| Abstrakt: |
Peter Pheasant, a wealthy young man about town who died of smallpox in 1703, kept Mary Thompson as his mistress and cast her off before he died. In an alternative account of the events, he married Thompson and she was entitled to dower from his estate after his death. The truth of these two claims was bitterly contested between Pheasant's brothers and Thompson in the ecclesiastical courts. Thompson was backed by her friend Delarivier Manley, a well-known playwright and satirist, who hoped for a financial reward. Manley shared information with the feminist poet Sarah Fyge Egerton, who unexpectedly testified against her, leading to the estrangement of the two women. The broad outlines of the story were published in 1787, based on evidence from what was known as Doctors' Commons, but since then it has been thought that the original records were lost. They have now been rediscovered in London Metropolitan Archives, and in combination with material at Lambeth Palace Library, The National Archives and the Norris Museum they enable the case to be reconstructed in great detail, as well as its background and some of its consequences. The extent to which anyone was telling the truth remains far from certain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
