Some Disused Roads to Matrimony
Marriage according to the Canon Law—The English Law—Peculiars—The Fleet Chapel—Marriage Houses—“The Bishop of Hell”—Ludgate Hill in the Olden Time—Marriages Wholesale—The Parsons of the Fleet—Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act—The Fleet Registers—Keith’s Chapel in May Fair—The Savoy Chapel—The Scots Marriage Law—The Strange Case of Joseph Atkinson—Gretna Green in Romance and Reality—The Priests—Their Clients—A Pair of Lord High Chancellors—Lord Brougham’s Marriage Act—The Decay of the Picturesque.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The marrying in the Fleet is the beginning of eternal woe.” So scribbled (1736) Walter Wyatt, a Fleet Parson, in one of his note-books. He and his likes are long vanished, and his successor the blacksmith priest (in truth he was neither one nor other) of Gretna is also gone; yet their story is no less entertaining than instructive, and here I set it forth.
Some prefatory matter is necessary for the right understanding of what follows. Marriage, whatever else it may or may not be, is a contract of two consenting minds; but at an early age the church put forth the doctrine that it was likewise a sacrament which could be administered by the contracting parties to each other. Pope Innocent III., in 1215, first ordained—so some authorities say—that marriages must be celebrated in church; but it was not yet decreed that other and simpler methods were without effect. According to the canon law, “espousals” were of two kinds: sponsalia per verba de præsenti—which was an agreement to marry forthwith; and sponsalia per verba de futuro—which was a contract to wed at a future time. Consummation gave number two the effect of number one, and civilly that effect was the same as of duly celebrated nuptials; inasmuch as the church, while urging the religious ceremony upon the faithful as the sole proper method, admitted the validity of the others—quod non fieri debit id factum valeat (so the maxim ran). The common law adopting this, held that (1) marriage might be celebrated with the full rites of the church; or (2) that the parties might take each other for man and wife; or (3), which obviously followed, that a priest might perform the ceremony outside the church, or without the full ceremonial—with maimed rites, so to speak. Whatever penalties were incurred by following other than the first way the marriage itself held good.
I must here note that in 1844, in the case of The Queen against Millis, the House of Lords seemed to decide that there could not have been a valid marriage in England, even before Lord Hardwicke’s Act, which in 1753 completely changed the law, in the absence of an ordained ecclesiastic. The arguments and the judgment fill the half of one of Clark and Finnelly’s bulky volumes, and never was matter more thoroughly threshed, and winnowed, and garnered. The House was equally divided; and the opinion of the Irish Court of Queen’s Bench, which maintained the necessity of the priest’s presence, was affirmed. The real explanation, I think, is that, though the old canon law and the old common law were as I have stated, yet English folk had got so much into the habit of calling in the Parson that his presence came to be regarded as essential. The parties, even when they disobeyed the church by leaving undone much they were ordered to do, would still have “something religious” about the ceremony. In 1563 the Council of Trent declared such marriages invalid as were not duly celebrated in church; but Elizabeth’s reign was already five years gone, both England and Scotland had broken decisively with the old faith, and the Council’s decrees had no force here.
In England both church and state kept tinkering the Marriage Laws. In 1603 the Convocation for the Province of Canterbury declared that no minister shall solemnise matrimony without banns or licence upon pain of suspension for three years. Also, all marriages were to be in the parish church between eight and twelve in the forenoon. Nothing so far affected the validity of the business; and “clandestine marriages,” as they were called, became frequent. In 1695, an Act of William III. fined the Parson who assisted at such couplings one hundred pounds for the first offence, and for the second suspended him for three years. This enactment was followed almost immediately by another, which mulcted the clergyman who celebrated or permitted any such marriage in his church as well as the bridegroom and the clerk. The main object of this legislation was to prevent the loss of duties payable upon regularly performed marriages; but it strengthened ecclesiastical discipline.
Thus your correct wedding, then as now, had its tedious preliminaries; but the fashion of the time imposed some other burdens. There was inordinate feasting with music and gifts and altogether much expense and delay. Poor folk could ill afford the business; now and again the rich desired a private ceremony; here and there young people sighed for a runaway match. Also, outside this trim and commonplace century the nation’s life had not that smoothness which seems to us such a matter of course. Passion was stronger and worse disciplined; law, though harsh, was slow and uncertain. How tempting, then, the inducement to needy persons to marry cheaply and without ceremony! Now, London had a number of places of worship called Peculiars, which, as royal chapels, possessions of the Lord Mayor and alderman, or what not, claimed, rightly or wrongly, exemption from the visitation of the ordinary. These were just the places for irregular or clandestine marriages. Peculiars or not, as many as ninety chapels favoured such affairs. Chief among them were the Savoy, the Minories, Mayfair Chapel, and (above all) the Fleet, which—from a very early date to half a century ago—was a famous prison especially for debtors, standing on what is now the east side of Farringdon Street. It had a chapel where marriages were properly solemnised by 1613, and (it may be) earlier; but the records are somewhat scanty. Now, a number of dissolute Parsons were “fleeted” (as the old phrase ran) for one cause or another, and some might live outside the walls but within the rules or liberties of the Fleet, as the ground about the prison was called. These obtained the use of the chapel, where, for a reasonable consideration, they were willing to couple any brace forthwith. What terror had the law for them? Men already in hold for debt laughed at a fine, and suspension was a process slow and like to be ineffectual at the last. The church feebly tried to exercise discipline. On June 4, 1702, the Bishop of London held a visitation in carcere vulgo vocat’ ye Fleet in civitate London. He found one Jeronimus Alley coupling clients at a great rate. ’Twas hinted that Jeronimus was not a Parson at all, and proof of his ordination was demanded; “but Mr. Alley soon afterwards fled from ye said prison and never exhibited his orders.” Another record says that he obtained “some other preferment” (probably he was playing the like game elsewhere).
The legislature, in despair, as it might seem, now struck at more responsible heads. In 1712 a statute (10 Ann. c. 19) imposed the penalty of a hundred pounds on keepers of gaols permitting marriage without banns or licence within their walls. This closed the Fleet Chapel to such nuptials, but private houses did just as well. Broken-down Parsons, bond or free, were soon plentiful as blackberries; and taverns stood at every corner; so at the “Two Fighting Men and Walnut Tree,” at “The Green Canister,” at “The Bull and Garter,” at “The Noah’s Ark,” at “The Horseshoe and Magpie,” at “Jack’s Last Shift,” at “The Shepherd and Goat,” at “The Leg” (to name no more), a room was fitted up in a sort of caricature of a chapel; and here during the ceremony a clock with doubly brazen hands stood ever at one of the canonical hours though without it might be midnight or three in the morning. A Parson, hired at twenty shillings a week, “hit or miss,” as ’twas curiously put, attended. The business was mostly done on Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays; but ready, ay ready, was the word. The landlord or a servingman played clerk, and what more was wanted?