Elliot, in his “Memoirs,” has a view of his inn, which he, with characteristic effrontery, styles “The Marriage House.” Now if there was pre-eminently one marriage-house far and away superior to any other, it certainly was that of Gretna Hall, built in 1710 by one of the Johnstone family, whose elaborately sculptured coat of arms still remains over the doorway, even though the Johnstones vanished more than a century ago, and though in the interval the property has many times changed hands, and has been an inn and has reverted again to the condition of a private residence. It was about 1793 that Gretna Hall became an inn: a very superior inn, indeed, with three avenues approaching it: an inn where the neatest of “neat post-chaises” were kept, and where the coaches halted. So it remained until 1851. John Linton became landlord of Gretna Hall in 1825, and ruled for twenty-six years. He had been valet to Sir James Graham of Netherby, and was generally considered a superior man. He did not personally marry his guests, who were naturally gleaned from the front rank of fugitives; but generally employed David Lang, and when that worthy died replaced him by one who was by trade a shoemaker, and thus perhaps predisposed to join two ardent souls together. He paid his journeymen small sums for their journey-work, just as your dignified clergy pay curates for their labours. Notwithstanding this personal abstention on Linton’s part, he was generally known as “the Bishop.” The nickname at once shows the superior estimation in which he and his establishment were held, and carries an implied satire upon Right Reverend Fathers in God. An account rendered by John Linton to his guests would be a curiosity, if itemised. A handsome sum was, doubtless, set down for being married, among the insignificant items for food and lights. Although he did not officiate, he kept the registers of marriages at his house; and they are still in existence at Annan.
GRETNA HALL IN THE OLD DAYS.
THE WAKEFIELD CASE
A marriage that was really an abduction, and, as such, became a matter of extraordinary notoriety, to match the amazing audacity of the man who perpetrated it, was that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Ellen Turner, in 1826. The form of marriage was performed at Gretna Hall, on March 8th. Wakefield was at the time a widower, aged thirty. He had been educated at Westminster School, and by the influence of his first wife’s family had been given an appointment at the British Legation in Turin. This he resigned, and was living on his wits in Paris when he chanced to hear of Miss Turner, a beautiful girl sixteen years of age, and heiress to a great fortune. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant—afterwards M.P. for Blackburn, 1832-41—living at Pott Shrigley, in Cheshire, and was at the time at a boarding-school in Liverpool. Wakefield invented an ingenious and plausible story for marrying the girl and so securing her money. Coming to England, he called at the school in Liverpool with a letter purporting to be in her father’s handwriting, stating that he was ill and she was to return home in company with the bearer of the letter. No suspicions were awakened, and the girl was allowed to depart with him. During the journey by post-chaise, Wakefield, who seems to have been a scoundrel of wonderful address, told her that her father’s illness was really assumed, and that he was then, a ruined man, flying from his creditors to Scotland. They were to meet him at Carlisle and cross the Border together. At Carlisle, of course, no father was to be found, and Wakefield then declared that affairs were so serious that only a marriage with himself would save her parent from the horrors of a debtors’ prison. If she married him, he would at once advance her father £60,000. The story seemed of the crudest and most unconvincing kind, but it imposed upon Ellen Turner, and she agreed, in order to save her father, to marry Wakefield at Gretna.
The day following the marriage, Wakefield hurried her with him across England, and to Calais. From that strategic point he proposed to communicate with the girl’s father, and come to terms, but Wakefield very soon found himself arrested by the French police and sent over to England, to stand his trial at the Lancaster Assizes, for abduction, Mr. Turner in the meanwhile claiming his daughter.
Wakefield and a brother who had aided him were awarded the very light sentence of three years’ imprisonment apiece. In the following month the marriage was annulled by a special Act of Parliament. A curious point was raised during the trial, Serjeant Cross, for the prosecution, stating that “Had the offence been committed on English ground, the defendants would in the course of the law have been condemned to an ignominious death.”
Wakefield afterwards emigrated to Australia, and in 1838 acted as secretary to Lord Durham, in Canada. Apologists have stated that he redeemed his early faults by usefulness in the Colonies, but to most it will seem that he was an extremely dangerous man, only too leniently dealt with. He died in 1862.