{"id":44601,"date":"2025-12-03T09:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T08:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/?post_type=mec-events&#038;p=44601"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T08:48:37","slug":"history-talk-elihu-yale-and-his-wicked-wife-david-ebsworth","status":"publish","type":"mec-events","link":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/events\/history-talk-elihu-yale-and-his-wicked-wife-david-ebsworth\/","title":{"rendered":"History Talk: Elihu Yale and his Wicked Wife. David Ebsworth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Elihu Yale may have given his name to one of the world\u2019s great universities, but he saved his most memorable flourish for his unfortunate wife, Catherine, whom he immortalised in his will with the deliciously vague insult \u201cmy wicked wife\u201d\u2014and then left a dramatic blank space for good measure. Yet Catherine was hardly the cardboard villain of his story: the spirited daughter of a Levant Company adventurer who helped bring Alicante wine to British tables, she had a pedigree as colourful as any Georgian novel. Meanwhile, Elihu\u2014nabob, merchant prince, and occasional scandal magnet thanks to the East India Company\u2019s murkier dealings\u2014left behind a tale so riddled with twists, contradictions, and marital theatrics that, as author David Ebsworth insists, it remains \u201cstranger than fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>David has given us many exceptional presentations in the past. He is a master storyteller and this will be no different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" data-id=\"44604\" src=\"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Eliyu-phone.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44604\" srcset=\"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Eliyu-phone.jpg 600w, https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Eliyu-phone-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"544\" height=\"385\" data-id=\"44603\" src=\"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/David-Ebsworth-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44603\" srcset=\"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/David-Ebsworth-1.jpg 544w, https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/David-Ebsworth-1-300x212.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 544px) 100vw, 544px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elihu Yale may have given his name to one of the world\u2019s great universities, but he saved his most memorable flourish for his unfortunate wife, Catherine, whom he immortalised in his will with the deliciously vague insult \u201cmy wicked wife\u201d\u2014and then left a dramatic blank space for good measure. Yet Catherine was hardly the cardboard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14692,"featured_media":44602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"mec_category":[287],"mec_speaker":[],"class_list":["post-44601","mec-events","type-mec-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mec_category-history-talks"],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec-events\/44601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec-events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/mec-events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44601"},{"taxonomy":"mec_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec_category?post=44601"},{"taxonomy":"mec_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u3ajavea.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec_speaker?post=44601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}