Towards the middle of the seventeenth century clandestine, and irregular marriage was prevalent, and it is easily accounted for. A public marriage had come to be a very expensive affair. There was a festival, which lasted several days, during which open house had to be kept; there were the Marriage Settlements, presents, pin money, music, and what not--so that the binding of their Children in the holy Estate of Matrimony was a serious matter to parents; who probably preferred giving the young couple the money that otherwise would go in useless waste and profusion. So they used to get married quietly: a custom which Pepys reprobates in the marriage of the daughter of Sir William Penn to Mr. Anthony Lowther. "No friends, but two or three relations of his and hers." The bride was married in "palterly clothes, and nothing new but a bracelet that her servant had given her." And he further says, remarking on the meanness of the whole affair, "One wonder I observed to day, that there was no musique in the morning to call up our new married people, which is very mean, methinks."
Misson, who visited England in the reign of William III., speaks of these private marriages.
"The Ordinary ones, as I said before, are generally incognito. The _Bridegroom_, that is to say, the Husband that is to be, and the _Bride_, who is the Wife that is to be, conducted by their Father and Mother, or by those that serve them in their room, and accompany'd by two Bride men, and two Bride Maids, go early in the Morning with a Licence in their Pocket, and call up Mr. Curate and his Clerk, tell them their Business; are marry'd with a low Voice, and the Doors shut; tip the Minister a Guinea, and the Clerk a Crown; steal softly out, one one way, and t'other another, either on Foot or in Coaches; go different Ways to some Tavern at a Distance from their own Lodgings, or to the House of some trusty Friend, there have a good Dinner, and return Home at Night as quietly as Lambs. If the Drums and Fiddles have notice of it, they will be sure to be with them by Day Break, making a horrible Racket, till they have got the Pence; and, which is worst of all, the whole Murder will come out."
This senseless custom survives, in a modified degree, in our times, when on the marriage of a journeyman butcher, his companions treat him to a performance of the "Marrow bones and Cleavers," and also in the case of marriage of persons in a superior station of life, in the playing, on the Organ, of a Wedding March.