Jane Austen's England Read online

  After 1754 it was still possible to have a discreet wedding in a parish where neither bride nor groom was known, and for rapid marriages couples fled across the border to Scotland where the laws were much less restrictive. For those complying with the law, banns were called in the parish church of both parties on three consecutive Sundays or holy days in order to publicly proclaim the intended marriage. This allowed anyone to raise objections – something that happened in January 1791 at Weston Longville, as Parson Woodforde noted: ‘One Bush of this parish (whose daughter’s banns were published last Sunday) came to my house this evening to forbid the banns, the man being found out to be a very infamous character.’10 Five days later, he added: ‘Brown (whose banns were forbid last week by the girl whose name is Bush) called on me this morning and I returned him the half crown that I recd. last Sunday sennight [seven nights ago] by my clerk for publishing the banns that day.’11

  For anyone with an urgent need to marry or who did not wish banns to be proclaimed in public, the more expensive option was to obtain a licence, for which an ‘allegation’ had to be sworn, usually by the groom, giving details of the couple and assurances of no impediments to the marriage. Normally, common licences were issued by archbishops, bishops and some archdeacons, or by clergy in certain parishes and officials acting on their behalf. A marriage was then permitted to take place within the jurisdiction of the person issuing the licence, in one of the parishes named on the licence, but the requirement to be married in a named parish was often ignored. The wedding could take place later that day, but usually happened the day after. In August 1788 Woodforde conducted such a ceremony: ‘About 11 o’clock this morning I took a walk to Weston Church and there married by Licence Jas. [James] Herring of Norwich to Miss [Elizabeth Ann] Peachman of this parish, for which I recd. of Mr. Herring 2.2.0 which I think very handsome of him.’12

  Parental consent was required for anyone under the age of twenty-one marrying by licence, but minors could marry by publication of the banns, though parents were at liberty to object. The age of consent was fourteen for boys and twelve for girls, but most did not marry until their early twenties, even if they were betrothed at an earlier age. Apprentices were not permitted to marry, so many young men married late, in their mid- to late twenties. Richard Cureton, on becoming an apprentice in London in 1783, had to sign an indenture stating that during the seven years of apprenticeship he would ‘not commit fornication, nor contract matrimony’.13

  For rich and poor alike, a church was the venue for weddings. By today’s standards most were low-key affairs, with few guests and moderate expenditure on wedding clothes and celebrations. ‘Smock weddings’ were a peculiar type of ceremony at which the bride was married naked – although usually she was barefoot and en chemise, wearing only a shift (‘chemise’), smock or sheet for propriety. The point was that if she brought no clothes or property to the union, the husband-to-be was thought not liable for any debts she might have. Such weddings, randomly reported, occurred mainly in the eighteenth century, particularly for widowed women whose deceased husbands had left debts.

  One Derby newspaper in September 1775 chose to run a story about a marriage that had taken place over a hundred miles to the south: ‘Thursday se’nnight was married by licence, at Bishop’s Waltham, Winchester, Mr. Richard Elcock, bricklayer, to Mrs. Judith Redding, who, to exempt her future husband from the payment of any debts she might have contracted, went into one of the pews in the church, and stript herself of all her cloaths except her shift, in which only she went to the altar, and was married, much to the astonishment of the parson, clerk, &c.’14 A few years earlier, a similar wedding took place at St Michael’s church at Ashton-under-Lyne in Lancashire: ‘On Thursday last, was married, at Ashton-under-Lyne, Nathaniel Eller to the widow Hibbert, both upwards of fifty years of age; the widow had only her shift on, with her hair tied behind with horse hair, as a means to free them both from any obligation of paying her former husband’s debts.’15

  It was sometimes wrongly supposed that a smock wedding enabled a bride to retain her own wealth if her husband-to-be had debts. In December 1797 such a wedding was held at St Philip’s parish church (now the cathedral) in Birmingham, with several newspapers reporting that the bride wore nothing (possibly not even a chemise) so that the creditors of her debt-ridden new husband could not seize her property:

  There is an opinion generally prevalent in Staffordshire, that if a woman should marry a man in distressed circumstances, none of his creditors can touch her property, if she should be in puris naturalibus [stark naked] while the ceremony is performed. In consequence of this prejudice, a woman of some property lately came with her intended husband into the vestry of the great church of Birmingham, and the moment she understood that the Priest was ready at the altar, she threw off a large cloak, and in the exact state of Eve in Paradise, walked deliberately to the spot, and remained in that state till the ceremony ended.16

  For the wealthier classes, a wedding was an opportunity to flaunt status and the latest fashions, as happens in Sense and Sensibility. With the marriage of Miss Grey to Willoughby being imminent, Elinor ‘could soon tell at what coachmaker’s the new carriage was building, by what painter Mr Willoughby’s portrait was drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey’s clothes might be seen’. The wealthy wore fine clothes for weddings, with white chosen for the bride and sometimes for the bridesmaids as well. Most people, including the brides, simply wore their Sunday best or something that could be subsequently used for that purpose. The bride’s wedding clothes were secondary to her trousseau, for which she might be given household linen, items of clothing and other articles for her new life. In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen wryly says of the wedding between Maria Bertram and Mr Rushworth: ‘It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed; the two bridesmaids were duly inferior; her father gave her away; her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr Grant.’

  At the wedding that he conducted by licence in August 1788 between James Herring and Elizabeth Peachman, Woodforde was impressed by everything:

  It was a smart genteel marriage, 2 close carriages with smart liveries attended. Sheriff Buckle of Norwich and Mr. John Herring who was Sheriff of Norwich the last year and his son, old Mr. Peachman, Mrs. John Herring, Mrs. Forster of this Parish, and a very pretty young lady very neatly dressed, and attended as a bride maid and whose name was Miss Wingfield were at the ceremony. The bells rang merry after. Mr. Buckle, Mr. Herring and son and old Mr. Peachman returned with me on foot from Church to my house and eat some cake and drank some cyder &c. Mr. Peachman pressed me much to dine with them but I was not well enough to go into company.17

  Rather than riding in a carriage, most people walked to church, and it was customary for flowers, herbs and rushes to be strewn along the route or at the church porch. A poem published in 1796 by Henry Rowe, rector of Ringshall in Suffolk, alludes to this practice:

  The wheaten ear was scatter’d near the porch.

  The green broom blossom’d strew’d the way to church.18

  For the lower classes, wedding ceremonies were simple. In November 1810 the Reverend William Holland of Over Stowey in Somerset described the marriage of two of his servants:

  I went to church and married my servants Robert Dyer and Phebe [Phoebe Symons], and I trust they will be happy in each other and I gave them and their friends a dinner on the occasion and they are to continue with me as servants till Lady [Day] next…Dyer desired me to publish the banns now and they were to be married about Christmas. I answer’d if the banns be publish’d, ‘tis best marrying immediately, and they took my advice. My wife [Mary] is to take Phebe with her to Bath where we mean to go if it please God after Christmas and Dyer will stay in the house to take care of things here.19

  All weddings were morning events, since canon law decreed that they could be solemnised only between 8 a.m. and noon – a rule that held until 18
86. Particular times of the year (especially Lent) were traditionally avoided, and Sundays could be a nuisance. Holland certainly grumbled in October 1800: ‘Had a wedding, but the clerk did not give me notice of the same the day before which made me very angry. Indeed Sunday is a bad day for these things, as it hurries me and I can scarce get myself ready for prayers.’20

  The oldest customs, survivals from antiquity, were the wedding cake and the ring that was given to the bride during the ceremony. ‘The Wedding Ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand,’ according to the antiquary and clergyman John Brand, ‘because it was antiently believed…that a small artery ran from this finger to the heart.’21 Because the dissection of human bodies had disproved this fact, he added, ‘though the opinion has been justly exploded by the Anatomists of modern times’.22 He also mentioned that some wives never removed their wedding ring: ‘Many married women are so rigid, not to say superstitious, in their notions concerning their wedding rings, that neither when they wash their hands, nor at any other time, will they take it off from their finger, extending, it should seem, the expression of “till Death us do part” even to this golden circlet, the token and pledge of matrimony.’23

  Brand was fascinated by old customs and folklore, and when conducting weddings in London and in Newcastle, he had observed the tradition of saluting the bride: ‘It is still customary among persons of middling rank as well as the Vulgar, in most parts of England, for the young men at the marriage ceremony to salute the Bride, one by one, the moment it is concluded. This, after officiating in the ceremony myself, I have seen frequently done.’24 For those who could afford to pay the ringers, a wedding was often marked by a peal of bells, and in the church of the Holy Trinity at Kendal, Westmorland, one bell bore the inscription:

  In wedlock bands,

  All ye who join with hands,

  Your hearts unite;

  So shall our tuneful tongues combine

  To laud the nuptial rite.25

  After the event, a meal might be laid on, and being a morning ceremony, a wedding breakfast was most common. More elaborate celebrations could continue the whole day, perhaps with a dinner and a supper, along with music, dancing, games and sports. Then as now, the wedding cake was an important element of the ceremony and was subsequently distributed to family and friends, something Jane Austen mentioned when writing to her sister Cassandra in 1808: ‘Do you recollect whether the Manydown family send about their wedding cake? Mrs Dundas has set her heart upon having a piece from her friend Catherine, and Martha, who knows what importance she attaches to this sort of thing, is anxious for the sake of both, that there should not be a disappointment.’26

  Customs varied across the country, and in northern England the cake was broken up over the bride’s and groom’s heads or scattered into the crowd. Elsewhere, the traditions relating to the ring and the cake were linked when pieces of cake were passed through the ring and thrown over the heads of the newly-weds, or placed beneath the pillows of young people to induce prophetic dreams of lovers and marriage. Henry Rowe wrote that after the bells rang out for the married couple, the cake was passed through the ring:

  The wedding cake now thro’ the ring was led,

  The stocking thrown across the nuptial bed.27

  There were many local variations of the old custom of throwing the bride’s stocking. In one, the married couple sat up in bed and the bridesmaids sat at the end of the bed, with their backs to the couple. They then threw the stockings over their shoulders, and whoever managed to hit the bride would soon be married themselves.

  The next day, most married couples began their everyday life together. No modern concept of a ‘honeymoon’ then existed – the term still referred to the month after the wedding. Rich newly-weds might make an extended tour, usually in Britain as the country was so often at war. The couple rarely went away alone, but were accompanied by friends, relatives and, of course, servants. The less well-off settled for whatever they could afford, perhaps staying with relatives for a week or two, while the lower classes had little or nothing in the way of a holiday, most returning to work the next day. Unless it was a royal or aristocratic wedding, in which case the newspapers would report the event at length, a modest notice might appear in a local newspaper. One from the Derby Mercury in June 1802 is typical: ‘Married…Sunday se’nnight, Mr. James York, chymist and druggist, to Miss Weston, both of Nottingham.’28 These notices were more common after 1800, though still confined to the middle and upper classes.

  Less welcome to the families involved were sensational newspaper accounts of elopements, as in February 1815 when the Western Luminary reported:

  ELOPEMENT.– Another fashionable couple have eloped, it is supposed from the neighbourhood of Bristol. They arrived at Stourbridge about half-past six o’clock on the morning of Saturday se’nnight, in a post-chaise and four, and stopped at the Talbot hotel, where they changed horses. The Lady must have emerged in great haste from her bed-chamber, having no covering but a flannel petticoat and a great coat. They wished to purchase a bonnet in that town; but did not procure any other covering for the damsel until they reached Penkridge. They gave the different post-boys a 1l. [£1] note each, and proceeded northward from Stafford, for that celebrated spot, Gretna Green. The parties were unknown.29

  In novels such as Jane Austen’s, the heroines are invariably concerned with relationships and about overcoming impediments to those relationships. Had she been writing some decades earlier, clandestine marriages might well have featured, but as they were now illegal, elopement was the solution where a couple was desperate to marry without parental consent. The Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice is dismayed to discover that young Lydia has run off with Wickham. In a letter, Lydia describes her happiness: ‘I am going to Gretna Green…for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel…I can hardly write for laughing.’ Wickham actually has no intention of marrying, and they are eventually tracked down in London.

  Villages just over the Scottish border were favoured locations for couples fleeing from England to be married, and the best known was Gretna Green, some 10 miles from Carlisle. In a letter to Bessy Winkley written at Dove Nest in the final days of 1809, Nelly Weeton described how her employer had eloped: ‘Mrs. Pedder was a dairy maid at Darwen-Bank, Mr. P’s house near Preston [Lancashire], when he fell in love with her. Her father heard of the connexion and fearing his daughter might be seduced, sent for her home. He lives near-by here. Mr. P. followed her, took her off to Gretna Green and married her…She is not eighteen yet…Mr. P. is a little man of about 34.’30

  Scottish marriage law required only a declaration before witnesses, a role performed by various Gretna Green inhabitants, including Joseph Paisley, who was a farmer, fisherman and smuggler. For sixty years from 1753 he officiated as Gretna Green’s parson. He was known as a blacksmith, though according to his successor Robert Elliott, he ‘only acquired that name from his quickness in uniting eloping parties, for the common saying there was, “strike the iron when it is hot, Joseph”.’31 Robert had become acquainted with Paisley in 1810 and took over his business three years later. He left his version of the marriage ceremony:

  It is very simple. The parties are first asked their names and places of abode; they are then asked to stand up, and enquired of if they are both single persons; if the answer be in the affirmative, the ceremony proceeds.

  Each is next asked:—‘Did you come here of your own free will and accord?’ Upon receiving an affirmative answer the priest commences filling in the printed form of the certificate.

  The man is then asked, ‘Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, forsaking all other, [and] keep to her as long as you both shall live?’ He answers ‘I will.’ The woman is asked the same question, which being answered the same, the woman then produces a ring which she gives to the man, who hands it to the priest; the priest then returns it to the man, and orders him to put it on the fourth finger of the woman’s left hand, repeat
these words, with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen. They then take hold of each other’s right hands, and the woman says ‘what God joins together let no man put asunder.’ The priest says ‘forasmuch as this man and this woman have consented to go together by giving and receiving a ring, I, therefore, declare them to be man and wife before God and these witnesses in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.’32

  The upper classes set great store by the legalities of marriage, but the lower classes were rarely worried by such niceties, and many couples simply lived together rather than pay fees to marry in church, particularly after the 1753 Act made the less costly clandestine marriages illegal. Some only married once the woman was pregnant. There were alternative, cheaper methods of marrying, mainly comprising informal declarations, but although acceptable by custom they were not actually legal. Few poor people could afford to elope to Gretna Green unless they were marrying someone wealthy, but the clergy could make life difficult for those living together without marrying.

  William Holland kept a close eye on what was happening in his Somerset parish of Over Stowey, and in October 1800 one couple felt obliged to marry: ‘It seems the persons were but lately come into the Parish and they had lived together before and they brought a bouncing child to be christened the very day of their wedding. I gave them a good jubation [severe rebuke], and told them that had I known there were such people in my Parish I would not have suffered them to have remained long in that situation. This they were aware of, so came to be married.’33