‘Fleet Marriages’ and other Irregular or Clandestine Marriages

The civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales was first introduced in 1837. However, parish churches in England and Wales had been ordered to keep parish records since 1538. For this reason, family historians recommend that parish records are usually the first place to look when researching baptisms, marriages and burials prior to 1837.

However, if you can’t find your ancestors’ marriage records in the parish registers it is possible that, along with a sizeable minority of the English and Welsh population, they had a ‘clandestine’ or ‘irregular’ marriage.



These types of marriage are often termed ‘Fleet Marriages’. This is because such a large proportion of irregular or clandestine marriages took place in or around Fleet Prison in London – for reasons that will soon become clear.

By the early 18th Century, it was estimated that up to a third of all marriages were irregular or clandestine^[1]. In addition, around half of all marriages in London were performed at or around Fleet prison (which equated to around one seventh of all English weddings). Many couples travelled to London to get married so ‘Fleet Registers’ are well worth researching, even if your ancestors had no obvious London connection.

Various attempts were made by the authorities to stamp out irregular or clandestine marriages. They were banned by the Marriage Act (1753) in 1754.

What are irregular or clandestine marriages?

Since the 13th Century, Church Law (‘Canon Law’) imposed strict rules for a valid marriage. From the 16th Century onwards, a couple could avoid some of these rules (see below) by obtaining a Marriage Licence, but this was expensive.

Irregular marriages were marriages that did not comply with Church Law, whilst clandestine marriages were irregular marriages that had an added element of secrecy.

Irregular or clandestine marriages did, however, comply with English Common Law and they were perfectly valid for the purposes of, say, inheritance and proof of legitimacy.

Here is a comparison of the rules that governed a valid marriage in Church Law and in Common Law up until the Marriage Act came into force in 1754:

Rules for a valid marriage in Church Law	Rules for a valid marriage in Common Law
*This was briefly raised during Cromwell’s Protectorate in the 1650s to 16 years (males) and 14 years (females). It was not raised permanently (to 16 years for both sexes) until the Age of Marriage Act 1929. ** Marriage banns were a series of public announcements which were made on three consecutive Sundays prior to the wedding. These declarations were made from the church or chapel in which the wedding was to take place and gave the names of the engaged couple.
There must be consent.	There must be consent.
Legal age for marriage: 14 years (males), 12 years (females)*.	Legal age for marriage: 14 years (males), 12 years (females)*.
Must be conducted by an Anglican clergyman.	Must be conducted by an Anglican clergyman.
Marriage banns** had to be called OR: pay for a Marriage Licence.
Marriage had to take place in the parish of at least one of the couple. OR: pay for a Marriage Licence.
Parental consent required if either couple was aged under 21 years.
Witnesses required.
The marriage must be during ‘canonical hours’ i.e. between 8am and noon.[2]

Why did clandestine or irregular marriages become so popular?

Although there were many reasons for their popularity, the main reasons were:

• Cost. They were usually cheaper than a parish church wedding.
• Privacy.
• Speed.
• Parental consent was not required.
• Secrecy. Essential if, for example, an inheritance might be lost if a marriage was exposed.
• ‘Flexibility’ of dates. Backdating marriage certificates to confirm legitimacy or secure an inheritance was common.
• To claim poor relief in a particular parish. To prove ‘settlement’ in a particular parish, some proof of marriage was often required.
• Bigamy. In the days before centralised records, a bigamous marriage performed without banns and outside the parish of bride and groom had a good chance of going undetected.
• To escape debt (females only). If a single woman incurred debts and then got married, her debts transferred to her husband under the law of ‘coverture’.

Who performed clandestine or irregular marriages?

As discussed, a Common Law marriage had to be conducted by an ordained Anglican Clergyman. In practice, those clergymen fortunate enough to have a ‘living’ (i.e. regular income) were unlikely to risk the disapproval of the Church authorities by conducting such marriages.

However, there were many ‘unbeneficed clergymen’ (i.e. those without a regular income). This less fortunate group of clergymen often relied on the fees they could charge for conducting irregular or clandestine marriages.

Where were clandestine or irregular marriages performed?

Up until the late 1600s, there were a great number of ‘lawless’ churches and chapels scattered throughout England and Wales. They claimed exemption from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and performed clandestine or irregular marriages.

The most notorious early examples were in the City of London. Clandestine marriages were held in the Tower of London (the White Tower) until around 1630, when Archbishop Laud put a stop to them. St James Duke’s Place and Holy Trinity Minories gratefully took up the slack, claiming exemption from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. At St James Duke’s Place, the earliest Marriage Register covering the period 1664 – 1691 contained 40,000 marriages. St Botolph’s Aldgate was also prolific.

Attempts by the establishment to stamp them out – and the unintended consequences

By the late 1600s, the Church authorities and Parliament had become increasingly keen to stamp out the practice. Their (mainly financial) concerns were over:

• The lost revenue from marriage fees.
• The legal ambiguity that these types of marriages created, particularly surrounding inheritance.

In 1686, the Order of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners against Clandestine Marriages imposed suspensions and punishments for clergymen performing irregular marriages. In the same year, the Rector of St James Duke’s Place was suspended.

Parliament also stepped in. The Marriage Duty Act (1695) imposed penalties for conducting irregular marriages. In 1696, an act ‘enforcing the Laws which restrain Marriages without Licence or Banns’ imposed a £100 fine for offending clergymen and a £10 fine for the offending groom.

By the late 1600s, the Church of England and Parliament had largely succeeded in reining in those clergymen who performed irregular or clandestine marriages; provided those clergymen had assets or a reputation to lose. The numbers of weddings at St James Duke’s Place and Holy Trinity Minories slowed, particularly after the suspension of the Rector of St James Duke’s Place.

However, some clergymen had ‘neither liberty, money, nor credit to lose’ ^[3]. The various measures to end irregular marriages did not affect them. Quite the opposite in fact; these men had now been gifted a near monopoly on the practice. Such clergymen included debtors languishing in debtors’ prisons such as Fleet Prison and Kings Bench Prison.

Fleet Prison

Fleet Prison was a debtors’ prison based in Fleet Market (modern day Farringdon Street) in the City of London. For a fee, inmates of the Prison were able to live in the surrounding area comprising parts of Ludgate Hill, the Old Bailey and Fleet Lane. This area was known as the ‘Rules of the Fleet’ or the ‘Liberty of the Fleet’. The ‘Rules’ included private houses, taverns and coffee shops, so that inmates were perfectly capable of living in some comfort, provided they had ready cash.

The earliest mention of a ‘Fleet Marriage’ is contained in a letter dated September 1613 ^[4]. It refers to the marriage of George Lester, a debtor and inmate of the prison, to Miss Babbington, ‘a woman of good wealth’. It was observed that he would now be able to ‘maintain himself in prison’ but, intriguingly, he seemed unable (or unwilling?) to buy himself out of it.

The earliest Fleet Register is dated from 1674. ‘Fleet’ weddings were initially held in the Fleet Prison Chapel itself, with the prison warden taking a cut of the proceeds. However, as business boomed the weddings spilled out into the various taverns, coffee houses and private houses in the ‘Rules of the Fleet’. Not only did the clergymen charge a fee, but so did the tavern keeper on whose premises the marriages were performed. There were also touts hanging around to bring in business; sailors were particularly lucrative.

Sometimes the clergyman lived ‘in house’. On other occasions, they were sent for. There are records of clergymen based in the ‘Rules’ of the Fleet being booked to perform irregular weddings in the towns and villages outside of London.

“The practice continued to increase at the Fleet, which was resorted to by persons of all ranks and conditions in life, from the nobleman to the chimney-sweeper, who desired to be married with secrecy and dispatch. Neither the penalties of the before-mentioned acts, nor even excommunication, had any effect in preventing these marriages, which it was well known were valid and indissoluble, although irregular.” ^[5].

In a classic example of Parliament closing the stable door once the horse had bolted, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1711 imposing a fine on any prison warden who allowed weddings in the Prison Chapel. By this stage, most ‘Fleet Marriages’ were conducted in the ‘Rules’.

In 1712, another Act of Parliament was passed with the intention of punishing those clergymen who were already in prison. However, business continued unabated.

By the 1740s, it was estimated that a half of all weddings in London were performed at the Fleet i.e. around 6,500 per year.

The day before the ban on irregular or clandestine marriages came into effect, one Fleet register recorded 217 marriages. ^[6]

Kings Bench Prison and the ‘Liberty of the Mint’

Many clandestine marriages were also performed at Kings Bench Prison and its surrounding area, known as the ‘Liberty of the Mint’ or just ‘the Mint’ (a debtors’ sanctuary similar to the ‘Liberty of the Fleet’). This area catered mainly for couples travelling in from Kent or Surrey but was nowhere near as notorious as Fleet Prison.

May Fair Chapel

May Fair Chapel, built in around 1728, came late to the party. However, it soon became the place for “fashionable clandestine marriages” ^[7] – and charged accordingly. The Rev. Alexander Keith, who performed irregular marriages at Mayfair, was accused of earning ‘a very bishopric of revenue’^[8].

Following complaints from the Rector of neighbouring St George’s Chapel, he was excommunicated and sent to Fleet Prison in 1743. However, he was still able to set up a new Chapel ten yards from his old Chapel and employed assistant curates (who were also Fleet clergymen) to perform weddings there. Here is an extract of an advert he ran, confirming his new address and prices:

“To prevent mistakes, the little new chapel in May Fair, near Hyde Park corner, is in the corner house opposite to the City side of the great chapel, and within ten yards of it … and the License on a Crown Stamp, Minister and Clerk’s fees, together with the Certificate, amount to one guinea as heretofore, at any hour till four in the afternoon. And that it may be the better known, there is a porch at the door like a country church porch.” – Daily Post, July 20, 1744. ^[9]

When the Marriage Act banning clandestine marriages was passed, Keith wrote a pamphlet lamenting its likely effects:

“Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing; is an old proverb and a very old one, but we shall have no occasion for it after the 25th day of March next, when we are commanded to read it backwards and from that period (fatal indeed to Old England!) we must date the declension of the numbers of the inhabitants of England.” ^[10]

He went on to say that of the ‘many thousands’ of couples he married, they generally ‘did not exceed the acquaintance of a week’.

The day before the ban on clandestine marriages took effect, 61 marriages were performed at the new Mayfair Chapel.^[11] Keith died in Fleet prison in 1758.

What information was recorded?

Fleet registers usually included:

• Full names of the couple (hopefully).
• Marital status of the couple.
• Where the couple lived (usually just the parish – not an exact address). If the groom was a sailor (which was extremely common) the name of the ship was sometimes recorded.
• Occupation (of the groom)
• The name of the officiating clergyman (or at least his initials). Some ministers, such as John Gaynam were notorious for the number of marriages they performed so do look out for the identity of the minister if you can. The Fleet Registers ^[12] gives short biographies of some of the most notorious (and prolific) clergymen.

You may be pleasantly surprised to notice that the information recorded in the Fleet Registers is generally more comprehensive than that held in conventional parish records e.g. occupation, sailor’s ship.

However, a note of caution. Fraud was rife and weddings were routinely backdated. For example, the Fleet Registers relate the tale of a man who, using aliases, married four different women in the space of 14 months. The women’s motives were either pregnancy, or an attempt to escape debt. (They did, however, pay him ‘for his trouble’.)^[13] So although there might be more information, it might be completely wrong! Baptisms were also registered at May Fair and these should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, for obvious reasons.

Marriage registers were not only kept by the clergymen. The busier taverns also maintained registers or employed freelance clerks to maintain registers for them. The reasons for helpfully keeping registers was purely commercial – charges could be made for extra copies that may be required at a later date.

Notebooks were also kept and these can be more interesting than the actual marriage registers. They often included additional comments. Here is a flavour;

“This couple had cohabited many years but upon a small legacy being left they thought it proper to marry. I gave them an old Certificate and antidated it to 24 of August 1734 for which I was to have five shillings” …
“Paid marr [marriage] five shillings and two shillings Certiff [certificate]: the said Rachel the prettiest woman I ever saw.”^[14]

In addition to marriage registers and notebooks, a few marriage indexes are also available.

The multiplicity of records being kept by various interested parties is obviously great news for family historians. If you are lucky enough to trace a wedding in both a register and a notebook, then precedence should be probably be given to the notebook. This is because the notebooks contained the original details from which the marriage registers were compiled.

When irregular marriages were eventually banned, some of the records were lodged with the Bishop of London. Others remained in private hands and were of significant value; in 1821, the Government purchased a series of registers for just over £260.^[15]

The Marriage Act 1753 (w.e.f. 25 March 1754) aka Hardwicke’s Marriage Act

The Marriage Act, “for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage”, finally brought an end to irregular clandestine marriages. The rules for a valid marriage in Church Law became a legal requirement for all marriages (with some variations). There were exemptions for Jews and Quakers. The penalties for non-compliance were severe enough to ensure compliance; the marriage would be rendered void and the offending minister would be sentenced to 14 years’ transportation.

However, the Act only applied to England and Wales and the Fleet’s loss became Gretna Green’s gain.

Extra reading

The Fleet Registers, John Southerden Burn, 1833. This contains fascinating biographies of the main ‘players’, together with extracts of the Fleet books. It is not always in stock but well worth checking out.
Irregular Marriages in London before 1754, Tony Benton, 1993
Old and New London – A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places Volume II (Old and New London), Walter Thornbury 1897.