Thus your correct wedding, then as now, had its tedious preliminaries; but the fashion of the time imposed some other burdens. There was inordinate feasting with music and gifts and altogether much expense and delay. Poor folk could ill afford the business; now and again the rich desired a private ceremony; here and there young people sighed for a runaway match. Also, outside this trim and commonplace century the nation’s life had not that smoothness which seems to us such a matter of course. Passion was stronger and worse disciplined; law, though harsh, was slow and uncertain. How tempting, then, the inducement to needy persons to marry cheaply and without ceremony! Now, London had a number of places of worship called _Peculiars_, which, as royal chapels, possessions of the Lord Mayor and alderman, or what not, claimed, rightly or wrongly, exemption from the visitation of the ordinary. These were just the places for irregular or clandestine marriages. Peculiars or not, as many as ninety chapels favoured such affairs. Chief among them were the Savoy, the Minories, Mayfair Chapel, and (above all) the Fleet, which--from a very early date to half a century ago--was a famous prison especially for debtors, standing on what is now the east side of Farringdon Street. It had a chapel where marriages were properly solemnised by 1613, and (it may be) earlier; but the records are somewhat scanty. Now, a number of dissolute Parsons were “fleeted” (as the old phrase ran) for one cause or another, and some might live outside the walls but within the _rules_ or _liberties of the Fleet_, as the ground about the prison was called. These obtained the use of the chapel, where, for a reasonable consideration, they were willing to couple any brace forthwith. What terror had the law for them? Men already in hold for debt laughed at a fine, and suspension was a process slow and like to be ineffectual at the last. The church feebly tried to exercise discipline. On June 4, 1702, the Bishop of London held a visitation _in carcere vulgo vocat’ ye Fleet in civitate London_. He found one Jeronimus Alley coupling clients at a great rate. ’Twas hinted that Jeronimus was not a Parson at all, and proof of his ordination was demanded; “but Mr. Alley soon afterwards fled from _ye said prison_ and never exhibited his orders.” Another record says that he obtained “some other preferment” (probably he was playing the like game elsewhere).