatural dealing with me. But I can do no less than say, that my husband did nothing but with reluctancy, and was pressed thereunto by his friends. Notwithstanding all which, I was committed prisoner to the Gatehouse, Westminster,84 without one penny of money, or any manner of relief; but my husband came thither to visit me, and charged the keeper I should want nothing [and that] so far as 40£ went, he would see paid;85 and afterward on the 11th of May, sent me this letter, the copy of which I here insert verbatim, the which I have now by me, and shall keep it as a relic.86

more, see Introduction, 10ff. 80. A major port city in southeast England that faces France across the English Channel. 81. A reference to The Arraignment, 325ff. It suggests a concerted effort on the part of a community of writers, booksellers, and printers (howsoever small) to create a modulated response to the trial over time. 82. 83. Note the change in tenses in this portion of Mary’s account. Truth has yet to be confessed; everything else has already occurred. 84. A prison with two wings at right angles to one another. On the west side of Tothill Street there was a staircase for “the bringing in and carrying out of robbers, felons and trespassers” (TLE, 305). See also Case, 122n197, Ultimum, 172n140, and Vercingetorixa, 320, line 2 and note 44. The Case notes John’s willingness to pay 40 shillings for Mary’s care (125n205). 85. Jailers were permitted to charge prisoners for everything from food to accommodations. Highstatus inmates might even pay for the luxury of a servant or two. 86. Mary frequently refers to John’s letters in quasi-religious terms, but they carry tremendous authority regardless of the claim, as they provide evidence of intent and motive. John finds her assertions so disturbing that he promises of the following letter that he “never wrote or caused to be written sent or caused to be sent, or knew of any such letter till I saw such a thing in her book” (Ultimum, 172). See also Case, 143.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 73 My Dearest Heart, Although the manner of your usage may very well call the sincerity of my affection and expressions to you in question; yet when I consider, that you are not ignorant of the compulsion of my father, and the animosity of my whole relations both against you and myself for your sake, I am very confident your goodness will pardon and pass by those things which at present I am no way able to help. And be you confident, that notwithstanding my friends’ aversion, there shall be nothing within the reach of my power shall be wanting, that may conduce both to your liberty, maintenance, and vindication. I shall very speedily be in a condition to furnish you with money, to supply you according to your desire. I hope Mr. Baley87 will be very civil to you. And let him be assured he shall in a most exact measure be satisfied; and have a requital for his obligation. My Dearest, always praying for our happy meeting, I rest, your most affectionate May the 11th. husband, 1663. John Carleton. At the same time, his brother George came and drank a health to my confusion,88 fell down dead drunk, and afterwards said, that I had poisoned him. Other of my husband’s friends came to visit me in the Gatehouse (of the many hundreds of others, I shall say nothing).89 One of them said, Madam, I am one of your husband’s friends and acquaintance; I had a desire to see you; because I have heard of your breeding. Alas, said I, I have left that in the city amongst my kindred, because they want90 it. Another in his discourse delivered as an aphorism that marriage and hanging went by destiny.91 I told him, I had received from the destinies, marriage, and he in probability might, hanging, to wave many others of the like nature. On the 3rd of June, 1663, I am by order brought to the sessions92 in the Old Bailey.93 The court being sat, a bill of indictment was drawn up against me by the name of Mary Moders, alias Steadman, for having two husbands now alive, viz. 87. This is probably a reference to the prison’s warden; he is identified as “Mr. Ed. Baley, deputy-keeper of the Gatehouse” (80). See also Arraignment, 327n61. 88. “Discomfiture, overthrow, ruin, destruction, perdition.” 89. Mary is referring here to the large crowds of people who paid a few pence apiece to see “The German Princess” during her incarceration. 90. Lack, are in want of. 91. “Marriage and Hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven” (Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy [Oxford, 1621], 3.2.2.5). 92. A continuous span of sittings of the judicial courts, held daily; in England, these terms occurred four times yearly. See also Case, 126n209, Ultimum, 197n309, Vercingetorixa, 229, line 264 and note 112, and Arraignment, 317. 93. The central criminal court in London. See also Case, 97, and Arraignment, 317.

74 MARY CARLETON Thomas Steadman and John Carleton. The grand jury found the bill, and was to the effect following: viz. That she the said Mary Moders late of London, spinster, otherwise Mary Steadman, the wife of Thomas Steadman, late of the city of Canterbury in the county of Kent,94 shoemaker, 12 May, in the sixth reign95 of his now majesty, at the parish of St. Mildred’s96 in the city of Canterbury,97 in the county aforesaid, did take to husband the aforesaid Thomas Steadman, and him the said Thomas Steadman then and there had to husband. And that she, the said Mary Moders, alias Steadman, 21 April, in the 15th year of his said majesty’s reign, at London, in the parish of Great St. Bartholomew’s, in the ward of Farringdon without,98 feloniously did take to husband one John Carleton and to him was married. The said Thomas Steadman, her former husband, then being alive, and in full life; against the form of the statute in that case provided; and against the peace of our said sovereign lord, the king, his crown and dignity, etc.99 Afterwards I was called to the bar; and appearing was commanded to hold up my hand, which accordingly I did; and my indictment was read to me as followeth: Clerk of the Peace: Mary Moders, alias Steadman, thou standest indicted in London by the name of Mary Moders, late of London, spinster, otherwise Mary Steadman, the wife of, etc. And here the indictment was read as above: How sayst thou? Art thou guilty of the felony whereof thou standest indicted or not guilty? Not guilty, my Lord. Clerk of the Peace: How wilt thou be tried? I said, by God and the Country.100 Clerk of the Peace: God send thee a good deliverance.

94. County in southeast England where the towns of Canterbury, Dover, and Gravesend are located. 95. Year of. Postdated from 1649. See also Case, 127n216. 96. Founded in the eighth century and standing in the shadow of Canterbury Castle, St. Mildred’s is the oldest church in Canterbury. It is likely that a Saxon church stood at this site even before the Normans arrived (1066). 97. Cathedral city in the southeast of England. 98. Named for Sir Nicholas Faringdon, lord mayor of London, by King Edward II, the ward housed the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and was known for its financial ties. The term “without” connotes its location outside the London Wall, see also Case, 127n218, and Arraignment, 318n19. 99. See Arraignment, 319n20. 100. “By god and country” is a standard legal response indicating that the prisoner will stand trial by jury rather than by ordeal.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 75 And afterwards I being set to the bar in order101 to my trial, I prayed time till the morrow for my trial, which was granted; and all persons concerned were ordered to attend at nine of the clock in the forenoon.102 I was sent to Newgate,103 and in the evening my husband came to the place I was lodged at, and desired admittance. After I was acquainted with it,104 I desired he should be admitted to my presence. Upon his entering the room, he said, How do you do, Madam? I thank you, My Lord. As well as ever I was in my life, never better. I pity you, Madam. I scorn your pity, My Lord, I have too large a soul. But, said he, I came to take my leave of you forever. You have not long to stay here. I am sorry for you.105 Why, (said I), My Lord, have you numbered my days?106 My propitious stars a better sort of influence than you imagine them to have. Well, said he, I shall pray for you, Madam. I said, My Lord, why? Are you righteous? The prayers of the wicked are not effectual. Upon that, he stepped backward to be gone. I stepped forwards to him, and said, Nay (My Lord) it is not amiss, Before we part, to take a kiss. Why, said he, will you kiss me? I told him, Yes: and did so. A person of honour desired him to stay and take a glass of sack. He said, No. I replied, I am sorry Your Lordship’s breeding is so poor, it will not give you leave to be civil. On Thursday, the 4th of June, at 9 of the clock in the morning, I was brought by my keeper to the bar, and silence being made, the jury was sworn, and the witnesses were called, viz. James Knott, Sarah Williams,107 Mr. George Carleton the elder. The court with great patience staid108 the prosecution above an hour and a half, in regard Mr. George Carleton alleged he was not ready with his witnesses. After which, the court proceeded and acquainted Mr. Carleton, that they were 101. To schedule the trial. 102. 9:00 AM. 103. Adjacent to the Old Bailey and home to the central criminal court of England. See also Case, 108n108, and Ultimum, 192n276. 104. His request for admittance. 105. John is referring to the fact that Mary’s execution is imminent. 106. Mary’s retort points out that John and his family were interested in the value she could add to their family. The Carletons took interest in her on account of the amount of money, jewels, and goods they believed they would acquire through the marriage of their son. Now, their interest lies in the number of days until her execution. 107. Kietzman explains that Sarah Williams was a neighbor of the Carleton family, brought to testify against Mary (The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman, 63). For the complete list of jurors, see Arraignment, 320. 108. The court halted the prosecution proceedings.

76 MARY CARLETON not bound to stay so long as they had already; but he was bound to be provided to prosecute. The indictment was read, which was to this effect: that I had at several times married several persons that were now living; that I had married in St. Mildred’s Parish in Canterbury some years last past, one Thomas Steadman, a shoemaker now living; and that in April last past I had feloniously married one John Carleton, against the statute in that case made and provided. James Knott was sworn, and said, that I was married in the place aforesaid, unto one Thomas Steadman, who is now alive, and would have come up, if he had had money to have born his charges, and that he [Knott] gave me in marriage, that I was born at Canterbury, and that my father-in-law, his name was Richard Ford.109 He being asked, if he knew my own father and mother; he said, No. And further said, that it was about a week or a fortnight before the act for marriages by justices of the peace was put in execution.110 The Lord Chief Justice asked Knott, what were the words used in the marriage? He answered that he was so young, that he could not remember that. William Clark sworn, said, that there was an indictment against me at Dover for marrying of one [Thomas] Day, after Steadman, and that I was prosecuted by Steadman, of which I was cleared. Mr. George Carleton the elder being sworn, gave in evidence, that he saw my husband [Steadman] at Dover. Being asked whether he knew him to be her husband, he answered, that he could not swear it. James Knott gave further evidence that I had two children by Steadman. Mr. George Carleton the elder being asked if he had anything further to say, acquainted the court that he had searched the register-book of the parish church of St. Mildred’s, Canterbury, but could not find any such marriage registered. And further said that the present parson of the parish did tell him that the clerk of the said place was often guilty of neglect in that kind. Mr. George Carleton the younger being sworn, said that I was married unto his brother, John Carleton, in April last in Great St. Bartholomew’s.

109. Like Mary’s supposed father, Ford was a fiddler, who kept an alehouse. Choristers, in contrast (what Moders was prior to the destruction of Canterbury’s organ in 1642 by the parliamentary army) were court trained, formally educated musicians. Regardless of which performer was actually the better player, socially speaking, Moders would have been more respected, despite his now itinerant standing. See also Replication, 52n36, Case, 122n197, and Ultimum, 172n145. 110. The statute that Knott is referring to is “An Act touching Marriages and the Registring thereof; and also touching Births and Burials” (C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 [London: Wyman and Sons, 1911], 2:715–18). It required a civil ceremony before a justice of the peace and was established as a means to clarify and regularize the then nebulous process of matrimony. Moving the matter of marriage fully into civil hands, even if only for a time, also dealt a lethal blow to the church’s power over all things domestic.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 77 Mr. Smith, the parson that married me there, gave in evidence, that he married Mr. John Carleton and myself, in April last, by the Book of Common-Prayer,111 and had a licence produced to him for his warrant; I, craving leave to speak, said, I acknowledged that I was married to Mr. Carleton, at the time, and in the manner as is before expressed; therefore they might save themselves the labour, and the honourable bench, the trouble, of further proof in that case. Mr. George Carleton the elder being asked if he had any other evidence to offer, answered that he had more witnesses to prove my being married to other persons. The bench replied that there could be nothing given in evidence that was not contained in the indictment. The court asked Knott, who were with him besides at the wedding he mentioned in his evidence. He said that there was Mr. Mann, the parson that married us, the sexton,112 my sister, and himself that gave me. Some of the jury desired the court to ask Knott, how old he was now. He answered that he was one or two and thirty years of age. Mr. Carleton being asked if he had any more witnesses, answered, No. I standing all this while at the bar, not once interrupting or disturbing the evidence of the other side, the court calling upon me to make my defence, I without any disturbed thought, or unquiet mind,113 did in a deliberate composed manner address myself to the bench in this sort: My Lord, in the first place, I do with all due respect and submission, humbly beseech Your Lordship and this Honourable Bench, not to impute anything that I shall say to confidence, but rather to the necessity that lieth upon me, to make my defence for my life. A thing that will sufficiently oblige any to make the best defence they can: but that doth not weigh so much with me, as that which is every whit as dear to me as my life.

111. Mary and John took their oaths from “The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony,” in The Book of Common Prayer (Church of England [(Cambridge, 1662)]). Taken out of circulation during the Interregnum and replaced by the simpler Directory for Public Worship (1644), it was restored and reinstituted as part of the Clarendon Code (Act of Uniformity, 1662) (Case, 131n236, and Arraignment, 323n44). 112. “An office responsible for a church and its property, and for tasks relating to its maintenance or management; (in early use) spec. = SACRIST n. 1; (in later use chiefly) an officer of a parish church whose responsibilities have traditionally included bell-ringing and grave-digging.” 113. We see the claim of a peaceful mind frequently voiced in early modern women’s descriptions of their public interactions. Often it seems meant to illustrate a spiritual composure that derives from a godly access to truth. See, for instance, Anna Trapnel’s self-possession in trying circumstances: “and thus they mocked and derided at me as I went to the sessions. But I never was in such a blessed selfdenying lamb-like frame of spirit in my life as then” (Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea; or, a Narrative of her Journey into Cornwall the Occasion of It, the Lord’s Encouragements to It, and Signal Presence with Her in It. . . . [London, 1654], 23). An excerpt of Trapnel’s Report and Plea appears in Her Own Life, ed. Graham, Hinds, Hobby, and Wilcox, 76.

78 MARY CARLETON My Lord, it is my reputation and my innocency, that encourageth me to speak before your lordship at this time, and it is that which produceth confidence in me, that as I am innocent of the thing urged upon me by them, the justice and reason of you before whom I stand, by the which I hope to be acquitted and rendered to the world what I am, not what my prosecutors would have the world to believe me to be. My Lord, I shall not trouble you with anything impertinent, nor wish anything that related to these affairs more than needs I must. When his son, my husband, came and addressed himself to me, pretending himself a person of honour, and upon first sight pressed me to marriage, I told him, Sir, said I, I am a stranger, have no acquaintance here, and desire you to desist your suit. I could not speak my mind, but he (having borrowed some threadbare compliments) replied, Madam, your seeming virtues, your amiable person, and noble deportment, render114 you so excellent, that were I in the least interested in you, I cannot doubt of happiness. And so, with many words to the like purpose, [he] courted me. I told him, and indeed could not but much wonder, that at so small a glance he could be so presumptuous with a stranger, to hint this to me; but all I could say, would not beat him off. Therefore, My Lord, I do humbly acquaint your Lordship, that old Mr. Carleton did rather115 design upon me; than I upon him, to say nothing of what passed before I was married to his son, of which there was enough to demonstrate that evidently, so soon as I was married to his son, he desired me to make over my estate to his son, to satisfy the world, that was somewhat amused, and in doubt of what it seems they had spread abroad for their own reputation: I answered him, Sir, I shall not disinvest myself of my estate, until I die.116 Mr. Carleton intercepted my letters, by that understood how my estate did lie, that he had that expectation of what I had is farther evident; for his son came to me, pretending to be a person of honour and great quality, and the better to accommodate himself in his application to me, he borrowed his brother George’s cloak. It is the same he hath on his back in court before your Lordship; and if any be deceived, I am. My Lord, if that they could but have insured that I had been the person as to estate, that they imagined me to be, your lordship should not have been troubled at this time, in these matters. If I understand them aright, they would have been contented to have practised concealment, in case I had had more than one husband instead of this defamation that I am loaded with, my lord. My crime is, that 114. Renders. 115. 116. The Carleton family appears to invoke the doctrine of coverture here, which allowed husbands to take control of their wives’ property (see also Introduction, 13, and Case, 91n22). After marrying John, Mary would have assumed the status of a “ ‘feme covert’ ” under common law and relinquished authority over her property (Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England, 3 and 24–25). Mary’s conviction that her estate will remain hers suggests that it might be secured through feetail, protecting its primary feofee from forfeiture or loss through marriage.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 79 I have not an estate, or at least such a one as they imagined it to be. Therefore, my Lord, I say, I am brought at this time to this place. And therefore, my Lord, were my jewels seized to defray the charge of their expensive courting of me. To colour what they have done, they fix the offences of some woman of Canterbury, a person that may be dead, or gone out of the land for aught I know, upon me. The place I know not, a place that I am a stranger unto; if that had not been so, they have had time enough since my first commitment to have produced more evidence than any that hath as yet been urged before your Lordship. My Lord, they brand me for marrying of a shoemaker and another sad piece of mortality, a bricklayer. My lord, my soul abhorreth such a thought, and never was accommodated with such condescension, to move in so low an orb. My Lord, by all that I can observe of the persons that appear against me, they may be divided into two sorts: the one of them come against me for want of wit; the other, for want of money. That Money hath been proffered to suborn117 some against me, I have witness to prove.118 My Lord, these people have been up and down the country, and finding none there that could justify anything of this matter, they get here an unknown fellow, unless in a prison, and from thence borrowed, you cannot but all judge to swear against me. My Lord, were there any such marriage as this fellow pretends, methinks there might be a certificate from the minister, or place. Certainly if married, it must be registered; but there is no registry of it, and so can be no certificate, no minister, nor clerk to be found. And if I should own a marriage, then you see that great witness cannot tell you, whether I was lawfully married or how? But it is enough for him (if such a paltry fellow may be believed) to say, I was married. I was never yet married to any but John Carleton, the late pretended lord. But these persons have sought always to take away my life, bringing persons to swear against me. My Lord, when old Mr. Carleton saw that he could not obtain his end of me, he threatened me with a justice and a prison; and the justice bound him over119 to prosecute me. He must make the best of it, and therefore it is no wonder that he repaired120 to such means and instruments to effect my ruin. My Lord, I desire that my witnesses may be called. Elizabeth Collier said, that she coming to the Gatehouse to see her husband, being a prisoner there for debt, one pretended that he came to see his wife there named Mary Moders. Upon that, she took upon her to personate the said person

117. To suborn is to bribe someone, especially a witness set to give testimony in court. 118. Evidence in support of a fact. 119. “To oblige (a person) to undertake to do, or abstain from, a particular act; spec. to make (someone) give a recognizance not to commit a breach of the peace, usu. for a specified period.” 120. “To go, proceed, set out, make one’s way. Also: to arrive. Freq. with from, to, (arch.) unto, etc.”

80 MARY CARLETON he asked for. He said, Aye, it is true, thou art that unhappy Woman that I married. The which person she never saw before in her life. Mr. Ed. Baley, deputy-keeper of the Gatehouse, saith that he hath heard 40 people, at the least, of Canterbury, ancient livers121 and inhabitants there say, that they never knew, nor did ever see me before they came to see me in the Gatehouse, upon the fame that was spread abroad of my being born at Canterbury, and having acted such a part at Canterbury. The Lord Chief Justice was pleased to ask me, where I was born? I answered, In Germany. He asked me, Where? I said, At Cologne. Mr. Clark was asked by the court whether he could prove, or swear, that I was the Mary Moders that was tried at Dover? He answered that he could not, neither prove it, nor swear it himself, for he was a stranger to the whole business. I, perceiving the slight evidence, and that I needed not either to say more, or offer more evidence in my behalf, submitted my cause to the bench and jury. Upon my being asked by the bench if I had more to say, I replied, No. The court gave instructions to the jury as followeth: First, the indictment was briefly recited. And as to the evidence, the court observed, that there was but one witness to prove the indictment, and that he could not remember the manner of marriage, nor the words used there. And if that I had been married, and had two children, and that the jury should believe that single evidence, and that he had sworn aright, I was to die. The judge told the jury that they had heard of a trial against me, for having had two husbands before, one Steadman, and Day, at one time, and that from a juryman that was upon the jury at the same trial; yet he could not swear, that I was the woman. The jury went forth and continued absent a quarter of an hour: upon their return, and silence being made, the jury being called over, they were asked as the custom is who should say for them? They answered, The Foreman. The court asked whether they found the prisoner guilty, or not guilty? The foreman answered, Not Guilty. Upon which, there was a great shout of the people. After silence being made, I moved the court, that they would order the restoration of my jewels. They answered that I had owned Mr. Carleton for [my]122 husband; he must sue for them, if old Mr. Carleton shall deny the delivery of them.123 When the jury was returning with their verdict, my husband in the garden, met them. He asked one of them if they had found me guilty? He, in answer to his 121. Inmates, who have been in prison for some duration. 122. 123. The justice’s determination thus upholds the doctrine of coverture and confirms that John owns Mary’s possessions. Interestingly, John announces that he will still “never own her.”

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 81 question, said, No, My Lord, we shall leave you to make much of your princess. He replied, By God, I am undone. I will never own her.124 Their envy against me rested not here: they preferred several other bills the same afternoon; and endeavoured as much the next day.125 But the grand jury, perceiving it to be rather upon malice, than upon any just ground that they had so to do, flung them out. During my stay at Newgate after the trial, a kinsman of my lord came to visit me, [and] said, Madam, I think you are with child. I answered him that if I were, it would be a young clerk; he would be born with a pen and ink in his hand and a bond about his neck.126 Saturday, the 6th of June, I was discharged from my restraint; since which, I shall acquaint the world with what hath happened to my vindication. It was one of my pretended husbands, by whom a bill was preferred127 (but not found, as I said before) by Billing the bricklayer. Upon Whitsun-Monday, the 8th of June instant, the said Billing came to Newgate, [and] demanded of the keepers to deliver his wife to him. The turnkey,128 and other subordinate officers of the gaol,129 told him, they had none of his wife. He insisted upon it, and withstood all denial, mentioned my name, and the particulars of my trial. The keepers, remembering there was a former mistake of the same person, given in evidence on my behalf at the trial, called one Grizell Hudson, a convict, a pretty woman, and in good habit. The turnkey asked Billing, whether this was his wife? Billing replied, Yes, and asked her, why she did not come to him upon his first sending for her? She told him, that the keepers would not permit her to stir out of the prison, in regard her fees were not paid. Billing said, he would pay the fees; and whispered her in the ear, saying, that they had a mind to hang her (meaning the Carletons) but he would not prosecute her. Time it was, he had put in an indictment against her, but he could not help that. Well Moll, said he to her, Have ye all your things? She said, Yes. But, said he, Moll, why do you stay here amongst such wicked company, rogues and whores? I see their irons about their legs. Why, said she, I have left some linens engaged in the cellar. To the cellar, the keeper carried them both, and there Billing left a note under 124. Another instance of double entendre: John’s assertion may express his disgust promising that he will never own her (call her his own or acknowledge her as belonging to himself), but Mary’s inclusion of the statement may suggest that she feels John will never own (have control or direction over) her. 125. The Carletons tried to put forward several additional suits against Mary; apparently all were rejected. 126. Legitimate apprenticeship offered a pledge or promise of fulfillment of a legal contract. Mary is certainly acknowledging that any son of hers is John’s progeny, but she is also asserting that that son will be bound legitimately to his indenture. 127. 128. The man who has charge of the prison keys. 129. Prison.

82 MARY CARLETON his hand, to pay five shillings to the tapster,130 which note he hath to produce, to satisfy any that shall make further enquiry in this particular. He further said that she had cheated him of forty pounds, and that he would pawn the lease of his house, rather than she should want money, although she was a wicked rogue, if she would but live with him: She promised she would. He told her he would give her a sky-coloured silk petticoat, and waistcoat, and a paduasoy131 gown, new Holland132 for smocks, and all other things necessary. Billing turning himself to the company there present, said merrily that she had cost him much before when he married her, but he never lay with her, but he had kissed her and felt her a hundred times. Billing asked her again, if she would leave these wicked rogues, and go along with him. She said she had another debt to pay. He asked what it was; and she said, Twenty pounds to such a one, a stranger then present, unto which person he gave a note to pay 20£ in one month after the date thereof (it’s more133 than probable he will be made so to do). He further said to her that now it will trouble me to pay all this money, and then you to run away from me in a short time. Withall, said he, Moll, you need not, for I have a better estate than the young man that tried you for your life. So gave the particulars of his estate, what in money, houses, leases, and land. He added moreover, that he did love her out of measure, notwithstanding she had done him other mischief, than what he had before-mentioned. She asked him, what they were? He said, she had stolen from his daughter a knife and a wrought sheath, a handkerchief, and a sealed ring.134 With that, the standers-by told him, that he was mistaken, that this Grizell Hudson was not the person. He swore it was, and that he knew her well enough; that he saw her in the Gatehouse, and that she knew what passed between us there: But, said he, Moll, thou are a cunning rogue. I desire nothing of thee but to be honest and live with me. The which she promised, and he parted with great content thereupon. Reader, take the whole and view it well. I leave it to thy ingenuity whether from the trial itself and other circumstances, there be not enough to clear one, in thy judgement. I have omitted clothing of it in polite language,135 in regard I was confined to render it in those proper terms and words that every accident carried along with itself, without adding or diminishing.

130. The tapster draws and serves liquor to the inmates, a bartender. See also Case, 140n276. 131. “A strong, rich, silk fabric, usually slightly corded or embossed.” 132. “A linen fabric, originally called, from the province of Holland in the Netherlands, Holland cloth. When unbleached called brown Holland.” 133. 134. A finger ring bearing the sign of a noted lineage. 135. I have been forced to speak outright and bypass decorum.

An Historical Narrative of the German Princess 83 AN Encomiastic136 POEM UPON The German Princess.137 Fame’s trump sounds forth the Amazons’138 renown, Whose worthy feats have kingdoms overthrown; The triumphs of their sex may win the bays139 From masculine fortunes more unworthy praise. Some are for valour, some for learning praised, Beauty and piercing wit have others raised. Man’s highest honours can’t pretend to claim What is not justly due to woman’s name. And yet all histories defective are, And have not named a female half so rare, As this our PRINCESS; whose WIT so refined, Made frustrate what her enemies had designed; Deceiving her deceivers, cast them all Into the pit they digged for her fall. No more shall Cleopatra boast her parts,140 Which won great Antony’s and Cesar’s141 hearts; Though with one passion she did both enflame, In all estates herself, being still the same. To vainer purpose did Thalestris142 come From distant regions to procure a son Of Alexander: ’twas not (I greatly fear)

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20

136. An encomium is an expression of high, glowing praise. 137. Like John, Bernbaum assumes that Mary was not the sole author of her work; he asserts that “the ‘encomiastic poem’ . . . [betrays] her association with a journalist who saw in her notoriety a profitable opportunity” (The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673, 21). See also Introduction, 2n3, citing Ultimum, 169. 138. According to Greek mythology, Amazons were female warriors. The term was often used to refer to strong, fierce women in general. 139. Wreaths made of bay laurels. 140. This reference to Cleopatra’s “parts” recalls the special attention that is paid to Mary’s “parts” in both her own accounts and in John’s recitation of them. For Mary’s, see Case, 115n149 and earlier in this pamphlet (62n23); for John’s, see Replication, 50n22, and Ultimum, 166n103. 141. Cleopatra had an affair first with Julius Caesar and then with Antony. See also Historical, 65n40, and Vercingetorixa, 214, line 3 and note 8. 142. According to Greek legend, Thalestris (fl. 334 BCE) was a queen of the Amazons who visited Alexander the Great in hopes of conceiving his child.

84 MARY CARLETON Courage or wit’s effect, but hot desire. This foreign PRINCESS such perfections brought Into our English world, as lessons taught Most proper; for our age declining still From bad to worse, goes on to what’s most ill: Our Ancestors renowned virtues prized, But we all real honours have despised: How well doth she our dulled soul revive, And good examples to the great ones give, To brave and noble virtues to aspire, And make the under-duller143 world admire. Thus, though disguised, her most illustrious worth Through all impediments of hate break forth, Which her detractors sought within a prison To eclipse, whereby her fame’s the higher risen. As gems in the dark do cast a brighter ray, Than when obstructed by the rival day; So did the lustre of her mind appear, Through this obscure condition, more clear. And when they thought by bringing to the bar To gain her public shame, they raised her far More noble trophies. She being clearly quit Both by her INNOCENCE and excellent WIT. FINIS.

143. The material world of things.

25

30

35

40

Mary Carleton The Case of Madam Mary Carleton (1663) The Case, like An Historical Narrative, tells the story of Mary’s arrival in London and her encounter with the Carleton family from Mary’s perspective. Beginning with her early life in Germany, Mary documents the death of her parents, her experiences in cloister, and attempts by early suitors to secure her fortune. Whether we choose to read Mary’s account as fabrication or truth, we should recognize the literary qualities that Mary brings to bear in her narration. Though she directs readers to contemporary romance and to Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,1 her suitors actually appear to come from an earlier moment. They feel almost Chaucerian in makeup, seeming to hail from “The Miller’s Tale,” the first, elderly and lecherous, here a soldado, disfigured by the clap, and the second, a young and “lycorys” student of chemistry and astrology.2 The “storied” aspect of The Case continues throughout its presentation, leading at least one scholar to pronounce this work the first novel in English literature.3 The Case continues, following a familiar track; traversing some of the same material covered in An Historical Narrative. Using more precise language and sharper wit, which seems to indicate a revisionary impulse, Mary recalls John’s ardent wooing, her coded rebuttals, and finally their eventual marriage, furtively arranged by the Carletons, to protect bride and groom from discovery. Mary continues the account, relating the moment when her in-laws gave up hope of reimbursement, charged her as a bigamist, and had her jailed. She takes readers through the trial proceedings to her acquittal and beyond, relating numerous instances in which her detractors were discovered for having tried either to bribe participants or to obstruct justice in some fashion. Mary’s criticism of the various “tales and stories” (97) reported of her reflect the holes in the case against her. For example, during the trial itself, the few interviews her in-laws manage to secure prove nothing beyond James Knott’s unsubstantiated claim that Mary was previously married, a discrepancy over the date of that first marriage, and a suspicion in his credibility. Narrative mastery makes The Case a joy to read. While Mary understandably shifts the image of plotting and manipulative pretenders back onto the Carletons themselves and necessarily characterizes herself as a vulnerable and 1. See Marlowe, The Tragicall History of D. Faustus as It Hath Bene Acted by the Right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham His Servants (London, 1604). 2. Licorice or mint. Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale,” in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., gen. ed., Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), line 99. 3. Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663–1673. See also Introduction, 25ff.

85

86 MARY CARLETON traduced foreigner, that is not all that The Case reveals about its enigmatic narrator. Mary’s hapless vulnerability is only one element in a very complex and paradoxical portrait. The Case realizes its goals: as readers, we cannot help but recognize the mercenary motives that drive John and his family. Mary appeals to the Carletons, because she will bring them status and wealth—or so they believe. But we can also see that Mary is herself far from naive, and she may not be all that she seems. She not only knows what to say; she also knows what not to say. As we read, it becomes increasingly difficult to parse out Mary’s avowals from her demurrals, her truths from her falsehoods. What makes her equivocations so very pleasurable is that she is willing, for the most part, to let us, as readers, in on the joke: “Let the world now judge, whither being prompted by such plain and public signs of a design upon me,” she explains, “to counterplot them, I have done any more than what the rule and a received principle of justice directs: to deceive the deceiver, is no deceit” (113). And, so, with a little bit of prompting, would any wittily told story go forth. The Case has been transcribed from an EEBO copy reproduced from the Newberry Library.4

4. See Introduction, 42.

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 87

Figure 2. Mary Carleton, frontispiece, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414. Behold my innocence after such disgrace— Dares show an honest and a noble Face— Hence forth there needs no mark of me be known For the right Counterfeit is herein shown— Ætatis mece proximo 22 Ianuar stilo novo vicesimo primo 16635 Is. Ch: Sculp:6 MC7 5. “Age became my friend, January 22, 1663, new style, is about 21 years,” Mary explains using the new Julian rather than old Gregorian calendar. As England was still using the old, this choice would align her with the Continent, where she claims her birth (Todd, Counterfeit Ladies, 149). 6. John Chantry, fl. 1660; an engraver who worked primarily for booksellers (Joseph Strutt, A Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical Account of All the Engravers, from the Earliest Period of the Art of Engraving . . . in Early Modern Britain [London, 1785]). 7. Mary Carleton.

88 MARY CARLETON The CASE OF Madam Mary Carleton, Lately styled8 The German Princess, Truly Stated: With an HISTORICAL RELATION OF HER Birth, Education, and Fortunes; IN AN APPEAL TO His Illustrious Highness PRINCE RUPERT.9 By the said Mary Carleton. Sic juvat ire sub umbras—10 London, Printed for Sam: Speed at the Rainbow11 in Fleet Street,12 and Hen: Marsh at the Princes Arms

8. “Trans. To give a name or style to; to call by a name or style. Const. with complement; †also with for, with.” See also Ultimum, 169n125. 9. The nephew of King Charles I to whom Mary dedicates her book. In The Ultimum Vale, John casts Mary as a fraud whose impudence and guilt lead her to dedicate her text to Prince Rupert, asserting, “I say I wonder at her presumption in dedicating a book, which only bears the name she now owns, to that thrice noble and illustrious Prince Rupert, wherein she abuses (though none can detract from his renowned fame).” See also Ultimum, 204n353, and Case, 90n15. 10. Aeneid, 4.660: “Thus, thus I go gladly into the dark.” Dido’s cry of tragic triumph as she welcomes death after Aeneas abandons her (Virgil, Aeneid, in Ecologues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1–6, ed. and trans. H. R. Faircloth, rev. G. P. Goold, no. 63 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999]). 11. Samuel Speed, a bookseller in London, with a press at St Paul’s and a bookshop at the Rainbow between the two temple gates, located on Fleet Street, was probably the son of Daniel Speed. He was arrested in 1666 for selling law books that had been printed during the Commonwealth (Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1641 to 1667, 169–70; and Wing, STC, 4:837). 12. Principal route leading into and out of the city and a common address for booksellers.

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 89 in Chancery Lane.13 MDCLXIII. 166314

Figure 3. Prince Rupert, Elector Palatine, title-page verso, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # Case E5 19414. 13. Henry Marsh, the second printer/bookseller, likely worked in collaboration with Speed, bearing half the costs and liability for the printing and sales of the pamphlet. Marsh also worked with Francis Kirkman, who took over the business at his death in 1665. Marsh was arrested and imprisoned at the Gatehouse with two other stationers for seditious practices (Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1641 to 1667, 123; R. C. Bald, “Francis Kirkman, Bookseller and Author,” Modern Philology 41, no. 1 [1943]: 24 n21; M. A. Shaaber, “The Meaning of the Imprint in Early Printed Books,” The Library 24 [1944]: 135; and Wing, STC, 4:594). Chancery Lane connects to Fleet and takes its names from the High Court of Chancery, which began the association when the bishop of London acquired the old temple in 1161. 14. Handwritten in ink.

90 MARY CARLETON TO HIS Most Illustrious Highness PRINCE RUPERT, Count Palatine of the Rhine, AND Duke of Cumberland,15 etc. Great Prince, To whom should the injured innocence of a foreign and desolate woman address itself but to your noble and merciful protection, who with the majestical glories of your relation to this crown, have most condescending compassions to the distressed and low estate of the afflicted. For when I considered the general report of this your generosity and clemency even in the greatest incitements of passion, amidst the victorious progress of your arms; I could not but presume your highness would open your ears to the complaints of an abused woman, in a case wherein the laws are altogether as silent16 as in the loudest and clamorous noise of the war. Besides, the different necessity of my cause and the vindication of it17 did inevitably put me upon your Highness’s patronage, I am traduced18 and calumniated19 as an impostor (and the scandal continues after all the umbrages20 of it are vanished) and that I am not a German, nor so well descended there as I have alleged, and do and will maintain: therefore to your highness as the sacred and fittest sanctuary of this truth I have betook myself; whose excellent purity I do so revere and honour, that I would not soil it with the least tincture of a pretence, or paint of falsehood for a world. Your highness drew your first princely breath, which hath since filled the trump of fame, within the limits of that circle of the Rhine, where I was born:21 and 15. Born in Prague to a German prince and an English princess, Rupert (1619–1682), was the nephew of King Charles I. He served as a Royalist general during the Civil War; though banished after the king’s defeat in 1646, he returned after the Restoration in 1660, where he held a series of naval commands and lived off of a pension from his cousin (and king) Charles II. Rupert’s father, Frederick V, served as elector Palatine of the Rhine (today southwest Germany) before becoming king of Bohemia in 1619. Mary’s plea for sympathy from Prince Rupert, therefore, was quite strategic; it announced her royalist sympathy and spoke her quality without having to openly address either. Rupert, sharing both a German and an English heritage, lived in England for the majority of his life. See Case, 88n9, and Ultimum, 204n353. 16. Mary may be referring here to her inability to retrieve her jewels and clothing under the law, as both have become her husband’s property. 17. A side reference (?) to one of the earliest pro-Mary pamphlets: A Vindication of a Distressed Lady. 18. “To speak evil of, esp. (now always) falsely or maliciously; to defame, malign, vilify, slander, calumniate, misrepresent; †to blame, censure.” 19. “To asperse with calumny . . . to accuse or charge falsely and maliciously with something criminal or disreputable; to slander.” 20. “Shade, shadow. Obs.” “(Very common in the 17th c.).” 21. Though Prince Rupert was born in Bohemia, the city had been part of the Rhenish Palatinate as well. Rupert may figure again in Mary’s life after the trial, as he served as a British naval commander

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 91 within the confines of your paternal dominions, my infant cries were to be heard; and therefore with all alacrity I submit my cause, and my stronger cries for justice to your highness, who partakes equally of this and my country. Notwithstanding I should not have been so bold as to have given your highness this trouble, but that I have been informed you have been graciously pleased to pity my ruins, and to express your resentment of those incivilities I have suffered: And indeed that, with the just indignation of other noble persons, who are pleased to honour my desertion and privacy with their company, is the only support I have against those miseries I endure, the more unsupportable because irremediable by the laws of this kingdom made against femes covert.22 I take not upon me to dispute the equity thereof, but in all submiss obedience do cast myself and my cause at your highness’s feet, most humbly requesting and beseeching your grace and favour in some extraordinary redress to be vouchsafed to Your highness’s most obedient and most de voted servant, Mary Carleton.

in both the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars and would have benefitted from any intelligence she was able to garner during her aborted trip to Holland. 22. Coverture is considered “the condition or position of a woman during her married life, when she is by law under the authority and protection of her husband.” The Carleton family appears to invoke the doctrine of coverture, which allowed husbands to take control of their wives’ property. After marrying John, Mary would have assumed the status of a “feme covert” under common law, relinquishing all authority over her property (Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England, 3 and 24–25). The Arraignment confirms John’s right to his wife’s possessions. The final statement of The Arraignment makes this point clear: “Afterwards she desired that her jewels and [the] cloths taken from her might be restored to her. The court acquainted her that they were her husband’s and that if any detained them from her, [then] he might have his remedy at law. She, charging old Mr. Carleton with them, he declared they were already in the custody of his son her husband” (see also Introduction, 13, and Historical, 61n16 and 80n123).

92 MARY CARLETON Æt: Suæ 3823

Figure 4. Mary Carleton at thirty-eight, A4 recto, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414. Mary Carleton called the German princess. To the Noble Ladies and Gentlewomen, of ENGLAND. 23. “Her age at 38.” This image from 1673 is interlineated into the 1663 pamphlet to show age progression. Obviously, a later reader/bookseller/printer combined the newer material with the original at some point. This same process of interlineation occurs in at least two, maybe three, other images in this pamphlet.

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 93 Madams, Be pleased to lay aside that severity of your judgement, by which you examine and castigate the licitness and convenience of every of your actions or passages24 of moment, and therefore seldom run into the misgovernment of Fortune, and cast a favourable eye upon these novels25 of my life, not much unlike those of Boccaccio,26 but that they are more serious and tragical. The breach that is made in my credit and reputation, I do feel and understand to be very wide, and past my repairing, whatever materials of defence, excuse, and purgation I can bring to the scrutiny of men, who are not sensible to what sudden changes our natures are subjected, and that from airy thoughts and motions,27 things of great influence, sometimes good, sometimes bad, have been exhibited to the world, equal to the most sober and firm resolutions of the valiant and the wise. It hath been my mishap for one among many others to miscarry in an affair, to which there are more intrigues and perplexities of kin and alliance, and necessary dependence, than to any other thing in the world, i.e. marriage: (Hymen28 is as blind as Fortune and gives her favours by guess) the mistaken advantages whereof, have turned to my real damage: so that when I might have been happy in myself, I must needs transplant my content into a sterile, ungrateful soil and be miserable by another. Yet have I done nothing dishonourable to your better beloved sex, there is nothing of lewdness, baseness, or meanness in the whole carriage of this noised29 story, nor which I will not, cannot justify, as the actions of a gentlewoman; with the account of which, from the beginning of my life, I here present you. My fortune not being competent to my mind though proportionable to any gentle degree, hath forwardly30 shrunk into nothing, but I doubt not to buoy both my 24. “A transition or progress through a period, stage, etc.” 25. “Any of a number of tales or stories making up a larger work; a short narrative of this type, a fable.” See, for example, Marguerite of Valois’s Heptameron (published posthumously in French in 1558). 26. Italian writer and humanist (1313–1375), who wrote the frame-story of the Decameron as well as De Mulieribus Claris, a treatise offering biographies of famous women throughout myth and history. See also Introduction, 24. 27. Perturbation of the mind or feelings from material influences. 28. Hymenaios, the god of marriage. Born of Apollo and one of the muses (sometimes Clio, sometimes Calliope, sometimes Urania, and sometimes Terpsichore). He is also associated with a genre of Greek lyric poetry that was performed as the bride was conducted toward the threshold of her new home. In art, he wore a garland and carried a burning torch. Note that the Goddess Fortuna is often portrayed as blind to indicate the arbitrary and uncertain nature of events effecting human affairs. In calling Hymen blind, Mary seems to suggest the equally accidental circumstances that may befall wedding partners, setting them on a course poised for disaster. See also Historical, 62n21, Ultimum, 170n129, and Witty Combat, 306n142. 29. “Rumoured; famed.” 30. “Prematurely. Obs.”

94 MARY CARLETON honour and estate up together, when these envious clouds31 are dispelled that obscure my brightness; The shadows are at the longest, and my fame shall speedily rise in its due lustre, till then, and ever I am, Ladies, your devoted handmaid, MARY CARLETON.

Figure 5. Mary Carleton, at Marriage Ceremony, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414. Mary Carleton.

31. Note Mary’s repeated use of cloud and shadow imagery in describing her condition. Mary tries to convince her readers that the damage to her reputation may be temporary and that she remains a respectable lady at her core.

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 95

Figure 6. “The German Princess with her Supposed Husband and Lawyer,” A8 verso detail; courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # E5 19414. A. S. Nicholls delin. J. Basire. sculp.32 32. Designed and drawn by A. S. Nicholls, engraved by James Basire. Basire apprenticed to Richard William Seale and after traveled to Italy with Roger Dalton, another master engraver. In 1755, he was appointed to the Society of Antiquaries and from that time forward worked primarily on landscape and historical projects. A. S. Nicholls was probably Sutton Nicholls, known primarily for his portrait work. Both “narrative” images postdate the pamphlets and so must have been inserted after the fact (Lucy Peltz, “Isaac Basire [1704–1768], printmaker and draughtsman, ODNB; Mark Noble and James Granger, A Biographical History of England, from the Revolution to the End of George I’s Reign [London,

96 MARY CARLETON The CASE OF Madam Mary Carleton, the wife of Mr. John Carleton, formerly styled a German Princess. I am so much the more beholden to my innocence than to my fortune, that I dare more confidently appear to the vindication of the one, than (through the malign deceit and injury of my adversaries) to the vendication33 of the other; And challenge my enemies, and the spoils they have made of me though I dare not lay claim to my friends, my honour and my estate, which I shall keep concealed and inviolable from such rude and mischievous hands as my person hath been betrayed to. And yet the suspicious, noxious world doth very hardly conceive of me other than a malefactor, and prefer my wit and artful carriage to my honesty, and take this untoward passage of my life for some festivous34 and merry accident of the times, and look upon me as a notorious (nay even among the more ingenious, but as a) notable person. I can give no other reason for this, but the diligent and forestalling slanders of my accusers, who by lewd and most false suggestions have precluded all ways to my justification and defence; and my own unwearied patience in suffering those calumnies to pass unrefuted, further than by a legal trial; not willing to cast any dirt upon those by way of regesting35 those foul-mouthed and libellous scandals by personal reflections; for I concluded that time, and the justice of my cause and the laws of the kingdom would clearly absolve me, and that therefore such exasperations on my part would widen that breach, which the fraudulent covetousness of some relations had made between my husband and myself, and render it irreconcilable, when as I had resolved to redintegrate36 that affection, we were mutually bound to have for each other. 1806], 2:337). A later reader/bookseller/printer apparently combined the newer material with the original at some point. 33. Perhaps a printer error, or perhaps Mary is using the “vend” spelling to play on her earlier references to Dame Fortune (with possible monetary connotations) and to her subsequent description of the spoils her husband’s family gained from the affair—the “jewels and other things” the family “[defeated her] of.” 34. Festive. 35. Retaliating, retorting [against]. 36. “To restore to a state of wholeness, completeness, or unity.”

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 97 But since I have perceived, and have been fully satisfied and informed of their insatiable and implacable malice against me, not only in prosecuting me with fresh indictments after the jury had acquitted me of the former,37 (though the grand jury were so fully sensible of the injustice and maliciousness thereof, that they would not receive any more) to say nothing also of the witnesses brought against me, the blind and the lame (as to their tales and stories) procured by most wicked and detestable practices,38 (whom God forgive) but by advising my husband after my acquittal to forsake me, and renounce my bed, and so defeating me of my jewels and other things of value of mine own, and leaving and exposing me destitute to the world, and to the pity or scorn of people, as my condition shall weigh with them: These unsufferable mischiefs have now at last extorted this narrative from me, which I request the courteous reader to give credit to, and equally and seriously consider my case. It hath already made a great noise in the world, suitable to that bluster my husband’s friends had raised my fortune and quality to;39 but those high winds being laid by their weeping showers, I will secretly and clearly tell the world the naked truth of all this story, having premised a short apology for myself, and given some account of this my (errant-like) adventure and peregrination40 from the place of my native country. I was born at Cologne41 in Germany, though incredulous people do take that for a pretence, and better concealment from any research42 that can be made after me; but as I have declared it before that honourable judicature in the Old Bailey,43 whose grave and reverend authority, I hate to profane and abuse with a lie; so I do again assure the world by the greatest pledges of a Christian, that I am a native of that place, and did continue in it, or thereabouts, the most part of my life hitherto. They that know it, know it to be one of the mistresses and completest cities in that 37. See Arraignment for the particulars of the indictment (318). 38. Here, Mary refers to the inability of John to produce the witnesses he has called; the unreliability of testimony against her; and the charge that John and his family paid people to falsely testify against her. Though “several witnesses were sworn by the oath” to appear, twelve in all (Arraignment, 322), the only recorded testimony comes from James Knott, William Clark, Sarah Williams, Mary’s father-in-law, her brother-in-law, and Mr. Smith (none of whom was originally listed). 39. Mary states that John “took upon him the acceptation of the title [of lord] publicly as well as privately” and “[boasted] of the fortune he had matched” (Historical, 71). 40. “The action or an act of travelling or going from place to place; a course of travel; a journey, esp. on foot. Also occas.: an account of a journey.” 41. Key German transportation hub located along the Rhine River, it formed one of the states of the Holy Roman Empire. See also Historical, 66n47, Ultimum, 164n92, Vercingetorixa, 221, line 45 and note 60, and Arraignment, 328n64. 42. “The act of searching carefully for or pursuing a specified thing or person; an instance of this.” 43. The central criminal court in London. See also Introduction, 3, Historical, 73, and Arraignment, 317.

98 MARY CARLETON empire, not only famed for the birth of very illustrious persons of ancient times, and the honour it hath received from them (as I could largely instance, especially from its Latin adject of Agrippina44) but for that modern glory it received by the entertainment of the king of Great Britain, who was most hospitably and cordially, and with all imaginable respect and honour treated here, when by virtue of Cromwell’s league with France, he departed that kingdom.45 I mention this at large, because hence I took up those resolutions, which since, with so much misfortune I have put in execution. I observed here the courteous civility, and affable good temper of the English nation, for by those gentlemen that then attended the king I measured his kingdom. Those were persons of such winning and obliging carriage, of so easy and familiar address, and yet of that generous and regardful demeanour, that I was hugely taken with such sweet conditions, and being then young, by their frequent converse in the town, which was constantly in my ears, came to such an acceptable knowledge of their manners, that I then thought of passing over to that country, for a fuller satisfaction and delight I had promised myself among such a people. As to my parents, who by Pythagoras46 his fanciful philosophy, or rather envious witchcraft, have been transmigrated into I know not what filthy and vile persons, of the most perdite47 and abominable sort of men;48 I do desire pardon of their ghosts, and shall sprinkle their ashes with my tears, that I have by my unadvised and ungoverned resolution, raised them from their quiet and honourable graves, 44. Julia Agrippina, the younger, wife of Claudius and mother of Nero, born in Cologne (15 AD–59 AD). “Of or belonging to land or fields. . . . Tacitus—From her was named Colonia Agrippina . . . the place of her birth, now Cologne” (Jacobo Facciolati et al., A New and Copious Lexicon of the Latin Language [1853], s.v. “AGRIPPINA, adject of ”). 45. A reference to Charles II. During the nine years that the young Stuart spent in exile, first in France, then later in Holland, Flanders, and Spain, Cromwell parlayed with fellow monarchs demanding that they refuse to harbor or assist the young king. 46. A pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who founded the Pythagorean school. The Pythagoreans believe that numbers constitute the true nature of things and argue for the transmigration of souls, insisting that as we die our essence transfers to another form, human, beast, or plant. John imagines Mary’s transmigrations in inanimate terms. 47. “Debauched, abandoned, wicked.” 48. The charges about Mary’s parentage are rather confused. In The Ultimum Vale, John states that Mary is “a bastard of a German soul transmigrated into the body of a Canterbury fidler’s daughter, or a German fiddlestick played upon a Canterbury fiddle, or the sperm of a German lord mixed with and evacuated into an ale tub and drank up by a Canterbury hostess, of which came this prodigious excrescence” (161). Yet, later in that same pamphlet, when John attacks claims made by Mary, he asserts that the “fiddler and alehouse-keeper” figure is her father-in-law, Richard Ford. John even claims to have met Ford at his home where he also “saw [Mary’s] own mother and brethren” (172). Todd explains some of the confusion, noting, “After the death of . . . [Mary’s] father . . . her mother remarried either a fiddler or an innkeeper” (“Carleton [née Moders],” ODNB). The Ford mentioned in these texts is most definitely Mary’s father-in-law. See also Replication, 52n36, Historical, 163n25, and Ultimum, 172n145.

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 99 to be the suspicious and lewd discourse of every malevolent and busy tongue. But let such know, that my father’s name was, Henry Van Wolway, a licentiat49 and doctor of the civil law, and lord of Holmstein,50 a man esteemed for his services done to this city of Cologne, in mediating their peace and security and neutrality, in the Swedish and German war,51 and for other effects of his counsels and endeavours to our ecclesiastical prince elector, and the house of Lorraine,52 in all those turmoils of that country, in the first rupture of the Spanish and French war.53 I instance these remarks, because having been so long dead some nineteen years, I cannot better describe or characterize him to strangers, though he were known in his own country by other great and noble actions, as well as for his long and ancient descent from an honourable family of that name: which whosoever shall give himself the trouble of curiosity in enquiring, may yet find preserved from the ruins of a destructive, and but just composed conflagration.54 It will seem foolish and sottish55 flattery in me, to adorn his monument with any more elegy,56 to a strange and perhaps unbelieving nation, who have no faith for anything they see not, or not have heard from plain and undeniable testimony.57 And if I be taken for uncharitable in this rigid imputation, let the practices of those, who have made their unreasonable incredulity, a pretence to their more barbarous cruelty, be my excuse to the world. I shall not need therefore to particularize any more of him, for places and circumstances, and the like accidents, will be of no greater demonstration, or 49. “One who has received a ‘licence’ from a university, college, or the like. In early use sometimes gen. = ‘graduate’; more commonly spec. the holder of a particular degree between bachelor and master or doctor, still preserved in certain foreign universities (cf. Spanish licenciato, French licencié); the latest use in England was in the Cambridge degree of Licentiate of Medicine (Medicinæ licentiatus, abbreviated M.L.) which was abolished in 1859.” 50. Mary may be referring to the Duchy of Holstein. Cologne, which she claims as her home, is located in Westphalia, Germany. 51. Sweden, under Gustavus Adolphus, eventually entered the Thirty Years’ War, supporting the Protestant Bohemians; much of what is now modern Germany fought on the opposing side with the Catholic Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. 52. Cologne was ruled by an archbishop who was a prince elector (a member of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire) and the archduke of Lorraine, a region in the northwest of modern-day France. 53. France (Protestant Bohemians) and Spain (Catholic Habsburgs) fought continually during the Thirty Years’ War (which involved most of the countries in Europe and lasted from 1618 to 1648) and beyond. 54. “The burning up of anything in a blazing fire.” 55. “Foolish, doltish, stupid: . . . †b. Of things or actions. Obs.” 56. “elegy, n.” “A song of lamentation, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead.” 57. Though Mary passes judgment on English society for such skepticism, the strict requirements for credibility proved beneficial to Mary’s defense during her trial.

100 MARY CARLETON convincing verity, than those punctual58 relations of Sir John Mandeville,59 concerning things that were impossible to be in humanity and nature; and I will not so much as seem to impose upon the reader, with those nearer artifices of a lie. I am capable of doing myself right, (which I suppose will be too readily interpreted to my disadvantage) by any means, within the compass of a woman’s understanding, and therefore if I thought I should need more ordinary ways, I would have applied myself thereunto. And so, I will proceed to a further narrative of my life, having acquainted the reader, that it pleased God to take away both my father and mother before I was full three years old, but my father died last suddenly, and left me entirely possessed of his estate, without any guardian or trustees; the expectation of many people who had long designs both upon it and me. Being thus an orphan, and destitute of a procurator,60 as we call it in our law, the church as next a kin to such estates (and claims the right and disposal of the ward) secured me, and what I had, in their hands, until such time as I should be of age and understanding to determine of myself and my fortunes, which they hoped by so early a matriculation and induction of me into profession of the religious to grasp finally into their hands.61 By them I was put into the monastery or nunnery of Sancta Clara,62 at this infant age, and educated in all such breeding as was fit for one devoted to the 58. “Exact in every point; precise, accurate. Obs.” 59. Sir John Mandeville: (supp. fl. ca.1357), travel writer, was assumed to have written the Voyages de Jehan de Mandeville Chevalier, which appeared anonymously in France ca. 1357. The book is a vernacular account of the known world, loosely based upon the alleged travels of its putative narrator. Much of the account is spurious (M. C. Seymour, “Mandeville, Sir John (supp. fl. ca. 1357) supposed writer,” ODNB). Mary’s writing makes for interesting comparison. Her tale, like Mandeville’s Voyages, raises similar questions of authenticity. 60. “A person who performs the duties of curator (CURATOR n. 1) or guardian towards a minor, etc. without having been legally appointed to do so”; either that or “a person appointed as guardian of the affairs of someone legally unfit to conduct them him- or herself, such as a minor, an insane person, etc.” Mary is here talking civil law as it was applied in Europe (outside England’s borders). 61. Mary’s account of her childhood and accusations of greed against the church create a pattern in her storytelling. In this story, as later in her account of her trials with the Carleton family, Mary casts herself as a young woman alone in the world (whether because of the death of her parents or as a foreigner in England) whom male authorities (the church and the Carleton men) have tried to manipulate and from whom they have tried to steal. 62. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), along with Francis of Assisi, was the founder of the order of Franciscan nuns known as the Order of Saint Claire or the Order of the Poor Ladies (often known simply as the Poor Clares). Certain convents served as both homes for religious women and schools for young women more generally. Mary does not specify in which monastery she resided, but it may be that she was housed in the Convent of Santa Clara in Cologne. As far as I can gather, the convent must have been associated with Cologne’s Franciscan Church of St. Clare, now deconsecrated and demolished. While there were certainly plenty of practicing Catholics in England in 1663, most significantly the

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 101 service of God and his Church, wherein, if ignorance and innocence might render devotion acceptable, my young probation years I may be confident were not offensive. But growing up to some capable years, and my active busy soul exerting itself, and biting as it were the bit of this restraint and confinement; the hours and days of this solitude and retirement, in which I was as it were buried as soon as I was born, grew most irksome and tedious to me, though I was not yet acquainted with the world. I felt some such strong impulses and natural instincts to be ranging abroad, and in action, as the first finders of Terra Incognita,63 were urged with, to the discovery of those regions, of whose existence they had no further assurance than their own hopeful bodings and divinations. The discipline also, began now to aggrieve me, and the more my thoughts wandered and strayed after my roaming and strange fancy of the world’s bravery (which I began now to take notice of, from the gallant appearance of persons of quality, who frequented our chapel) the more did the orders of the place straighten and fret me. I began to be weary of my company, and the poverty of those Votaries,64 called in derision, as it were the Bare-footed Clares;65 and though I suffered none of these hardships, nor underwent any of those nice66 penances and mortifications,67 as having no inordinacies of youth to quell and subdue, yet the customary severity of such dealing with that sweetness and tenderness of our sex, did much grate me; and I blindly wished I were (what my inclinations prompted me to) a man, and exempt from that tedious life, which yet was so much the worse, because it was altogether passive and sedentary.68

new king’s younger brother, James II, the Catholic Church was still effectively kept outside English borders and had been since Elizabeth I started cracking down on recusants (those who recused themselves from church service). That continental English novitiates generally paid rather well for their keep speaks to the derision in Mary’s comment about being bare-footed Clares (Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly, eds., The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identities [Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2103], 6–7). While the ban on Catholic practice in England had been lifted in 1650, the return of the Clarendon Code put paid to religious freedom for any but the state faithful. Accordingly, Mary’s Catholicism marks her as exotic. 63. Latin phrase meaning “unknown land.” 64. “One who is bound by vows to a religious life; a monk or nun.” 65. Another reference to the aforementioned Poor Clares. 66. Fastidious; excessively particular. 67. “The subjection or bringing under control of one’s appetites and passions by the practice of austere living, esp. by the self-infliction or voluntary toleration of bodily pain or discomfort.” 68. Mary’s wish to be a man may have been indicative of her transgressive character, if not simply of her later tendency to manipulate her identity to her own advantage. For a fascinating account of Mary’s deceptions in light of their gender-bending potential, see Lilley, “Mary Carleton’s False Additions,” esp. 83–89. Mary’s complaints about the disappointingly “tedious,” “passive and sedentary” lifestyle of the Poor Clares seem to indicate that a life of deception might be particularly appealing to her. A life of

102 MARY CARLETON Nor could I find when more matured, but that religion when imposed as a task and made an employment was one of the greatest burdens I could endure (though I have learned better things by practise and the troubles of the world, and could wish myself safe in such a retreat from the cares of the future, and the doleful thoughts of my past time, and have a zeal for my religion, the obligations and conduct, whereof I have to my sorrow so much in my late unadvised resolutions, abdicated and neglected). I looked upon it more as constraint, and not a voluntary act, wherein I had no manner of election;69 and my libertine spirit which mistook bold humanity, and the dictates of a generous nature, for simple and genuine adoration, confirmed me in this opinion, and finally persuaded me and prevailed with my reason, which grew not up equal with my passion, to abandon this serene and blissful mansion, and venture upon the world’s alluring, promising vanities. I was arrived at that age wherein I was capable of being admitted, and professing myself a nun, and to take upon me the vows of the order of perpetual virginity, and the like requisites of that monastical life, and therefore the fathers and confessors willing to make me a proselyte70 were very urgent that I would take the habit and devote myself to a religious life, setting before me the many examples of some excellent ladies and gentlewomen then in the cloister (though it be one of the poorest convents of all) who had great and noble friends, and great estates (some of them) and had notwithstanding with all readiness of mind separated and estranged themselves from all worldly things, and consecrated themselves to God. But my resolutions of forsaking that melancholy and silent abode, were so far advanced, and so obstinated71 in me to the prosecution of my masculine conceptions that I obtained my discharge at the same time, as I have partly hinted before, that his majesty was in Cologne, whom, with the rest of the desirous world I longed to see: accompanied therefore with my maid who had attended me in the religious house, and a man-servant who was my steward or bailiff72 abroad,73 and had prepared all things for my secular estate, I went to his palace, were to pass scheming, swindling, traveling, and/or cross-dressing seems quite attractive on account of the variety, pleasures, and self-direction it would (or did) afford her in contrast to the religious (or married) life. 69. Again, Mary’s desire for freedom and frustration with the “constraint” imposed by religion are echoed later in her account of her entrance in marriage. Though Mary did willingly marry John, she characterizes her courtship as pressured, hasty, and intensely choreographed by the Carleton family. 70. “A person who has changed from one opinion, religion, party, etc., to another; a convert.” Mary’s reference to herself as a potential “proselyte” or “convert” may imply simply the entrance into religious life and a conversion from the lay life to the religious life. Or, it may indicate that she was not a Catholic at this stage. 71. “To be caused to persist stubbornly.” 72. “The agent of the lord of a manor, who collects his rents, etc.; the steward of a landholder, who manages his estate; one who superintends the husbandry of a farm for its owner or tenant.” 73. “That is or takes place abroad (in various senses); of or relating to the world outside or away from one’s home; (in later use esp.) of or situated in another country.”

The Case of Madam Mary Carleton 103 other reencounters, I met with a civil person, one Mrs. Margaret Hammond,74 the daughter of Sir Richard Hammond, living somewhere then in the north of England, a very accomplished woman, who for her religion had left England, intending to have betaken herself to the English nunnery at Louvain;75 but some difficulties happening therein, she had journeyed up hither upon the same account and perceiving me a stranger did me the civility with her countrymen, as to procure me the satisfactory view of the king and his court, which could do no less than oblige me to invite her home and to desire her while she stayed at Cologne to make use of my house and what entertainment she found. She was pleased to accept of this offer, and hereupon my curiosity having attained some part of its wish, we began to be familiar, and I for my part to enquire into her condition, the reason of her travel and the news of the world, of all which she gave me so delightful an account, insinuating the necessity of her condition, with the perfection of her endowments that I told her if she could think it answerable to her content to stay with me and be my governess, she should plentifully partake of my fortunes. We agreed. But not to weary the reader with those instructions and fundamentals of education she laid, as she was a rare and absolute mistress of all those arts, it will be sufficient to declare, that seeing so much virtue in her, my greediness of communicating with it more freely and clearly, put me upon giving her the trouble of teaching me the English tongue, the locked repository of so many excellencies.76 This by a fond and most pleasing diligence, I pretty well attained in a year’s time, having my governess always in my company, whither abroad, as I used to ride some miles, by coach, or else pass in a pleasure-boat in the summer, to acquaint myself first with my own country; the tenderness of my years, offering no 74. As there is no Margaret Hammond mentioned in any of the Louvain records currently scanned, we might surmise that she never took orders (Who Were the Nuns?: A Prosopographical Study of the English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800; https://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/). 75. Louvain is a city in the Flemish Braban province, located in central Belgium on the Dyle River. By the time that Mary is writing, the Augustinian order of St. Monica’s in Louvain had been running a convent devoted entirely to the English Catholic community (disposed because they couldn’t practice their faith in England) since 1609. Earlier postulants had professed alongside their continental sisters in the motherhouse St. Ursula in Flanders. 76. By claiming she received language instruction from a noble Englishwoman, Mary explains why she, as a German, would be fluent in English. John often claims that her language ability helped to deceive him. In The Ultimum Vale, John recounts that “she would act and speak so modestly and majestically as could be expected to maintain and make her pretences seem real, and she used good language, though in a broken tone” (163). He insists, however, that she likewise falsified a “language barrier” whenever she was challenged. Language became a tool of manipulation as “she would seem to be angry with herself because she could not express herself in our tongue to that height as she would” (163).

104 MARY CARLETON man the occasion or thoughts of love or marriage, by which means I passed free and unobserved and then returned again to my country retirement near the city. I now addicted77 myself to the reading of history, and then to take off the gravity and seriousness of that study to more facile pastimes of literature; romances, and other heroical ablandiments,78 which being written for the most and best part in French, I made that my next business, though of lesser difficulty, to gain a knowledge in that tongue, which being counterminous79 to ours, and spoke promiscuously in the adjacent provinces of the Walloon80 country, rendered itself at my devotion.81 The felicity of these two, put me upon a desire of attacking the rest of the European languages, wherein without arrogance,82 and as many can testify; I have more than a smattering, and here was lately an Italian (as I have since been told upon discourse and some wonder of my readiness in them) who was one of my masters; and who might have justified the truth of this and the rest of my story; his name was Giacomo Della Riva, well known to many gentlemen in this town. In those and the like studies, and other befitting exercises of my sex, I passed away the age of nineteen years, when I thought it high time to put all this speculation and theory into practice, and being furnished with such a freight, and store of all foreign necessaries, to launch into the world, and see what returns I could make of this stock, but in the interim of such meditations, and unhappy accident (at my being at the spa83 the last summer, to drink those medicinal waters) discovered me, and invited two strange gentlemen, which that place always is furnished 77. “That devotes oneself or is attached to a form of conduct, pursuit, etc., esp. immoderately or compulsively.” 78. Ablandiments is most likely a form of “ablandishment,” which is an “alteration of BLANDISHMENT n., perhaps after Spanish ablandamiento blandishment, flattery (first half of the 15th cent.;