There were many orders of Fleet Parsons, some not parsons at all. At the top of the tree was the “famous Dr. John Gaynam,” known as the “Bishop of Hell:” he made a large income and in his time coupled legions; and at the bottom were a parcel of fellows who would marry any couple anywhere for anything. The Fleet Parson of standing kept a pocket-book in which he roughly jotted down the particulars of each marriage, transcribing the more essential details to a larger register at home. Certificates, at a varying charge, were made out from these, and the books being thus a source of profit were preserved with a certain care. To falsify such documents was child’s play. Little accidents (as a birth in the midst of the ceremony) were dissembled by inserting the notice of the marriage in some odd corner of a more or less ancient record. This antedating of registers was so common as almost to deprive them of any value as evidence. Worse still, certificates were now and again issued, though there had been no marriage. Sometimes the taverners kept registers of their own, but how to establish a fixed rule?
Not all the “marriage houses,” as they were called, were taverns. They were often distinguished by some touching device: as a pair of clasping hands with the legend “Marriages Performed Within.” A feature of the system was the plyer or barker, who, dressed in ragged and rusty black, touted for Parson or publican, or it might be for self, vaunting himself the while clerk and register to the Fleet. “These ministers of wickedness” (thus, in 1735, a correspondent of The Grub Street Journal) “ply about Ludgate Hill, pulling and forcing the people to some peddling alehouse 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.” If you drove Fleetwards with matrimony in your eye, why, then you were fair game:—
Scarce had the coach discharg’d its trusty fare,
But gaping crowds surround th’ amorous pair.
The busy plyers make a mighty stir,
And whisp’ring, cry, “D’ye want the Parson, Sir?”
Yet the great bulk of Fleet marriages were in their own way orderly and respectable. Poor people found them shortest and cheapest. Now and again there are glimpses of rich or high-born couples: as, in 1744, the Hon. H. Fox with Georgina Caroline, eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond, of which union Charles James was issue. One odd species was a parish wedding: the churchwardens thought it an ingenious device to bribe some blind or halting youth, the burden of a neighbouring parish, to marry a female pauper chargeable to them; for, being a wife she immediately acquired her husband’s settlement, and they were rid of her. In one case they gave forty shillings and paid the expense of a Fleet marriage; the rag, tag, and bobtail attended in great numbers and a mighty racket was the result. According to the law then and long after, a woman by marrying transferred the burden of her debts to her husband. So some desperate spinsters hied them Fleetwards to dish their creditors; plyer or Parson soon fished up a man; and though, under different aliases, he were already wived like the Turk, what mattered it? The wife had her “lines,” and how to prove the thing a sham? Husbands, again, had a reasonable horror of their wives’ antenuptial obligations. An old superstition, widely prevalent in England, was that if you took nothing by your bride you escaped liability. Obviously, then, the thing to do was to marry her in what Winifred Jenkins calls “her birthday soot,” or thereabouts. So “the woman ran across Ludgate Hill in a shift,” for thus was her state of destitution made patent to all beholders.
When the royal fleet came in, the crews, “panged” full of gold and glory, made straight for the taverns of Ratcliffe Highway, and of them, there footing it with their Polls and Molls, some one asked, “Why not get married?” Why not, indeed? Coaches are fetched; the party make off to the Fleet; plyers, Parsons, and publicans, all welcome them with open arms; the knots are tied in less than no time; there is punch with the officiating cleric; the unblushing fair are crammed into the coaches; Jack, his pocket lighter, his brain heavier, climbs up on the box or holds on behind; the populace acclaims the procession with old shoes, dead cats, and whatever Fleet Ditch filth comes handy; and so back to their native Radcliffe, to spend their honeymoon in “fiddling, piping, jigging, eating,” and to end the bout with a divorce even less ceremonious than their nuptials. “It is a common thing,” reports a tavern-keeper of that sea-boys’ paradise, “when a fleet comes in to have two or three hundred marriages in a week’s time among the sailors.”
The work was mostly done cheap: the Parson took what he could get, and every one concerned must have his little bit. Thus, “the turnkey had a shilling, Boyce (the acting clerk) had a shilling, the plyer had a shilling, and the Parson had three and sixpence”—the total amounting to six shillings and sixpence. This was a fair average, though now and again the big-wigs netted large sums.
A Fleet marriage was as valid as another; but in trials for bigamy the rub was: Had there been any marriage at all? Some accused would strenuously maintain the negative. In 1737 Richard Leaver was indicted at the Old Bailey for this offence; and “I know nothing about the wedding,” was his ingenuous plea. “I was fuddled overnight and next morning I found myself a-bed with a strange woman and ‘Who are you? How came you here?’ says I. ‘O, my dear,’ says she, ‘we were marry’d last night at the Fleet.’” More wonderful still was the story told by one Dangerfield, charged the preceding year for marrying whilst Arabella Fast, his first wife, was still alive. Arabella and he, so he asserted, had plotted to blackmail a Parson with whom the lady entertained relations all too fond. At ten at night he burst in upon them as had been arranged. “‘Hey’ (says I), ‘how came you a-bed with my spouse?’ ‘Sir,’ (says he), ‘I only lay with her to keep my back warm.’” The explanation lacked probability, and “in the morning” the erring divine acknowledged his mistake:—“I must make you a present if you can produce a certificate” (he suspected something wrong, you see). Dangerfield was gravelled. Not so the resourceful Arabella. “‘For a crown I can get a certificate from the Fleet,’ she whispered; and ‘I gave her a crown, and in half an hour she brings me a certificate.’” The jury acquitted Dangerfield.