Tuesday: Mary Carleton : The German Princess

Mary  Carleton

The German Princess

.

Two hundred and fifty years ago
 every Londoner had heard 
of the audacious adventuress
 Mary Carleton. 

To-day she 
is almost unknown; 
and the only modern account of 
her, that in the " Dictionary of National Biography," is 
unreliable. 

Mary,  was 
born in Canterbury 
in 1634 or 1635.

 She ran away from her 
first husband, a shoemaker,
 in 1658, married a second in 
Dover, and escaped punishment for bigamy only through the 
failure of her first husband to
 appear against her. 

She ran 
away again, 
whither we know not; 
but in 1663 she 
stepped out of obscurity
 into almost national prominence.