16. Stoney Reels in a Big Fish
Mary Bowes and her husband the Earl of Strathmore had five children, but when he caught tuberculosis, she grew frustrated with his increasing debility and lack of sex drive. Mary started cheating on her husband with a series of lovers, and earned a reputation for promiscuity. When the Earl finally succumbed in 1776, the widowed Mary regained control of her fortune, and took up with a lover, George Gray. He got her pregnant four times within a year, with Mary aborting each one.
In 1777, she met and was seduced by Andrew Robinson Stoney, a British Army lieutenant who styled himself a “Captain”. He wrote scurrilous articles about Mary, and arranged to have them published in a newspaper. He then feigned outrage over the insult to Mary’s honor, and challenged the newspaper’s editor, who was in on the scam, to a duel. In the ensuing fake fight, Stoney pretended to have been “mortally injured”, and appealing to Mary’s romantic side, begged her to grant him his dying wish: her hand in marriage.