With such facilities for marriage, and such unprincipled ministers, it may easily be imagined that iniquitous schemes of all sorts were perpetrated under the name of Fleet weddings. The parsons were ready, for a bribe, to make false entries in their registers, to ante-date weddings, to give fictitious certificates, and to marry persons who would declare only the initials of their names. Thus, if a spinster or widow in debt desired to cheat her creditors by pretending to have been married before the debt was contracted, she had only to present herself at one of the marriage-houses in the Fleet, and, upon payment of a small additional fee to the clergyman, a man could instantly be found on the spot to act as bridegroom for a few shillings, and the worthless chaplain could find a blank place in his Register for any year desired, so that there was no difficulty in making the necessary record. They would also, for a consideration, obliterate any given entry. The sham bridegrooms, under different names, were married over and over again, with the full knowledge of the clerical practitioners. If, in other instances, a libertine desired to possess himself of any young and unsuspecting woman, who would not yield without being married, nothing was easier than to get the service performed at the Fleet without even the specification of names; so that the poor girl might with impunity be shaken off at pleasure. Or if a parent found it necessary to legitimatise his natural children, a Fleet parson could be procured to give a marriage-certificate at any required date. In fact, all manner of people presented themselves for marriage at the unholy dens in the Fleet taverns,—runaway sons and daughters of peers,—Irish adventurers and foolish rich widows,—clodhoppers and ladies from St. Giles’s,—footmen and decayed beauties,—soldiers and servant-girls,—boys in their teens and old women of seventy,—discarded mistresses, “given away” by their former admirers to pitiable and sordid bridegrooms,—night-wanderers and intoxicated apprentices,—men and women having already wives and husbands,—young heiresses conveyed thither by force, and compelled, in terrorem, to be brides,—and common labourers and female paupers dragged by parish-officers to the profane altar, stained by the relics of drunken orgies, and reeking with the fumes of liquor and tobacco! Nay, it sometimes happened that the “contracting parties” would send from houses of vile repute for a Fleet parson, who could readily be found to attend even in such places and under such circumstances, and there unite the couple in matrimony!
Of what were called the “Parish Weddings” it is impossible to speak in terms of sufficient reprobation. Many of the churchwardens and overseers of that day were in the frequent practice of “getting up” marriages in order to throw their paupers on neighbouring parishes. For example, in the Daily Post of the 4th July, 1741, is the following paragraph:—
“On Saturday last the churchwardens for a certain parish in the city, in order to remove a load from their own shoulders, gave forty shillings, and paid the expense of a Fleet marriage, to a miserable blind youth, known by the name of Ambrose Tally, who plays on the violin in Moorfields, in order to make a settlement on the wife and future family in Shoreditch parish. To secure their point they sent a parish-officer to see the ceremony performed. One cannot but admire the ungenerous proceeding of this city parish, as well as their unjustifiable abetting and encouraging an irregularity so much and so justly complained of, as these Fleet matches. Invited and uninvited were a great number of poor wretches, in order to spend the bride’s parish fortune.”
In the Grub Street Journal for 1735, is the following letter, faithfully describing, says Mr. Burn, the treachery and low habits of the Fleet parsons:—
“Sir,—There is a very great evil in this town, and of dangerous consequence to our sex, that has never been suppressed, to the great prejudice and ruin of many hundreds of young people every year, which I beg some of your learned heads to consider of, and consult of proper ways and means to prevent for the future. I mean the ruinous marriages that are practised in the liberty of the Fleet and thereabouts, by a set of drunken swearing parsons, with their myrmidons, that wear black coats, and pretend to be clerks and registers to the Fleet. These ministers of wickedness ply about Ludgate-hill, pulling and forcing people to some pedling ale-house or a brandy-shop to be married, even on a Sunday stopping them as they go to church, and almost tearing their clothes off their backs. To confirm the truth of these facts I will give you a case or two which lately happened.
“Since Midsummer last a young lady of birth and fortune was deluded and forced from her friends, and, by the assistance of a wry-necked swearing parson, married to an atheistical wretch, whose life is a continued practice of all manner of vice and debauchery. And since the ruin of my relation, another lady of my acquaintance had like to have been trepanned in the following manner. This lady had appointed to meet a gentlewoman at the Old Playhouse in Drury-lane, but extraordinary business prevented her coming. Being alone when the play was done, she bade a boy call a coach for the city. One dressed 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 so 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 lady begged to be excused; but he bade the coachman drive on. Being come to Ludgate-hill, he told her his sister, who waited his coming but five doors up the court, would go with her in two minutes. He went, and returned with his pretended sister, who asked her to step in one minute, and she would wait upon her in the coach. Deluded with the assurance of having his sister’s company, the poor lady foolishly followed her into the house, when instantly the sister vanished, and a tawny fellow in a black coat and black wig appeared. ‘Madam, you are come in good time; the Doctor was just a-going.’—‘The Doctor!’ says she, horribly frighted, fearing it was a madhouse: ‘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 payed by you or that gentleman before you go!’—‘That gentleman,’ says she, recovering herself, ‘is worthy a better fortune than mine,’ and begged hard to be gone. But Doctor Wryneck swore she should be married, or if she would not, he would still have his fee, and register the marriage from that night. The lady, finding she could not escape without money or a pledge, told them she liked the gentleman so well, she would certainly meet him to-morrow night, and gave them a ring as a pledge, which, says she, ‘was my mother’s gift on her death-bed, enjoining that if ever I married it should be my wedding-ring.’ By which cunning contrivance she was delivered from the black Doctor and his tawny crew. Some time after this I went with this lady and her brother in a coach to Ludgate-hill in the day-time, to see the manner of their picking up people to be married. As soon as our coach stopped near Fleet Bridge, up comes one of the myrmidons. ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘you want a parson?’—‘Who are you?’ says I.—‘I am the clerk and register of the Fleet.’—‘Show me the chapel.’ ‘At which comes a second, desiring me to go along with him. Says he, ‘That fellow will carry you to a pedling alehouse.’ Says a third, ‘Go with me; he wilt carry you to a brandy-shop.’ In the interim comes the Doctor. ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘I’ll do your job for you presently!’—‘Well, gentlemen,’ says I, ‘since you can’t agree, and I can’t be married quietly, I’ll put it off ‘till another time:’ so drove away. Learned sirs, I wrote this in regard to the honour and safety of my own sex: and if for our sakes you will be so good as to publish it, correcting the errors of a woman’s pen, you will oblige our whole sex, and none more than, sir,
“Your constant reader and admirer, “Virtuous.”
Such are but a few of the iniquities practised by the ministers of the Fleet. Similar transactions were carried on at the Chapel in May Fair, the Mint in the Borough, the Savoy, and other places about London; until the public scandal became so great, especially in consequence of the marriage at the Fleet of the Hon. Henry Fox with Georgiana Caroline, eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond, that at length,—not, however, without much and zealous opposition,—a Marriage Bill was passed, enacting that any person solemnising matrimony in any other than a church or public chapel, without banns or license, should, on conviction, be adjudged guilty of felony, and be transported for fourteen years, and that all such marriages should be void. This act was to take effect from the 25th of March, 1754.
Upon the passing of this law, Keith, the parson who has already been alluded to, published a pamphlet entitled, “Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages.” To this he prefixed his portrait. The following passages are highly characteristic of the man:—
“ ‘Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing,’ is an old proverb, and a very true one; but we shall have no occasion for it after the 25th day of March next, when we are commanded to read it backwards, and from that period (fatal indeed to Old England!) we must date the declension of the numbers of the inhabitants of England.”—“As I have married many thousands, and consequently have on those occasions seen the humour of the lower class of people, I have often asked the married pair how long they had been acquainted; they would reply, some more, some less, but the generality did not exceed the acquaintance of a week, some only of a day, half a day,” &c.—“Another inconveniency which will arise from this act will be, that the expense of being married will be so great, that few of the lower class of people can afford; for I have often heard a Fleet-parson say, that many have come to be married when they have but had half-a-crown in their pockets, and sixpence to buy a pot of beer, and for which they have pawned some of their clothes.”—“I remember once on a time, I was at a public-house at Radcliff, which then was full of sailors and their girls; there was fiddling, piping, jigging, and eating: at length, one of the tars starts up, and says, ‘D—n ye, Jack, I’ll be married just now; I will have my partner, and....’ The joke took, and in less than two hours ten couple set out for the Fleet. I staid their return. They returned in coaches, five women in each coach, the tars, some running before, others riding on the coach-box, and others behind. The cavalcade being over, the couples went up into an upper room, where they concluded the evening with great jollity. The next time I went that way I called on my landlord and asked him concerning this marriage adventure. He at first stared at me, but recollecting, he said those things were so frequent that he hardly took any notice of them; for, added he, it is a common thing when a fleet comes in, to have two or three hundred marriages in a week’s time, among the sailors.” He humorously concludes, “If the present Act in the form it now stands should (which I am sure is impossible) be of service to my country, I shall then have the satisfaction of having been the occasion of it, because the compilers thereof have done it with a pure design of suppressing my Chapel, which makes me the most celebrated man in this kingdom, though not the greatest.”