Note 46 — Chapter III · MARRIAGE.

People could be, and were, married without licence, both in the Fleet and Queen's Bench Prisons. It is probable that prisoners there were duly and properly married by banns in the prison chapel, long before 1674, which is the date of the earliest illicit Fleet Register in the Bishop of London's registry; for, in a letter, Sept. 1613, we read:[46] 'Now I am to enform you that an ancyentt acquayntance of yrs and myne is yesterday maryed in the Fleette, one Mr. Georg Lestor, and hath maryed Mris Babbington, Mr. Thomas Fanshawe mother-in-lawe. It is sayed she is a woman of good wealthe so as nowe the man wylle able to lyve and mayntayn hymself in prison, for hether unto he hath byne in poor estate.' But, at all events, the law was set at nought in Anne's reign, as it was for many a long year afterwards. In 1702 the chaplain was Robert Elborough, who married but few without banns or licence, 'but under a colour doth allow his clerk Bartholomew Basset to do what he pleases,' and in 1714 Mr. John Taylor filled the same office, but he does not seem to have solemnised matrimony at the Fleet. There was, however, a low clergyman, named John Gaynam, otherwise Doctor Gaynam, who did a large trade there in marriages, from 1709 to 1740. A little anecdote of him, though not in Queen Anne's time, may not be amiss. He was giving evidence at the Old Bailey on the trial of Robert Hussey for bigamy, in 1733.