FLEET STREET MARRIAGES.
It is said that the Fleet Street marriages of London originated with the incumbents of Trinity, Minories, and St James’s, Duke Place. The incumbents claimed to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, and performed the marriages without banns or license. It is not exactly known in what year these gentlemen started their lucrative profession; but one named Elliot, who was rector of St James’s, was suspended by the Bishop of London in 1616 for performing these ceremonies. The trade was then taken up by clerical prisoners living within the Rules of the Fleet; and Mr Burn tells us that, as a rule, these were just the men—having neither money, character, nor liberty to lose—to adopt the profession; and he further says that they were in the main ‘lusty jolly fellows, but thorough rogues and vagabonds, guilty of various offences.’ That they were not ashamed of the business is evident from the fact that they advertised in the Daily Advertiser of that year to the following effect: ‘G. R.—At the true chapel, at the old Red Hand and Mitre, three doors up Fleet Lane, and next door to the White Swan, marriages are performed by authority by the Rev. Mr Symson, educated at the university of Cambridge, and late chaplain to the Earl of Rothes.—N.B. Without imposition.’
‘J. Lilley, at the Hand and Pen, next door to the China Shop, Fleet Bridge, London, will be performed the solemnisation of marriages by a gentleman regularly bred at one of our universities, and lawfully ordained according to the institutions of the Church of England, and is ready to wait on any person in town or country.’
There must have been great competition in the business, for we are told that there might be seen in corners of windows tickets stating ‘Weddings performed cheap here,’ ‘The Old and True Register,’ &c. But the great trade was at the ‘marriage houses’ whose landlords were also publicans, the Bishop Blaire, the Horseshoe and Magpie, the Fighting Cocks, the Sawyers, the Hand and Pen, the Bull and Garter, and the King’s Head, the last two being kept by warders of the Fleet prison.
The parson and landlord—the latter usually acting as clerk—divided the fees between them, after paying a shilling to the tout who brought in the customers.
The Grub Street Journal of January 1735 has the following: ‘There are a set of drunken, swearing parsons, with their myrmidons, who wear black coats, and pretend to be clerks and registers of the Fleet, and who ply about Ludgate Hill, pulling and forcing people to some peddling alehouse or brandy-shop to be married; even on a Sunday, stopping them as they are going to church and almost tearing their clothes off their backs.’
This is confirmed by Pennant, who says: ‘In walking along the streets in my youth, on the side next the prison, I have often been tempted by the question, “Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married?” The parson was seen walking before his shop, a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or a roll of tobacco.’
Ladies who were possessed, or supposed to possess means, were often kidnapped and forced to marry ruffians whom they had never seen. For instance, we read that a young lady of birth and fortune was forced from her friends, ‘and by the assistance of a wry-necked swearing parson, married to an atheistical wretch, whose life was a continual practice of all manner of vice.’
Again, we learn that a young lady appointed to meet a gentlewoman at the Old Playhouse, Drury Lane; but something prevented the gentlewoman coming, and the young lady being alone when the play was over, told a boy to fetch a coach for the city. ‘One like a gentleman helps her into it and jumps in after her. “Madam,” says he, “this coach was called for me; and since the weather is bad and there is no other, I beg leave to bear you company. I am going into the city, and will set you down wherever you please.”’
The girl begged to be excused; but the man told the coachman to drive on. The result was that she was driven to a house, where she was induced to go in on the pretext of seeing the man’s sister, who would accompany her the rest of the journey. The sister came, but immediately vanished, and in her place appeared a ‘tawny fellow in a black coat and black wig,’ who said: ‘Madam, you are come in good time; the doctor was just agoing!’
‘The doctor!’ exclaimed the girl; ‘what has the doctor to do with me?’
‘To marry you to that gentleman. The doctor has waited for you these three hours, and will be paid by you or that gentleman before you go!’
‘That gentleman,’ replied the girl, recovering herself, ‘is worthy a better fortune than mine,’ and begged to be allowed to go; but the men were obdurate; and when she found she could not escape without money or pledge, told them that she liked the gentleman so much, that she would meet him the next night and be married; but they did not allow her to go before she had given them some pledge, and she therefore gave them a ring, which, to quote her words, ‘was my mother’s gift on her death-bed, enjoining that, if ever I married, it should be my wedding ring;’ and by this means she escaped.
The indecency of these practices, and the facility they afforded for accomplishing forced and fraudulent marriages, were not the only evils, for we are told that marriages, when entered in the register, could be antedated without limit, on payment of a fee, or not entered at all; and women frequently hired temporary husbands at the Fleet, in order that they might be able to plead marriage to an action for debt. These hired husbands were provided by the parsons at five shillings each; and we are told that one man was married four times under different names, and received five shillings on each occasion ‘for his trouble.’
That the parsons did not always get the best of it may be supposed from the following extract from the register of the Fleet Marriages: ‘1740. Geo. Grant and Ann Gordon, bachelor and spinster: stole my clothes-brush.’—‘Married at a barber’s shop next Wilson’s—namely, one Kerrils, for half a guinea; after which it was extorted out of my pocket, and for fear of my life, delivered.’
We are told that all sorts and conditions of men flocked to the Fleet to be married in haste, from the barber to the officer in the Guards—from the pauper to the peer. Timbs, in his book on London, states that among the aristocratic patrons of these unlicensed clergy were Lord Abergavenny; the Honourable John Bourke, afterwards Viscount Mayo; Sir Marmaduke Gresham; Lord Banff; Lord Montague, afterwards Duke of Manchester; Viscount Sligo; the Marquis of Annandale; Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland; and others. Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann about Fox’s marriage as follows: ‘The town has been in a great bustle about a private match, but which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics. Mr Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox (eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond), asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father was a footman; her great-grandfather, a king. All the blood-royal have been up in arms.’
The Bishop of London attempted to put a stop to these marriages in 1702, but with very little effect; and it was not until 1754 that an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent them. It is stated that the day before the Act was to come into force (March 24), there were no fewer than two hundred and seventeen marriages recorded in one register book; and these were the last of the Fleet weddings.
A collection of the registers of Fleet Marriages was made in 1821, and was purchased by the government; they weighed over a ton.
After the Marriage Bill of 1754, the Savoy Chapel came into vogue. The following advertisement appeared in the Public Advertiser of January 2, 1754: ‘By authority—Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, decency, and regularity at the ancient royal chapel of St John the Baptist, in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time of the Reformation (being two hundred years and upwards) to this day. The expenses not more than one guinea—the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways by land to this chapel, and two by water.’
The proprietor of this chapel was the Rev. John Wilkinson, who fancied—as the Savoy was extra-parochial—that he was privileged to issue licenses upon his own authority, and so took no notice of the Act. During the following year, 1755, he married no fewer than eleven hundred and ninety couples. The authorities at last took the matter up, and Wilkinson went into hiding; but he got a curate named Grierson to perform the ceremonies, he still giving the licenses, by which he thought his assistant would be harmless; but this was not so. Two members of the Drury Lane company were united by Grierson; and Garrick hearing of this, obtained the certificate, and had Grierson arrested. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation; by which sentence, we are told, fourteen hundred marriages were declared void. We are not told what became of Wilkinson, whose trade was thus put a stop to.