London, Volume 4
Knight, Charles
1843
LXXIX.-Fleet Marriages.
LXXIX.-Fleet Marriages.
If, by any inversion of the Rip Van Winkle adventures, a quiet, respectable London citizen of the present day could be suddenly abstracted from his home and the year , and, without losing any of his notions derived from that period of the world's history, be again set down, as it were, in the very heart of his native city a century or so earlier, he would meet with stranger things than in his philosophy he had ever before dreamt of as belonging to a time so little removed from his own. The costume, the comparatively miserable and dingy looking shops, the streets, the houses, the public buildings, would no doubt all more or less bewilder him; but it is not to such general matters we now refer, but to particular subject of universal interest, which would come before him with a perplexing and monstrous features.. Suppose him set down at , and wandering down towards his home by Bridge, wondering what makes the people wear such comical hats, long square coats, and endless waistcoats; and what can have become of all the cabs and omnibuses; and why the City Surveyor allows so many obstructions to exist in the street, as narrow pavements, projecting shop-windows, and overhanging great signs. But his whole attention is speedily engrossed by the novel words, He turns hastily, and sees that the question was put by a man in a black coat, but of very uncanonical appearance, who, like Chaucer's Sumpnour, has to a genteel young couple passing-raising the deep blush in the face of the , and something very like it in that of the other, who, however, with a smile, answers in the | ||
50 | negative, and they pass on: their time has not yet come. thinks our worthy citizen; and begins to remember him of sundry street jokes, familiar in his era, among the populace, and to wonder whether this is of the same class. But the man in the black coat pursues his vocation, and presently is seen to be not alone in it: others are busy tormenting every pair they meet with the same kind of question, varying only the words and manner. He steps aside to try if he can penetrate the mystery. A bookseller's shop is by his elbow, and in the window he sees the newspaper of the day, as unlike the double over the pages of which he has been accustomed to luxuriate at his breakfast of a morning, as things of the same name and object well may be; and on its front page the announcement that he reads runs thus :-- | |
[n.50.1] | ||
This makes our worthy citizen's confusion only more confounded; but through the mist he begins to have glimpses of a world where the only occupation is that of getting married, and where, consequently, every kind of device has been necessarily put in practice for the public convenience. Turning, with an inquiring eye, to look for the in the black coat, that worthy notices his glance, and thinking he may have occupation for him in view, steps up to him with a hand-bill, of which the following is a fac-simile:--
| ||
inquires the more and more surprised member of the | ||
51 | respectable ward of Farringdon Without. is the answer; (here he comes closer, and whispers)
| |
Before he can express his feelings, as a husband and a father, at such an offer, or investigate whether it is really and sincerely made as that can be fulfilled, a coach happens to pass slowly along, and instantly the player starts forward. It contains a single lady, but that is far from an objectionable circumstance. By this time a has got to the other window.
bawls a , half out of breath: And thus the lady is teased and insulted till the coach has passed so far as to show that the tenant does not intend to be married-to-day at least. Beckoning to the disappointed but indefatigable plyer, our friend, slipping a piece of money into his hand, remarks,
And therewith he runs off. | ||
Our citizen has no thoughts to waste on the strange aspect of the place at the bottom of Ludgate Hill--the ditch running along towards the Thames, and the bridge stretching across towards Fleet Street--for the symbols of the influences to which the whole neighbourhood seems devoted increase at every step. As he turns the corner, a board, placed within a window, stares him in the face,-- Another has,-- And every few yards along the Ditch and up the adjoining Fleet Lane he meets with similar notices. If anything could now add to our citizen's astonishment, it would be to see the kind of houses where these Hymeneal invitations are put forth so prominently. The at the corner of the Ditch; the by the prison; the a little alehouse, kept, it appears, by a turnkey of the Fleet; the kept by another turnkey; the the
the and the in Fleet Lane; the in the same place; the &c. &c.,--most, if not all, of them low inns and brandy-shops. Some of these are merely a kind of house of call for the parson and his customers, but sharing in the fee of the former as the price of their favour in sending for him; whilst the owners of others, of a more ambitious character, | ||
52 | reply to the questions of the citizen in words something very like those used by the distinguished lady of the great razor-strop maker-
and they tell him truly; the salary being generally about a week. | |
By this time our citizen's curiosity has become so much stimulated by the evidences of such novel, and, to him, unnatural practices, that he greatly desires to see a wedding performed; and his curiosity is soon gratified. coaches have just stopped opposite the door of the prison itself, containing females in each, whilst on the top and behind are several sailors; others, who could find no room, are running with shouts and laughter by the side. In the fulness of their hearts their story is soon told to the bystanders. It appears they were all assembled that morning at a public-house at Ratcliff for the purpose of enjoying themselves with the good things of the house, fiddling, piping, jigging, eating, and drinking, and without any thought of matrimony, till of the sailors started up, saying, &c. The joke took, and in less than hours the couple before us had started for the Fleet. But they are going the Fleet! heedless of the vociferations and anxiety of the neighbouring players. The citizen follows them. They stop at the door of a room where stands a coalheaver, who says, The party enter. The room is, on the whole, decently furnished with chairs, cushions, &c., but no parson is visible. Aware of the custom, and at the same time giving it their full approval, the sailors call for wines and brandy, which the parson deals in as a profitable appendix to his marriage-business; and search is set on foot for the reverend gentleman. Great is the joviality, and the party for some time overlook the unaccountable length of time the parson is absent. At last the discomfited messenger returns, and in the extremity of his despair at the loss, tells the truth without any circumlocution-his master is dead drunk! Consoling themselves with the reflection there are plenty more parsons in the Fleet, the party hurry out, but at the very door are met by a most respectable and venerable looking personage, who, in a tone of the greatest suavity, informs them he is ready to perform the office, and, before they have had time to consider of the application, opens another door, which, from the apology he makes to its tenant in a whisper, and a half-heard hint about , is evidently not his, and proceeds to work. If the worthy citizen has been surprised by all the preliminaries, the performance of the act itself is not of a character to moderate his emotions. As it goes on the drink is passed to and fro; winks, nods, whispers, and roars of laughter form a running accompaniment to the ceremony; practical jokes are played on the reverend functionary, whilst knowing fellow, a philosopher, who looks as well as gives as his name some facetious epithet, which so tickles the fancy of his brethren, that for some time the service, such as it is, cannot proceed; and at last the party growing tired, or perhaps other reflections beginning to work even at this late period, declare they are
| ||
53 | and are about to make a summary departure. The parson's suavity now disappears; with a volley of oaths, which the sailors return with interest, he demands his fees; and, after much squabbling, is paid at the rate of from or to or per couple for himself and clerk, according to the generosity or wealth of the parties; the parson finishing the whole affair by entering the particulars of the case in a dirty memorandum-book, with the addition Such is a brief sketch of the practices prevailing in the Fleet, as they were witnessed daily, in effect, by our ancestors a century ago.[n.53.1] | |
Up to , when the Bill passed which annihilated Fleet marriages, and substantially settled the law as it now is, marriage in England was regulated by the common law, which enjoined a religious and public form for the solemnization, but tolerated more private modes; in sense, indeed, it recognized any mode, for the marriage once performed, no matter in what manner, was held sacred and indissoluble, although the parties aiding and abetting might be punished by the ecclesiastical authorities. of the earliest clergymen who commenced marrying on a large scale, without licence or the publication of banns, appears to have been Adam Elliott, Rector of St. James, Duke's Place, who acted upon the claim for exemption from ecclesiastical jurisdiction put forth by the City with regard to the churches of St. James, Duke's Place, and Trinity, . In the parish register of the former, we find entries of marriages between the years and ! On some days between and couple have been married. This mine of wealth, which the ingenious rector had discovered) was not permitted to be worked freely; he was suspended by the Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, but allowed, on his petition, to return to his vocation after some delay. During his suspension, there appears every reason to suppose the Fleet marriages began, for about that period commence the Fleet Registers. These are the original books in which many of the Fleet parsons entered the marriages they performed, and which, after passing through various hands, among others of those who made a business of advertising them as open to the search of parties interested, and which were considered so valuable as to be frequently a special subject of bequest, were purchased by the Government in . The immediate origin of the Fleet marriages appears to have been as follows: A set of imprudent, extravagant, or vicious clergymen, confined in the Fleet for debt, and therefore in no condition to be deterred by the penalty of inflicted by the law on clergymen convicted of solemnizing clandestine marriages, tempted also by the opening made through Elliott's suspension, conceived the brilliant idea of making a kind of marriage-shops, open at all times, of their rooms in the prison, and most probably under still more arrangements than Elliott had permitted: there was but difficulty--the suspension from ecclesiastical functions, which was pretty sure to follow-but they knew well the state of the law; their marriages would be legal even after suspension: so, casting aside every other consideration but the gain that would accrue, they commenced marrying on the easiest terms, and, as they made a point of proclaiming, without hindrance of business or the knowledge of friends. Their marriages soon became highly popular among certain classes of the | ||
54 | community, and a fearful nuisance to others. By the beginning of the eighteenth century we find the parsons here carrying on an immense trade. In , on the petition of a Mr. Ashton, complaining of divers ill practices in the Fleet, a committee examined into the subject of the famous marriages, and reported the existence of many gross abuses in the Fleet, under the sanction of the Warden. From this time some little check appears to have been placed on the latter, but, on the whole, the evils went on steadily increasing up to the period of their sudden abolition. And the nature and extent of these evils would not now be believed, but for the decisive and manifold evidence furnished by those most interesting documents the registers before referred to. or of the registers are large books, but the remainder, a or more in number, are mere pocket-books, which the parsons or their clerks were accustomed to carry about with them to their places of business: in these they entered the particulars of the marriages immediately after the ceremony, and subsequently transcribed them, if paid to do so, into the larger registers; an arrangement that by no means prevented them from taking handsome sums for not making such additional entry when parties expressed a desire to have their marriage as secret as possible. If anything unusual occurred at a wedding, a note seems to have been commonly appended; and these notes form the most valuable and complete illustration we could desire of the system. We begin with a few extracts of a somewhat irregular nature, which may be as well dismissed :-- | |
In the account of another marriage we find recorded,
| ||
A wedding at which in pursuance of a vulgar error that a man was not liable to the debts of his wife, if he married her in this dress. | ||
This trick was frequently played, sometimes we presume as a joke, sometimes perhaps to endeavour to obtain the advantages before pointed out, of being supposed married in case of debt, without the danger or extreme degradation of a connexion with the low, fellows who
| ||
| ||
to help to pay the fee, no doubt. Another couple leave a
| ||
lent probably for the ceremony. | ||
| ||
55 | ||
At a certain marriage another was, it appears, a whilst at a
| ||
We have before referred to the frauds continually practised with regard to certificates; the following extracts will place this matter in the clearest light :-- And no doubt what was wanted was given; for whenever parties, from being unable to pay for indulgences, or from the parson being in a fit of repentance, are refused, it is beautiful to see the indignation which overflows in the comment on the circumstance. Here no result is stated, and therefore we may give a shrewd guess as to its nature. Another kind of application, which is of continual occurrence, is illustrated in the following: the cause of the application will be sufficiently clear; indeed, generally the matter is set down in terms too plain for our pages:-- These last few significant words show even more strikingly than the numerous entries of similar cases, to what an extent the ante-dating of certificates was carried in Fleet weddings. As a fitting appendix to this part of the subject, it may be observed that even the Fleet parsons had their gradations of assurance and rascality; in the lowest deep there was still a lower. On the trial of John Miller for bigamy, it was sworn by of the witnesses that anybody might have a certificate at a certain house for half-a-crown, without any ceremony of marriage whatever, and have their names entered in the book for as long time past as they pleased. | ||
Another species of accommodation was that of secrecy, obtained in various ways, but chiefly by allowing parties to be married merely by their Christian names, or by names evidently fictitious:-- Again: But there was a right and a wrong way, according to Fleet morality, of obtaining secrecy: the right being to acknowledge the desire for it, and pay accordingly; the wrong, to omit these important conditions. This consideration is evidently the moving influence in the following case, although coloured over by some virtuous indignation and pretence of injured innocence :-- But the malicious rascal has his revenge: the notice concludes with the words,
| ||
In other particulars respecting the performance of the ceremony, the Fleet gentry seem to have made it equally their rule, when paid for it, to suit the tastes and wishes of their customers. In case the parties are married abroad, but registered here; in another, the lady being sick in bed, the marriage is performed in her chamber; in a , the parties are married twice, the time by for which they paid and in a , a curious case, a Mrs. Hussey, a Quakeress, who was whilst at the marriage of John Figg and Rebecca Woodward, in , these men, to satisfy perhaps some religious scruple of the lady, dared, with their hands steeped in infamy, to administer the | ||
A class of marriages frequently performed here were the parish weddings, as they are called in the Register. says the of , But the Overseers only followed the example set them by greater men, the Justices, who were accustomed, when certain cases came before them, to send the parties to be married off hand at the Fleet: the unwilling swain consenting rather than go to prison. | ||
Perhaps the most painfully interesting cases are those of which the Registers furnish the fewest examples; not certainly for their unfrequency, but that they were attended by more than ordinary danger of the cognizance of the law, and were therefore, no doubt, generally omitted or stated in a way that could tell nothing to the uninitiated reader. We allude to the cases of abduction of heiresses and other young ladies of rank or respectability by sharpers, who found the Fleet a wonderful auxiliary to their operations: a moment of hesitation, and the thing was done. We have extracted in a former page the entry of the marriage of a gentleman with who were married without declaring their surnames: added to that notice are a few words, which, in all probability, indicate a world of misery: The reader will admire the parson's cautious phraseology as regards himself. In other cases there could not even be a pretence of acquiescence alleged on the part of the lady: sheer brute force was resorted to. Such a case is that mentioned in a newspaper of : [n.57.1] But the worthies of the Fleet did not always content themselves with being merely the agents of the villainy of others; occasionally they got up some profitable affairs of their own. The merit of the following scheme seems to have belonged solely to of that indefatigable body the plyers:-- [n.57.2] Whether John Todd or the lady was to be the victim of this ingenious arrangement does not appear very clear; but we may be sure the plyer knew what he was about when he laid out half-a-guinea in the affair. A more dashing and brilliant exploit is described ,in an interesting letter in the same newspaper of a later year, written by a lady, who having observed that a relation of hers had already fallen a victim to some of the villainous practices of the Fleet, proceeds to point out the adventure of a lady of her acquaintance. She The cunning, however, might have been spared; the knaves had obtained, no doubt, the kind of success they alone anticipated. Inferior spirits must have looked upon these exploits with envy, and have half grown ashamed of their own little trick of putting back the clocks after the regular hour when a passing sailor and his companion looked more than usually hymeneally inclined, and other manoeuvres of the like kind. | ||
From the preceding statement the general character and habits of the clergy of the Fleet will appear in tolerably vivid colours; an immense amount of additional evidence might be adduced to the same effect, showing them before the magistrates, convicted of swearing, of selling liquors, or for some of the drunken practices already described; here we find marrying in his nightgown, there another hiccupping out the words of the service, while a ekes out a scanty living by mendicancy: but sufficient has been given to show the operation of the general system, and we, therefore, close our view of the worst evils existing up to the middle of the last century, with a brief notice of some of the individuals who stood out most conspicuously among the actors. Dr. Gaynam, or Gainham, who is said to have been the gentleman emphatically denominated the Bishop of Hell, married here from about to . He seems to have been proud of his learning, and not at all uneasy as to his vocation; for when, on a trial for bigamy, he was asked if he was not ashamed to come and own a clandestine marriage in the face of a court of justice, he answered, with a polite bow, The extent of his business is vaguely shown in a remark he made on another and similar trial, when it was observed that it was strange he could not remember the prisoners, whom he professed to have married. was the reply-- Next in reputation to him, but after the Doctor's death, was Edward Ashwell, who died within the Rules of the Fleet in , a and an audacious villain, who was really not in orders, but who preached when he could get a pulpit: such at least is the character given him in a letter in the Lansdowne MSS. William Wyatt appears to have practised here from to . His is a curious case. In of his pocketbook Registers, under the date , we have the following memoranda of a kind of conversational argument between Mr. Wyatt's conscience and interests:-- says Conscience. Reply:
continues Conscience; There is no denying the truth of the remark; on the contrary, Conscience's antagonist, giving up the contest, despondingly acknowledges-- Then, after a scrap of Latin, the whole ends with the prayer-- The commentary on this is the fact that business went on so prosperously that, in , we find poor conscience-stricken Wyatt receiving his for a single month's marriages, merely, no doubt, to keep him from and that, in the same year, he set up an opposition chapel in May Fair, in the very teeth of the great man of the place, Keith. Among other parsons of the Fleet who may be summarily passed over are, William Dare, who married from to couple per month, and kept a curate to assist him; John Floud, who married not only at the Fleet, but also at the King's Bench, and the Mint, in ; James Lando, whose advertisement we transcribed verbatim in the commencement of our paper; Shadwell, a blind parson; and a host of others. But the greatest is yet behind; this was the far-famed Alexander Keith, the man who, in a published pamphlet against the Act of , could say with some truth, he adds, with delightful modesty, His principal place was in May Fair, where a chapel had been built about , and himself chosen to officiate; and where he added a new feature to the old system of Fleet Marriages, that of making clandestine marriages fashionable.[n.59.1] He was excommunicated in , and committed to the Fleet in the following year, where, like other great men, he made his very misfortunes, as he, of course, deemed them, redound to his wealth and fame.--He opened a little chapel in the Fleet, and commenced a thriving trade there, in addition to his May Fair business, which he kept going on without interruption through the agency of curates. Not the less, however, did he esteem himself a martyr to the cause. His wife died whilst he was in the Fleet, and he had her embalmed, and placed in a kind of funereal state, at an apothecary's in , in order, as he informed the public, to keep her till he could attend the funeral. Previously, also, of his sons died here, and the corpse was carried on a bier by men from the prison to Covent-garden, the procession stopping continually on the way, to enable the public to read the inscription on the coffin, We may add, that Keith himself died in the Fleet in . | ||
Of course, the state of things indicated in the foregoing pages did not escape all notice of the Legislature, or of the ecclesiastical authorities. The latter occasionally suspended a parson or , and the former passed Acts equally inefficient in practice. Among these may be mentioned the Act of , which ordered offenders to be removed to the County Gaol; and which, if energetically carried out, must, would suppose, have been effectual. But no substantial remedy was made or thought of, apparently, till the growth of that feature of the system already alluded to, its becoming fashionable, alarmed the heads of the | ||
60 | aristocracy for the safety of their own sons and daughters. And in the marriage of the Hon. Henry Fox with the daughter of the Duke of Richmond[n.60.1] excited a great deal of comment, and a sweeping alteration of the law was talked of. But the immediate cause of the famous Marriage Bill is said, by Horace Walpole, to have been a case which came before Lord Bath, in a Scotch cause, where a man, after a marriage of years, was claimed by another woman, on the ground of a (clandestine) pre-contract. But however that may be, the bill, as it was sent down to Parliament, became a complete battle-ground for party, and gave rise to some of the most curious and interesting of parliamentary debates. | |
In a letter from Walpole to the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, dated Strawberry Hill, , that most delightful of gossipers writes:-- In his Walpole has given a complete history of the progress of this bill, including his own views upon it. It may be interesting at the present day to see what could make such a man so determined an opponent of a bill which in its chief features, as regards the prevention of clandestine marriages, is not only still in force, but so completely acquiesced in as to be unquestioned. | ||
he says, No consideration of the character and abilities of the writer can prevent now from smiling at the absurdity of all these invectives against a Bill evidently admirably adapted for curing the evils we have endeavoured to point out, or from feeling something akin to indignation at the gross injustice shown to its author, the great Chancellor Hardwicke, whose very merit, that of probing the mischief to the bottom, and providing a suitable remedy, is here made his crime. But in the some of the most distinguished members did not hesitate to give utterance to even wilder opinions upon the necessity or consequence of the measure. said Mr. Charles Townshend, A Captain Saunders gave as his reason for voting against the Bill the case of sailors; which he illustrated by remarking that he had once given of his crew leave to go on shore, and the whole returned married! And not sailors only, it was carefully pointed out, would be hindered in their endeavours to obtain the comforts of wedlock, but the whole tribe of sailors, soldiers, waggoners, stage-coachmen, pedlars, &c. &c. Mr. Robert Nugent, who spoke with great energy, humour, and some little indecency, observed, and that Now there is so much force in this complaint, that the proposed Bill, by admitting of marriage by licence, to be obtained only at a considerable expense, did expose the poor, , to whatever unpleasantness might be attached to banns: and we need not add that this inequality remains to the present day. of the objections that the promoters of the Bill seem to have most dreaded was the prevalent belief in the sanctity of the marriage vow, no matter under what circumstances, legal or otherwise, it had been taken, and this plea was made some use of. Another objection was, that the Bill would increase the facilities for seduction, by giving the seducer an ever-ready excuse of the danger that might accrue to him from an immediate marriage; and certainly there is something in the objection. But the grand mischief that was pointed out was the aristocratic tendency of the whole measure. It was looked on by the opposition generally as initiated by and brought in for the especial benefit of the titled classes, enabling them to close their order, almost hermetically, against the approaches of any less privileged persons as wooers of their children--a kind of new game-law to prevent poaching on their preserves. says Mr. Nugent, And what was all this about? Simply because the law obliged both the rich heiress and the peer's son to wait till they were of age, when they might, as before, marry whomsoever they pleased! Upon the whole, the discussions on the Marriage Bill seem to us of the most striking cases on record of the blinding and mischievous effects of party spirit. | ||
Among the opponents in the we must not forget to mention the Right Hon. Henry Fox, a member of the Government, and the same gentleman we have before mentioned as availing himself of the Fleet accommodations. His conduct on the present occasion made him so popular, that the mob took the horses from his carriage as he passed to and from the House, and drew it themselves. In the common sense of the term, it could hardly be said to have been party spirit that made him so inveterate; but his speeches furnish the explanation. In the debates he attacked the Chancellor personally, under a thin veil, with the greatest virulence. Some kind of intimation, it is probable, was given him from a very high quarter, that his remarks had given offence; a circumstance that will explain his half apology on the reading, and the otherwise mysterious allusions in the Chancellor's terrible retaliation. Walpole thus describes the reading :-- [n.63.1] Fox was in when the particulars of the attack, and the half-hinted threat that he would be turned out of the ministry, reached him; he regretted to those around him that, on account of the close of the Session on the morrow, he could not answer it in a fitting manner. | ||
Out of doors the merits or demerits of the bill had been no less hotly debated. It is tolerably evident the great majority were decidedly opposed to the measure; they had, we presume, become so accustomed to the conveniences of the Fleet, as to have tacitly agreed to overlook its numerous evils. Hand-bills were distributed about the streets both for and against it, and among the pamphleteers who took up the cudgels was Keith himself, who published with a portrait of prefixed. The whole of his philosophy on the subject of Marriage is in admirable harmony with his life, and may be thus summed up in his own words- As we have seen, however, not even Keith's eloquence prevailed; and he was obliged to content himself with the consolations of his wit, and the independency which he was accumulating during the interval. says Walpole in a letter to George Montague, Esq., With regard to the other matter, his independency, we find in the for , the following paragraph:-- The last day of this pleasant state of things was the , when nearly couple were married by Keith; and in of the Fleet registers we find, under the same date, no less than marriages: a fitting conclusion of the Fleet Weddings. | ||
Footnotes: [n.50.1] Daily Advertiser, 1749. [n.53.1] See Burn's Fleet Registers: a work to the author of which we must express our great obligations. [n.57.1] Original Weekly Journal, Sept. 26, 1719. [n.57.2] Grub-Street Journal, Sept. 1732. [n.59.1] See Srawberry I-III, vol. iii., p. 110. [n.60.1] The eminent statesman Charles James Fox was the offspring of this marriage. [n.63.1] Walpole. |
