[1368] Laud had put an end to these irregular marriages in the Tower. At his trial in 1644 he was for this accused of interfering with popular liberty, and ably defended himself by showing the legality of his action: Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 116, 117; Burn, op. cit., 145 n. 2.
[1369] Letters of Horace Walpole, II, 337 (Letter to George Montagu, Esq.).
[1370] Lecky, Eng. in 18th Cent., I, 531; Friedberg, op. cit., 344; Knight, Hist. of England, V, 586; cf. Burn, Fleet Marriages, 143.
[1371] Letters of Horace Walpole, II, 337; Burn, op. cit., 145, note; Lord Mahon, Hist. of England (New York, 1849), II, 280. On Keith see Burn, op. cit., 141-45; Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 158 ff.
[1372] Not the least evil connected with the Fleet marriages was the promotion of unions between the indigent and those morally unfit for the marriage relation: see Bond's speech on the Hardwicke act, Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XV, 46, 47. But, of course, as Ashton suggests, the lighter expense may have induced respectable people to seek the Fleet parson, or otherwise to marry privately. "A public marriage had come to be a very expensive affair. There was a festival, which lasted several days, during which open house had to be kept; there were the marriage settlements, presents, pin money, music, and what not."—Ashton, The Fleet, 333, 334, who also quotes Misson's description of a private marriage in the time of William III. For Misson's account, see also Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 109 ff.
In his speech against the Hardwicke act Mr. Nugent, to show how "fond our people are of private marriages, and of saving a little money," says that in a year six thousand were married in Keith's Chapel as against fifty in the neighboring St. Anne's Church, in a populous parish and convenient for private marriages by license, though the difference in expense was only 8 or 10 shillings: Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XV, 19; cf. ibid., 41.
[1373] Keith's Observations on the Act for Preventing Clandestine Marriages: Ashton, The Fleet, 363, 364; also in Burn, Fleet Marriages, 144, 145.
[1374] This "poem," in twenty eight-line stanzas, is given by Ashton, op. cit., 369-72.
[1375] Quoted by Burn, Fleet Marriages, 14, 15, note; Ashton, op. cit., 372-75; also by Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 338, 339, note; and Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 176, 177.
[1376] On the preservation of the Fleet registers see Ashton, op. cit., 382-88; Burn, op. cit., 66 ff.; Hammick, Marriage Law, 11, 12; and Whitaker, in the Cornhill Magazine, May, 1867. By 3 and 4 Vict., c. 92, the Fleet and Mayfair registers, twelve hundred books of various sizes, are deposited in the office of the registrar-general at Somerset House (Hammick, op. cit., 12).