Fleet Street was fond of advertising. Joshua Lilly, who kept one of the Hand and Pen houses announced : "I Lilley at ye Hand and Pen, next door to the china shop, Fleet Bridge, London, will be perform'd the solemnization of marriages by a gentleman regularly bred att one of our Universities, and lawfully ordain'd according to the institutions of the Church of England, and is ready to wait on any person in town or count rey." . A watchmaker, who sometimes personated a cleric " in a flower'd morning gown " at the Bull and Garter, Great Hand and Pen and Star, informed the public of " The old and true Registrar near the Rainbow Coffee House." This odd notice is not easily forgotten : "John Lando, a French minister, in Church Street, Soho, opposite att a French pastry or nasty Cook's. His Landlord's name is Jinkstone, a dirty chandler's shop : he is to be heard of on the first flower next the skye." M. Lando varied parsoning with tutoring in Latin and French three times a week. Far and away the greatest marriage vender known to the Fleet was the Rev. Dr. Alex ander Keith, whose advertisement ran : "The way to Mr. Keith's Chapel is thro' Piccadilly, by the end of St. James's Street and down Clarges Street, and turn on the Left Hand the Marriages (together with a Licence on a Five Shilling Stamp, and Cer tificate) are carried on as usual, any time till Four in the afternoon, by another regular Clergyman, at Mr. Keith's little chapel in Mayfair, near Hyde Park Corner, opposite the Great Chapel, and within ten Yards of it. There is a Porch at the Door like a Country Church Porch." On the day before the passage of Lord Hardwicke's measure enacting "that any person solemnizing matrimony in any other than a church or public chapel without banns
or license should, on conviction, be adjudged guilty of felony, and be transported for felony; also that all such marriages should be void," Fleet Street went into a wild, scrambling festival of Hymen, which resulted in no less than two hundred and seventeen marriages! Dr. Keith, looking on the act as a personal insult, was prompted to write a thirty-twopage pamphlet, entitled " Observations on the Act for Clandestine Marriages." This protest sold like hot cakes. Among the doctor's remarks were these : "Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing, is an old proverb and a very true one, but we shall have no occasion for it after the 25th of March next, when we are commanded to read it backwards, and from that period (fatal indeed to old Eng land) we must date the declensions of the numbers of the inhabitants of England. . Another inconveniencey which will arise from this Act will be, that the expense of being married will be so great, that few of the lower class of people can afford, for I have often heard a Flete-parson say, that many have come to be married when they have had but half a crown in their pockets and sixpence to buy a pot of beer, and for which they have pawned some of their cloaths." Horace Walpole, in writing of a Mayfair chapel marriage said : "He sent for a Parson. The Doctor re fused to perform the ceremony without license and ring. The duke swore he would send for the Archbishop; at last they were married with a ring of the bed curtain, at half-an-hour past twelve at night, at May Fair Chapel." When Keith was wanted for performing eleven hundred and ninety bannless mar riages during the year (1755) after the pas sage of the Hardwicke Act, he exclaimed :
