FLEET MARRIAGES.—The practice of contracting clandestine marriages was very prevalent in England before the passing of the first marriage act (see MARRIAGE). The chapels at the Savoy and at May Fair, in London, were long noted for the performance of these marriages; but no other place was equal in notoriety for this infamous traffic to the Fleet Prison. The first notice of a Fleet marriage is in 1613, and the first entry in a register is in 1674. Up to this time it does not appear that the marriages contracted at the Fleet were clandestine; but in the latter year, an order having been issued by the ecclesiastical commissioners against the performance of clandestine marriages in the Savoy and May Fair, the Fleet at once became the favourite resort for those who desired to effect a secret marriage. At first the ceremony was performed in the chapel in the Fleet, but by 10 Anne, chap. 19, sect. 176, marriages in chapels without banns were prohibited under certain penalties, and from this time rooms were fitted up in the taverns and the houses of the Fleet parsons for the purpose of performing the ceremony. Mr Besant's romance gives a vivid description of the persons who celebrated these marriages—real or pretended clergymen of the Church of England, who had been consigned for debt to the prison of the Fleet, and who shamelessly employed touts to bring to them such persons as required their office. The sums paid for a marriage varied, according to the rank of the parties, from half-a-crown to a large fee. During the time that this iniquitous traffic was at its height every species of enormity was practised. Young ladies were compelled to marry against their will; young men were decoyed into a union with the most infamous characters; and persons in shoals resorted to the parsons to be united in bonds which they had no intention should bind them. Registers of the marriages were kept by the various parties who officiated; a collection of these books, purchased by government in 1821, is deposited at Somerset House. In 1840 they were declared inadmissible as evidence in a court of law.
Various ineffectual attempts were made to stop the practice by acts of parliament, and at length, the nuisance having become intolerable, in 1753 an act was passed which struck at the root of the matter by declaring that all marriages, except in Scotland, solemnised otherwise than in a church or public chapel, where bans have been published, unless by special license, should be utterly void. The public, however, were unwilling to surrender their privilege, and on the 26th March 1754, the day before the act came into operation, there were no less than 217 marriages entered in one register alone. See Burn's History of Fleet Marriages (1833), and Ashton, The Fleet: its River, Prison, and Marriages (1888).