Part 6

The case continued to excite enormous interest, increased by an account which she issued from prison of her father’s death and her relations with Cranstoun. She was constant in her professions of innocence, “nor did anything during the whole course of her confinement so extremely shock her as the charge of infidelity which some uncharitable persons a little before her death brought against her.” Some were convinced and denied her guilt, “as if,” said Horace Walpole, “a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie.” Others said she had hopes of pardon “from the Honour she had formerly had of dancing for several nights with the late P----e of W----s, and being personally known to the most sweet-tempered P--ess in the world.” The press swarmed with pamphlets. The Cranstoun correspondence, alleged not destroyed, was published--a very palpable Grub Street forgery! and a tragedy, _The Fair Parricide_, dismal in every sense, was inflicted on the world. The last scene of all was on April 6, 1752. “Miss Blandy suffered in a black bombazine short sack and petticoat, with a clean white handkerchief drawn over her face. Her hands were tied together with a strong black riband, and her feet at her own request almost touched the ground” (“Gentlemen, don’t hang me high for the sake of decency,” an illustration of British prudery which has escaped the notice of French critics). She mounted the ladder with some hesitation. “I am afraid I shall fall.” For the last time she declared her innocence, and soon all was over. “The number of people attending her execution was computed at about 5000, many of whom, and particularly several gentlemen of the university, were observed to shed tears” (tender-hearted “gentlemen of the university”!) “In about half an hour the body was cut down and carried through the crowd upon the shoulders of a man with her legs exposed very indecently.” Late the same night she was laid beside her father and mother in Henley Church.

Cranstoun fled from justice and was outlawed. In December that same year he died in Flanders.

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?

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.