[1386] "Lord Bath invented this Bill, but had drawn it so ill, that the Chancellor was forced to draw a new one—and then grew so fond of his own creature, that he has crammed it down the throats of both Houses, though they gave many a gulp before they could swallow it."—Walpole to Conway, May 24, 1753: Horace Walpole's Letters, II, 334-36; also in Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XV, 33.
[1387] For contemporary discussions see Gentleman's Magazine, XXIII, 399, 400, 452, 453, 538; XXIV, 145; XXV, 212; Monthly Review, XII, 111 ff., 438-46 (notices of various pamphlets including some by Dr. Stebbing); ibid., XIII, 92-95, 394 ff.; XVI, 371; XXXII, 233; XL, 226, 425-56. Compare Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 352 n. 1, who gives the titles of several pamphlets relating to the act; Madan, Thelyphthora, II, 38-90, "cannot mention or even think" of it "without indignation," because it "strikes at a divine institution."
[1388] Burn, Fleet Marriages, 16; Tegg, The Knot Tied, 206. For the debates in the Commons see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XV, 2-86; and compare the excellent analysis by Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 350-52; also Horace Walpole, Letters, II, 334-36; idem, Memoirs of George II., I, 336-49; Burn, Parish Registers, 32, 33; idem, Fleet Marriages, 16 ff., 22-31 (entire account of Lord Orford quoted); Lecky, Eng. in 18th Cent., I, 539; idem, Democracy and Liberty, II, 174-77; Spencer Walpole, Hist. of Eng., IV, 69, 70; Knight, Hist. of Eng., V, 585; Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng., II, 280-82; Hammick, Marriage Law, 12, 13; and Oppenheim, "Die Verhandlungen des Eng. Parliaments über Einführung der Civil-Ehe," ZKR., I, 9 ff., 14, 15, 20-22.
[1389] Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 183, 174, 175, note. Royal marriages were not comprehended by the Hardwicke act; hence irregular marriages of royal persons were still legal. On September 6, 1766, in a mansion in Pall Mall, Maria, Countess-Dowager of Waldgrave, niece of Horace Walpole, contracted a clandestine marriage, without witnesses, banns, license, or record, with the Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III. Her private chaplain performed the ceremony; hence, except in form, this was not strictly a Fleet marriage. A few years later, on Oct. 2, 1771, another brother of the king, the Duke of Cumberland, formed a similar irregular alliance with Anne Horton; but in this case there were a witness and a memorandum. Both marriages were declared legal by a special commission: see the chapter of Jeaffreson, on "Two Royal Marriages," op. cit., II, 234-49.
[1390] All the amendments "were designed to aggravate the aversion which the populace had conceived for a measure that appeared to them an attempt to deprive them of cheap and convenient marriage, with a view to preserve the children of the aristocracy from the misfortune of premature and imprudent matrimony.... The main object of the bill was, in the first instance, to abolish the law of matrimonial pre-contract throughout the kingdom." Therefore Henry Fox, to render it unsatisfactory to its promoters and "so ridiculous to the whole country," managed to have Scotland exempted from the operation of the law, although the suit which gave rise to the measure originated there: Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 183 ff.; cf. Burn, Fleet Marriages, 19.
[1391] Cobbett, Par. Hist., XV, 3. Cf. similar expressions by Mr. Bond, ibid., 41 ff.
[1392] Mr. Bond appears in this statement to be somewhat in error; for optional civil marriage existed in the Netherlands since 1656: see p. 409, above.
[1393] Speech of Mr. Bond, in Cobbett, op. cit., XV, 43, 44. Townshend (ibid., 57, 58) replies to the argument based on the laws of the Dutch. The people and the institutions are very different from the English and therefore afford no precedent. "In Holland not only every province but every town is a sort of sovereignty within itself; and their religion, especially with regard to marriage, is much the same as it was in this country in the days of Oliver Cromwell, when neither the marriage contract, nor the ceremony was supposed to have any sanctity or religion in its nature." Then follows this delicious bit of comparison: "The Dutch, sir, are naturally a cool, patient people, and not given to sudden changes, either in their tempers or passions; therefore the rendering a proclamation of banns necessary may do very well in that country; but in this, where the people are naturally sanguine, impatient, and as apt to change as the air they breathe, I am convinced that such a regulation would be the cause of numberless mischiefs."
[1394] Fox (Cobbett, loc. cit., 73) deprecates "making so free with the laws of God and nature." See also Nugent (ibid., 12-14) and Beckford (ibid., 82, 83). On the other side, the Earl of Hillsborough asks whether even the "vulgar can believe, that there is anything sacred in a ceremony performed in a little room of an ale-house in the Fleet, and by a profligate clergyman whom they see all in rags, swearing like a trooper and higgling about what he is to have for his trouble, and half drunk at the very time he is performing the ceremony."
[1395] Ryder, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 6, 7. Cf. the speech of Lord Barrington, ibid., 27, 28, who thinks the state as much justified in requiring that a marriage to be valid shall depend upon the observance of certain prescribed forms, as it is in demanding that a legally binding oath shall be taken before duly authorized persons. These arguments are criticised by Nugent (ibid., 22, 23) and by Beckford (ibid., 82, 83).