MARRIAGES IN THE FLEET

similar houses, the register was kept of the marriages. Not far from the Fleet is Newgate; so that the victims had their succession of nooses prepared, in case, as no doubt it often happened, one tie should be followed by the others. Pennant speaks of this nuisance from personal knowledge.

"In walking along the streets in my youth," he tells us, "on the side next this prison, I have often be tempted by the question, 'Sir, will you be pleased to walk in and be married. Along this most lawless space was frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand conjoined, with Marriages performed within, written beneath. A dirty fellow invited you in. The parson was seen walking before his shop; a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid night-gown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of tobacco. Our great chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, put these demons to flight, and saved thousands from the misery and disgrace which would be entailed by these extemporary thoughtless unions."

This extraordinary disgrace to the city, which arose most likely from the permission to marry prisoners, and one great secret of which was the advantage taken of it by wretched women to get rid of their debts, was maintained by a collusion between the warden of the Fleet and the disreputable clergymen he became acquainted with. "To such an extent," says Malcolm, were the proceedings carried, that twenty and thirty couples were joined in one day, at from ten to twenty shillings each "; and "between the 19th Oct., 1704, and the 12th Feb., 1705, 2,954 marriages were celebrated (by evidence), besides others known to have been omitted. To these neither licence nor certificate of banns were required, and they concealed, by private marks, the names of those who chose to pay them for it." The neighbourhood at length complained; and the abuse was

THE DUNCIAD

put an end to by the Marriage Act, to which it gave rise.

Ludgate and Fleet ditch figure among the scenes of the Dunciad. It is near Bridewell, on the site of the modern Bridge Street, that the venal and scurrilous heroes of that poem emulate one another, at the call of Dullness, in seeing who can plunge deepest into the mud and dirt.

"This labour past, by Bridewell all descend,
(As morning prayer and flagellation end),1

To where Fleet ditch, with disemboguing streams,
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames;
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.

Here strip, my children! here at once leap in;
Here prove who best can dash through thick and
thin;

And who the most in love of dirt excel,

And dark dexterity of groping well." 2

This part of the games being over,

Through Lud's famed gates, along the well-known
Fleet,

Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street;
Till showers of sermons, characters, essays,

In circling fences whiten all the ways:

So clouds replenished from some bog below,
Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow."

The "well-known Fleet" is the prison just mentioned, the side of which appears to have been visible at that time in Ludgate Hill, and where it was a joke (too often founded in truth) to suppose authors incarcerated.

"Few sons of Phoebus in the courts we meet;

But fifty sons of Phoebus in the Fleet,"

1 The whipping of the criminals in Bridewell took place after the church service.

2 Dunciad, book ii., v. 269.

BOOKSELLERS' SHOPS

says a prologue of Sheridan's. The Fleet having "rules," like the King's Bench, authors were found in the neighbourhood also. Arthur Murphy, provoked by the attacks of Churchill and Lloyd, describes them as among the poor hacks,

"On Ludgate Hill who bloody murders write,

Or pass in Fleet Street supperless the night." Booksellers' shops were then common as now in Fleet Street and the Strand, in Paternoster Row and St. Paul's Churchyard. This is pleasant to think of; for change is not desirable without improvement. One feels gratified, where difference is not demanded of us, in being able to have the same association of ideas with such men as Pope and Dryden, even if it be upon no higher ground than the quantity of books in Paternoster Row, or the circumstance that Ludgate Hill still leads into Fleet Street.

CHAPTER III

FLEET STREET

WE are now in Fleet Street, and pleasant memories
thicken upon us.
To the left is the renowned realm
of Alsatia, the Temple, the Mitre, and the abode of
Richardson; to the right divers abodes of Johnson;
Chancery Lane, with Cowley's birth-place at the corner;
Fetter Lane, where Dryden once lived; and Shire or
Sheer Lane, immortal for the Tatler.

Fleet Street was, for a good period, perhaps for a longer one than can now be ascertained, the great place for shows and spectacles. Wild beasts, monsters, and other marvels, used to be exhibited there, as the waxwork was lately; and here took place the famous ceremony of burning the Pope, with its long procession, and bigoted anti-bigotries. However, the lesser bigotry was useful, at that time, in keeping out the greater. Roger North has left us a lively account of one of these processions, in his Examen. It took place towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, when just fears were entertained of his successor's design to bring in Popery. The day of the ceremony was the birth-day of Queen Elizabeth, the 17th March.

"When we had posted ourselves," says North, "at windows, expecting the play to begin" (he had taken his stand in the Green Dragon Tavern), "it was very dark; but we could perceive the street to fill, and the hum of the crowd grew louder and louder; and at length, with help of some lights below, we could discern, not only

upwards towards the bar, where the squib-war was maintained, but downwards towards Fleet Bridge, the whole street was crowded with people, which made that which followed seem very strange; for about eight at night we heard a din from below, which came up the street, continually increasing till we could perceive a motion; and that was a row of stout fellows, that came, shouldered together, cross the street, from wall to wall on each side. How the people melted away, I cannot tell; but it was plain those fellows made clear board, as if they had swept the street for what was to come after. They went along like a wave; and it was wonderful to see how the crowd made way: I suppose the good people were willing to give obedience to lawful authority. Behind this wave (which, as all the rest, had many lights attending), there was a vacancy, but it filled apace, till another like wave came up; and so four or five of these waves passed, one after another; and then we discerned more numerous lights, and throats were opened with hoarse and tremendous noise; and with that advanced a pageant, borne along above the heads of the crowd, and upon it sat a huge Pope, in pontificalibus, in his chair, with a seasonable attendance for state: but his premier minister, that shared most of his ear, was Il Signior Diavolo, a nimble little fellow, in a proper dress, that had a strange dexterity in climbing and winding about the chair, from one of the Pope's ears to the other.

"The next pageant was a parcel of Jesuits; and after that (for there was always a decent space between them) came another, with some ordinary persons with halters, as I took it, about their necks; and one with a stenterophonic tube, sounded Abhorrers! Abhorrers!' most infernally; and, lastly, came one, with a single person upon it, which some said was the pamphleteer, Sir Roger L'Estrange, some the King of France, some the Duke of York; but, certainly, it was a very complaisant, civil gentleman, like the former, that was doing what