The Forgotten German Princess
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the "German Princess" raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame. Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband’s family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:02.8 | Hello, I'm Shahid Abari. Welcome to broadcasters of the future on those we have forgotten, but really shouldn't have. |
| 0:10.3 | A series of the essay program recorded for BBC Radio 3 in front of an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. |
| 0:17.5 | John Galaher is from the University of Leeds where he works on the histories of early |
| 0:21.2 | modern Britain and Europe and in particular the way people then travelled about for pleasure, |
| 0:26.8 | for education or because they wanted or needed to build new lives. John's about to finish his |
| 0:31.4 | first book all about learning languages in England in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Please |
| 0:36.9 | join me in welcoming John Galher |
| 0:38.1 | with a tale of the forgotten German princess. Her name was Mary Carlton, or else it was |
| 0:50.0 | Mary Stedman, or Maria DeVolvey, though some said that she was born Mary Motors. She came from a |
| 0:57.5 | grand family in the beautiful city of Cologne. Well, either that, or she was the daughter of a Canterbury |
| 1:03.8 | Fiddler. She was rich, except she wasn't. She was a model of wifely patience and charity to at least one of her husbands. |
| 1:14.2 | She was charming, well-bred, witty and fashionable, which meant it always came as a surprise when she |
| 1:20.5 | disappeared at the back door with your valuables. She forged the most beautiful letters. |
| 1:27.2 | They cheered and clapped when she was victorious in court. |
| 1:30.3 | They nearly pulled her from her coach when she was spotted in the street. |
| 1:33.3 | They queued up to visit her when she sat in prison. |
| 1:37.3 | Whatever her real name, they called her the German princess, |
| 1:42.3 | and she was the most famous con woman in Restoration England. Probably. |
| 1:49.1 | The German princess, Mary Carlton, I'll call her that because it's the name under which she became a |
| 1:55.2 | sensation, burst onto the public stage in 1663. Just three years previously, King Charles II had returned from exile |
| 2:04.2 | to take the throne, putting an end to two decades of turmoil. But underneath the facade of this |
... |
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