This measure was expressly designed to put an end to the long-continued and growing scandals of the so-called “Fleet marriages,” which had first attracted attention in 1674. The Fleet marriages, performed by the chaplains of the Fleet Prison, in London, led to many abuses. Made on the spur of the moment, between the prisoners there, incarcerated for debt or other misdemeanours, and the visitors permitted free access under the lax discipline of that time, the most fearful alliances were perpetrated by wholesale. Drunken prisoners, dissolute women, and parsons who richly deserved being unfrocked were the actors in these scenes, almost exactly matched by the similar clandestine marriages performed on application, at all hours of day or night, by the chaplains of the Savoy, and by the clerical owners of proprietary chapels in Mayfair. These marriage-merchants earned amazing incomes, the still-existing records of a Fleet parson’s fees in 1748 showing that in the month of October alone he received no less than £69 12_s._ 9_d._ for his services. At the Fleet, on March 25th, 1754, the day before Lord Hardwicke’s Act became law, there was a grand winding-up of the business, when 217 marriages were celebrated. The penalty provided by the Act was not, under the existing circumstances, too severe; for, in view of the evils wrought by those practices, it was necessary to provide the greatest discouragement possible to this traffic. Much more then than now, a marriage, once performed, was irrevocable. Divorce courts, for redress of matrimonial injuries, were unknown, and the drunken and the reckless who had taken part so lightly in a Fleet marriage were held to their bargain for life. But the Act, beneficent though it was, did not pass without great opposition, and even when it became law, its operation was confined to England; with the result that the only difficulty in the way of a clandestine marriage that should be sufficiently legal was that of making a journey out of England; whether across the English Channel to Calais, or into the Isle of Man, or across the Border into Scotland, was immaterial. The Isle of Man was for a brief period a favourite place, but the House of Keys, the legislature of that isle, in 1757 passed an Act forbidding marriages other than by banns or special license, with a penalty identical with that provided by the English Act for clergymen who should infringe it; while any layman performing any such ceremony was very roughly dealt with: the penalties in his case being— 1. To be pilloried. 2. To lose his ears. 3. To be imprisoned until the Governor saw fit to release him, on payment of a fine not exceeding £50. After the passing of this Act we hear little or nothing of clandestine marriages being celebrated in the Isle of Man.