ng
man, his long residence in London away from the ken of respectable
relatives and friends, and the extraordinary state of the marriage laws
at the period in which our man lived."

"Ah, to be sure! That was a strong point."

"I should rather think it was. I took the trouble to look up the
history of Mayfair marriages and Fleet marriages before you started for
Ullerton, and I examined all the evidence I could get on that subject.
I made myself familiar with the Rev. Alexander Keith of Mayfair, who
helped to bring clandestine marriages into vogue amongst the swells,
and with Dr. Gaynham--agreeably nicknamed Bishop of Hell--and more of
the same calibre; and the result of my investigations convinced me that
in those days a hare-brained young reprobate must have found it rather
more difficult to avoid matrimony than to achieve it. He might be
married when he was tipsy; he might be married when he was comatose
from the effects of a stand-up fight with Mohawks; his name might be
assumed by some sportive Benedick of his acquaintance given to
practical joking, and he might find himself saddled with a wife he
never saw; or if, on the other hand, of an artful and deceptive turn,
he might procure a certificate of a marriage that had never taken
place,--for there were very few friendly offices which the Fleet
parsons refused to perform for their clients--for a consideration."

"But how about the legality of the Fleet marriage?"

"There's the rub. Before the New Marriage Act passed in 1753 a Fleet
marriage was indissoluble. It was an illegal act, and the parties were
punishable; but the Gordian knot was quite as secure as if it had been
tied in the most orthodox manner. The great difficulty to my mind was
the _onus probandi_. The marriage might have taken place; the marriage
be to all intents and purposes a good marriage; but how produce
undeniable proof of such a ceremony, when all ceremonies of the kind
were performed with a manifest recklessness and disregard of law? Even
if I found an apparently good certificate, how was I to prove that it
was not one of those lying certificates of marriages that had never
taken place? Again, what kind of registers could posterity expect from
these parson-adventurers, very few of whom could spell, and most of
whom lived in a chronic state of drunkenness? They married people
sometimes by their Christian names alone--very often under assumed
names. What consideration had they for heirs-at-law