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Clandestine marriages in London: an examination of a neglected urban variable†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Jeremy Boulton
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Abstract

This article sets out the incidence of clandestine marriage in Restoration London. Analysis of parish registers of large suburban parishes suggests that such private unions peaked twice in the capital's history, immediately after the Restoration and again in the first half of the eighteenth century. Understanding the phenomenon is important since the increase in private weddings on the scale encountered was unique to London. Historians have failed to explain the growth in such unions satisfactorily. The practice is unlikely to be explained by the growth of religious dissent, by a desire to save money or to circumvent parish or parental control over choice of spouse. The custom's popularity can be explained more convincingly by reference to wealthier Londoners′ traditional predilection for private weddings, which was sanctioned by the church, and to emulation of the habit by those lower in the social scale. Adoption of the practice was further facilitated by increasing levels of disposable income and by the commercialization of the wedding ceremony after the Restoration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1993 , pp. 191 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Anthony Benton, Brian Outhwaite, Tony Wrigley, Richard Wall, Roger Schofield, seminar audiences in Cambridge, East Anglia and Liverpool and anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful comments. My interest in the subject arose from discussions with the late Amanda Copley, to whose memory this paper is dedicated.

References

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7 These vows would be binding if they were delivered in the present tense, the ‘de praesenti’ vow. If delivered in the future tense they only created a binding union if followed by sexual intercourse.

8 The Hardwicke Act removed the legal validity of clandestine marriages by laying down that only a wedding celebrated in church according to the proper form would have legal force.

9 This was not thought to be the case, however, if it was one of the few special licences purchased from one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's officials: Burn, R.R., The Ecclesiastical Law (8th ed., 1824), vol. II, 464a–5.Google Scholar

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11 In 1670 the parish of St Paul Shad well was carved out of the parish of Stepney. All weddings in the new parish have been included in this analysis.

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31 Both the Faculty Office and the office of the Vicar General of the Archbishop of Canterbury were sited in London and customarily sold large numbers of licences to Londoners. They, too, experienced a revival of business when the clandestine centres were closed down; see Cokayne, G.E. and Fry, E.A. (eds), Calendar of Marriage Licences issued by the Faculty Office 1632–1714, British Record Society 33, 1905.Google Scholar Both the Faculty Office and that of the Vicar General continued to experience a revival in business after 1700. In 1730 together they issued 2,700 licences. See Barber, M., ‘Records of marriage and divorce in Lambeth Palace Library’, Genealogists Magazine, 20, 4 (1980), 109–17.Google Scholar

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34 For the exact area covered by the Rules, see Brown, , ‘Fleet marriages’, 117, n. 3.Google Scholar

35 Information from the late Amanda Copley, who worked extensively on the Fleet registers whilst undertaking a family reconstitution of the parish of St James, Clerkenwell. Even this may be a conservative estimate. Mr Stephen Hale found that 295 out of a sample of 709 Fleet weddings of Kentish couples were duplicates: Mr Anthony Benton, private communication.

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43 For details of London parish fees see Boulton, ‘Itching after private marryings’, passim.

44 Guildhall MS 25665. Lambeth Palace Library CM7/105. The parish of Stepney charged 6s 8d from 1684. The lowest fees charged in Restoration London were, in addition to those of Cripplegate, those of St Sepulchres, 3s, and Whitechapel, 3s 6d. See Guildhall MS 9531/18, fos 19v, 124r-v; 9531/16, fo. 200v.

45 For the Minories, see Tomlinson, E.M., A History of the Minoriez (London, 1907), 406.Google Scholar For the Fleet's fees, see Brown, , ‘Fleet marriages’, 124.Google Scholar

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