There were regular Chaplains attached to the Fleet Prison to serve the Chapel there, and, as we have seen, the Warder made every prisoner pay 2d. or 4d. weekly, towards his stipend. Latterly the Chaplaincy was offered to a Curate of St. Bride's Church--as is now done in the case of Bridewell.
A complete list of Chaplains cannot be given, because all documents were destroyed when the Fleet was burnt by the Lord George Gordon rioters; but Mr. Burn in his "History of Fleet Marriages" (a book to which I am much indebted, for it has all but exhausted the subject) gives the names of some, as Haincks in 1698; Robert Elborough, 1702; John Taylor, 1714; Dr. Franks, 1728; 1797, Weldon Champneys; 1815, John Manley Wood, and John Jones: and in 1834, the date of the publication of Mr. Burn's book, the Rev. Richard Edwards, was the Chaplain.
These Clergymen, of course, married couples according to Law, and probably used the Chapel for that purpose. We know that it was so used, for the _Original Weekly Journal_ of Sept. 26, 1719, says:
"One Mrs. Anne Leigh, an heiress of £200 per annum and £6000 ready cash, having been decoyed away from her friends in Buckinghamshire, and married at the Fleet chapel against her consent; we hear the Lord Chief Justice Pratt hath issued out his warrant for apprehending the authors of this contrivance, who have used the young lady so barbarously, that she now lyes speechless."
But it is not of the Chaplains I would speak, but of the irregular Clergy, or Lay men, who performed the Marriages. One thing they all agreed in, the wearing of the Cassock, Gown, and Bands. They would never have been believed in had they not. The accompanying illustration[155] gives an excellent idea of the Fleet Parson, and it is taken from an Engraving entitled "_The_ FUNERAL _of Poor_ MARY HACKABOUT, _attended by the Sisterhood of Drury Lane_" and it has a footnote calling attention to the "wry-necked" parson. "_The famous_ COUPLE BEGGAR _in the Fleet, a_ WRETCH, _who there screens himself from the Justice due to his_ VILLANIES, _and daily repeats them._"
The lady holds a sprig of Rosemary in her hand, which in polite society was always presented by a servant, when the funeral cortége was about to leave the house:--In this case, a dish full of sprigs is placed upon the floor, and a child is playing with them. The Mourners carried them to the grave, and then threw them in, as we now do, flowers and wreaths of the same.