I turn to the registers wherein the doings of the Fleet Parsons are more or less carefully recorded. In 1783 most of those still extant had got into the hands of Mr. Benjamin Panton. “They weighed more than a ton”; were purchased by the Government for £260 6_s._ 6_d._, and to-day you may inspect them at Somerset House. There are between two and three hundred large registers and a thousand or more pocket-books (_temp._ 1674-1753). Not merely are the records of marriages curious in themselves, but also they are often accompanied by curious comments from the Parson, clerk, taverner, or whoever kept the book. The oddest collection is in a volume of date 1727-1754. The writer used Greek characters, though his words are English, and is as frank as Pepys, and every bit as curious. Here are a few samples from the lot: “Had a noise for four hours about the money” was to be expected where there were no fixed rates; but “stole my clouthes-brush,” and “left a pott of 4 penny to pay,” and “ran away with the scertifycate and left a pint of wine to pay for,” were surely cases of exceptional roguery. Curious couples presented themselves:--“Her eyes very black and he beat about ye face very much.” Again, the bridegroom was a boy of eighteen, the bride sixty-five, “brought in a coach by four thumping ladies” (the original is briefer and coarser) “out of Drury Lane as guests”; and yet the Parson had “one shilling only.” He fared even worse at times. Once he married a couple, money down, “for half a guinea,” after which “it was extorted out of my pocket, and for fear of my life delivered.” Even a Fleet Parson had his notion of propriety. “Behav’d very indecent and rude to all,” is one entry; and “N.B. behav^d rogueshly. Broke the Coachman’s Glass,” is another. Once his reverence, “having a mistrust of some Irish roguery,” though the party seemed of better rank than usual, asked indiscreet questions. The leader turned on him with the true swagger of your brutal Georgian bully. “What was that to me? G---- dem me, if I did not immediately marry them he would use me ill; in short, apprehending it to be a conspiracy, I found myself obliged to marry them _in terrorem_.” Again, he had better luck on another occasion: “handsomely entertained,” he records; and of a bride of June 11, 1727, “the said Rachel, the prettiest woman I ever saw.” (You fancy the smirk wherewith he scrawled that single record of the long vanished beauty!) He is less complimentary to other clients. His “appear^d a rogue” and “two most notorious thieves” had sure procured him a broken pate had his patrons known! How gleefully and shamelessly he chronicles his bits of sharp practice! “Took them from Brown who was going into the next door with them,” was after all merely business; but what follows is _not_. In 1729 he married Susannah Hewitt to Abraham Wells, a butcher. The thing turned out ill; and in 1736 she came back, and suggested annulment by the simple expedient of destroying the record;