ABSTRACT
Mary Moders seems to have been born into the lower ranks of society in Canterbury some time during the mid-1630s. In 1660 she was tried for bigamy but acquitted with a reprimand, since she alleged that she had heard that her first husband had been killed on active service abroad before she married again. Undeterred, however, she married a third time. The family of her third and last husband, John Carleton, a law student, was made aware of her maritally dubious past shortly after the wedding. In June 1663 they brought her to trial at the Old Bailey.1
