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?
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.
The clergyman said to have officiated in both cases was the “famous
Dr. Gaynam” (so a witness described him), the aforesaid “Bishop of
Hell.” How could he recollect an individual face, he asked, for had
he not married his thousands? But it must be right if it was in his
books: _he_ never altered or falsified _his_ register. “It was as fair
a register as any church in England can produce. I showed it last night
to the foreman of the jury, and my Lord Mayor’s clerk at the London
punch-house” (a noted Fleet tavern): so Gaynam swore at Robert Hussey’s
trial for bigamy in 1733. A familiar figure was the “Bishop” in Fleet
taverns and Old Bailey witness-box. At Dangerfield’s trial neither
counsel nor judge was very complimentary to him; but he was moved not a
whit; he was used to other than verbal attacks, and some years before
this he was soundly cudgelled at a wedding--in a dispute about his
fees, no doubt. “A very lusty, jolly man,” in full canonicals, a trifle
bespattered from that Fleet Ditch on whose banks he had spent many
a scandalous year, his florid person verging on over-ripeness, even
decay, for he vanishes four years later. Was he not ashamed of himself?
sneered counsel. Whereupon “he (bowing) _video meliora, deteriora
sequor_.” Don’t you see the reverend rogue complacently mouthing his
tag? He “flourished” ’twixt 1709 and 1740. On the fly-leaf of one of
his pocket-books he wrote:
The Great Good Man w^m fortune may displace,
May into scarceness fall, but not disgrace,
His sacred person none will dare profane,
Poor he may be, but never can be mean,
He holds his value with the wise and good,
And prostrate seems as great as when he stood.
The personal application was obvious; but alas for fame! Even in Mr.
Leslie Stephen’s mighty dictionary his record is to seek.
Time would fail to trace the unholy succession of Fleet Parsons. There
was Edward Ashwell (1734-1743), “a most notorious rogue and impostor.”
There was Peter Symson (1731-1754), who officiated at the “Old Red
Hand and Mitre,” headed his certificates G.R., and bounced after
this fashion:--“Marriages performed by authority by the Reverend Mr.
Symson, educated at the University of Cambridge, and late Chaplain to
the Earl of Rothes. N.B.--Without imposition.” Then there was James
Landow (1737-1743), late Chaplain to His Majesty’s ship _Falkland_,
who advertised “Marriage with a licence, certificate, and a crown
stamp at a guinea, at the New Chapel, next door to the China Shop,
near Fleet Bridge, London.” Of an earlier race was Mr. Robert Elborrow
(1698-1702): “a very ancient man and is master of ye chapple” (he seems
to have been really “the Parson of the Fleet”). His chief offence was
leaving everything to his none too scrupulous clerk, Bassett. There is
some mention also of the Reverend Mr. Nehemiah Rogers, a prisoner, “but
goes at large to his living in Essex and all places else.” Probably
they were glad to get rid of him for “he has struck and boxed ye
bridegroom in ye Chapple and damned like any com’on souldier.” _Mulli
praeterea, quos fama obscura recondit._ How to fix the identity of the
“tall black clergyman” who, hard by “The Cock” in Fleet Market, pressed
his services on loving couples? Was he one with the “tall Clergyman who
plies about the Fleet Gate for Weddings,” and who in 1734 was convicted
“of swearing forty-two Oaths and ordered to pay £4 2_s._”?
In 1753 Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (26 Geo. II. cap. 3) put a sudden
stop to the doings of those worthies. Save in the case of Jews and
Quakers, all marriages were void unless preceded by banns or licence
and celebrated according to the rites of the Church of England in a
church or chapel of that communion. The Priest who assisted at an
irregular or clandestine marriage was guilty of a felony punishable
by fourteen years’ transportation. The Bill was violently opposed;
and, according to Horace Walpole, was crammed down the throats of both
Houses; but its policy, its effects, as well as later modifications of
the marriage law, are not for discussion here.
I turn to the registers wherein the doings of the Fleet Parsons are
more or less carefully recorded. In 1783 most of those still extant
had got into the hands of Mr. Benjamin Panton. “They weighed more than
a ton”; were purchased by the Government for £260 6_s._ 6_d._, and
to-day you may inspect them at Somerset House. There are between two
and three hundred large registers and a thousand or more pocket-books
(_temp._ 1674-1753). Not merely are the records of marriages curious
in themselves, but also they are often accompanied by curious comments
from the Parson, clerk, taverner, or whoever kept the book. The oddest
collection is in a volume of date 1727-1754. The writer used Greek
characters, though his words are English, and is as frank as Pepys,
and every bit as curious. Here are a few samples from the lot: “Had a
noise for four hours about the money” was to be expected where there
were no fixed rates; but “stole my clouthes-brush,” and “left a pott of
4 penny to pay,” and “ran away with the scertifycate and left a pint
of wine to pay for,” were surely cases of exceptional roguery. Curious
couples presented themselves:--“Her eyes very black and he beat about
ye face very much.” Again, the bridegroom was a boy of eighteen, the
bride sixty-five, “brought in a coach by four thumping ladies” (the
original is briefer and coarser) “out of Drury Lane as guests”; and yet
the Parson had “one shilling only.” He fared even worse at times. Once
he married a couple, money down, “for half a guinea,” after which “it
was extorted out of my pocket, and for fear of my life delivered.” Even
a Fleet Parson had his notion of propriety. “Behav’d very indecent and
rude to all,” is one entry; and “N.B. behav^d rogueshly. Broke the
Coachman’s Glass,” is another. Once his reverence, “having a mistrust
of some Irish roguery,” though the party seemed of better rank than
usual, asked indiscreet questions. The leader turned on him with the
true swagger of your brutal Georgian bully. “What was that to me?
G---- dem me, if I did not immediately marry them he would use me ill;
in short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, I found myself obliged
to marry them _in terrorem_.” Again, he had better luck on another
occasion: “handsomely entertained,” he records; and of a bride of June
11, 1727, “the said Rachel, the prettiest woman I ever saw.” (You fancy
the smirk wherewith he scrawled that single record of the long vanished
beauty!) He is less complimentary to other clients. His “appear^d a
rogue” and “two most notorious thieves” had sure procured him a broken
pate had his patrons known! How gleefully and shamelessly he chronicles
his bits of sharp practice! “Took them from Brown who was going into
the next door with them,” was after all merely business; but what
follows is _not_. In 1729 he married Susannah Hewitt to Abraham Wells,
a butcher. The thing turned out ill; and in 1736 she came back, and
suggested annulment by the simple expedient of destroying the record;
when “I made her believe I did so, for which I had a half a guinea.”
Nor was there much honour among the crew of thieves. “Total three and
sixpence, but honest Wigmore kept all the money so farewell him,” is an
entry by the keeper of a marriage house, whom a notorious Fleet Parson
had dished. Another is by a substitute for the same divine:--“Wigmore
being sent for but was drunk, so I was a stopgap.” I confess to a
sneaking fondness for those entertaining rascals, but enough of their
pranks.
Of the other places where irregular marriages were celebrated two
demand some notice. One was Keith’s Chapel in Mayfair, “a very
bishopric of revenue” to that notorious “marriage broker” the Reverend
Alexander Keith. His charge was a guinea, and, being strictly
inclusive, covered “the Licence on a Crown Stamp, Minister’s and
Clerk’s fees, together with the certificate.” No wonder he did a
roaring trade! Keith seemed a nobler quarry than the common Fleet
Parson, and the ecclesiastical authorities pursued him in their courts.
In October 1742, he was excommunicated: with matchless impudence he
retorted by excommunicating his persecutors from the Bishop downwards.
Next year they stuck him in the Fleet; but, through Parsons as reckless
as himself, he continued to “run” his chapel. In 1749 he made his
wife’s death an occasion for advertisement: the public was informed
that the corpse, being embalmed, was removed “to an apothecary’s in
South Audley Street, where she lies in a room hung with mourning,
and is to continue there until Mr. Keith can attend her funeral.”
Then follows an account of the chapel. One authority states that six
thousand marriages were celebrated there within twelve months; but
this seems incredible. That sixty-one couples were united the day
before Lord Hardwicke’s Act became law is like enough. Here took
place, in 1752, the famous marriage of the fourth Duke of Hamilton to
the youngest of the “beautiful Miss Gunnings,” “with a ring of the
bed curtain half an hour after twelve at night,” as Horace Walpole
tells. And here, in September 1748, at a like uncanny hour, “handsome
Tracy was united to the butterman’s daughter in Craven Street.” Lord
Hardwicke’s Act was elegantly described as “an unhappy stroke of
fortune” by our enterprising divine. At first he threatened another
form of competition:--“I’ll buy two or three acres of ground and by God
I’ll under-bury them all.” But in the end he had to own himself ruined.
He had scarce anything, he moaned, but bread and water, although he had
been wont to expend “almost his whole Income (which amounted yearly
to several Hundred Pounds per Annum) in relieving not only single
distressed Persons, but even whole Families of wretched Objects of
Compassion.” The world neither believed nor pitied; and he died in the
Fleet on December 17, 1758.