“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The marrying in the Fleet is the beginning of eternal woe.” So scribbled (1736) Walter Wyatt, a Fleet Parson, in one of his note-books. He and his likes are long vanished, and his successor the blacksmith priest (in truth he was neither one nor other) of Gretna is also gone; yet their story is no less entertaining than instructive, and here I set it forth. Some prefatory matter is necessary for the right understanding of what follows. Marriage, whatever else it may or may not be, is a contract of two consenting minds; but at an early age the church put forth the doctrine that it was likewise a sacrament which could be administered by the contracting parties to each other. Pope Innocent III., in 1215, first ordained--so some authorities say--that marriages must be celebrated in church; but it was not yet decreed that other and simpler methods were without effect. According to the canon law, “espousals” were of two kinds: _sponsalia per verba de præsenti_--which was an agreement to marry forthwith; and _sponsalia per verba de futuro_--which was a contract to wed at a future time. Consummation gave number two the effect of number one, and civilly that effect was the same as of duly celebrated nuptials; inasmuch as the church, while urging the religious ceremony upon the faithful as the sole proper method, admitted the validity of the others--_quod non fieri debit id factum valeat_ (so the maxim ran). The common law adopting this, held that (1) marriage might be celebrated with the full rites of the church; or (2) that the parties might take each other for man and wife; or (3), which obviously followed, that a priest might perform the ceremony outside the church, or without the full ceremonial--with maimed rites, so to speak. Whatever penalties were incurred by following other than the first way the marriage itself held good.