The Carleton Bigamy Trial

Multiple conflicting perspectives come together in this collection to provide a Rashomon-style account of marriage, fraud, and trickery in seventeenth-century England.
 
Mary Carleton was an ordinary woman from Canterbury who entered historical records when she was accused of bigamy. The seven pamphlets in this edition focus on the bigamy trial of Mary Carleton, in which the accused eloquently defends herself and is ultimately acquitted. Written in the early years of the English Restoration, they demonstrate that narratives presenting what “she said” and what “he said” can reveal, forcefully and painfully, how truth can be fragmented in the different arenas of law, love, and politics. Through their disparate accounts of a marriage gone wrong, these pamphlets reinforce the social status quo even while they radically shatter the very foundations that give it heft. In asking readers to question absolutes, they unmask the precarious relationship between words and the world.
 

Mary Carleton (1642–1673) was a woman accused of marrying under a false identity while masquerading as a German princess, and the author of several pamphlets defending herself. 

Megan Matchinske is an emeritus professor of English and comparative literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is the author of multiple books, including Women Writing History in Early Modern England.