Note 1350 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

Burn, op. cit., 7, 8; Ashton, op. cit., 332, 338; Tegg, The Knot Tied, 202. These chaplains "of course, married people after publication of banns in their own chapels according to law;" and doubtless some of the weddings before them were entirely respectable. Such was probably the marriage in the Fleet of George Lester and Mistress Babbington as early as 1613: Burn, op. cit., 5; Ashton, op. cit., 335, 338; Tegg, op. cit., 199. But in these chapels as well as out of them clandestine marriages were solemnized. Here is an example from the Original Weekly Journal of Sept. 26, 1719: "One Mrs. Anne Leigh, an heiress of £200. per annum and £6000. ready cash, having been decoyed away from her friends in Buckinghamshire, and married at the Fleet chapel against her consent; we hear the Lord Chief Justice Pratt hath issued out his warrant for apprehending the authors of this contrivance, who had used the young lady so barbarously, that she now lyes speechless."—Burn, op. cit., 7 n. 2; also Ashton, op. cit., 338, 339. Celebration in the Fleet chapel, not elsewhere, was put an end to by the act of 10 Anne, c. 19. Cf. Hammick, The Marriage Law of England, 11; Burn, op. cit., 8.