There were two routes to marriage in England in the late 18th and 19th centuries, both requiring a four-week waiting period. Couples could either request the reading of banns in church for three Sundays in a row before the ceremony or, if marrying outside their parish, they could do so by licence, which meant registering with a member of the clergy and signing a bond to swear that at least one party to the marriage had lived in the parish for at least four weeks. One way to bypass these requirements was simply to elope to regions where English law did not apply – to Scotland, the Isle of Man, Channel Islands or France. Another way was simply to lie to the clergyman.
Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (officially ‘An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage’), which came into effect in 1754, aimed to put an end to secret and forced marriages and to impose stricter rules on how the marriage was to be conducted. Couples of all faiths, including Catholics and Nonconformists, had to be married by an Anglican minister, with Quaker and Jewish marriages the only exceptions.
What seemed a straightforward attempt to protect heiresses from the predations of fortune-hunters was in fact denounced in the House of Commons as an aristocratic plot to ‘secure all the rich heiresses in the kingdom for the aristocracy.’ The new restrictions simply were not fair on those who sought to improve themselves through elopement.
The Act brought in strict punishments for priests who knowingly solemnised illegal marriages; they were liable to transportation to America for fourteen years. Although prosecutions were rare, failure to read the banns or obtain the appropriate sworn statements for the licence caused clergymen anxiety. In 1768 a curate in Berkshire who had married ‘a young lady of immense fortune’ to her father’s groom without licence or publication of banns absconded from his place to avoid being sent to the plantations.[1]
In 1809 heiress and ward of Chancery Augusta Nicholson, an ‘infant’ (so-called because she was under 21) eloped with John Giles, a stage comedian who had caught her eye at the theatre in Tunbridge Wells. The couple succeeded in having the banns read twice at Marylebone Church in London but were intercepted before a marriage could take place.[2] The clergyman was called in to the Lord Chancellor’s chambers to explain why he had not made the appropriate checks on Miss Nicholson in person.[3]
- Kentish Gazette, 15 October 1768
- Morning Chronicle, 10 November 1809
- Despite opposition, Augusta Nicholson and John Giles married in April 1810. She died soon afterwards, leaving her husband and infant son with nothing – she was four days short of her 21st birthday, when she would have come into her fortune. That money was now her brother’s. He was a naval captain and promptly sailed back to England to claim it. However, he died in September 1811 en route, and as there were no other legatees, it reverted to Augusta’s baby. Hampshire Chronicle, 18 November 1811
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