Before the New Marriage Act passed in 1753 a Fleet marriage was indissoluble.

It was an illegal act, and the parties were punishable; but the Gordian knot was quite as secure as if it had been tied in the most orthodox manner.

The great difficulty to my mind was the _onus probandi_.

The marriage might have taken place; the marriage be to all intents and purposes a good marriage; but how produce undeniable proof of such a ceremony, when all ceremonies of the kind were performed with a manifest recklessness and disregard of law?
Even if I found an apparently good certificate, how was I to prove that it was not one of those lying certificates of marriages that had never taken place?
Again, what kind of registers could posterity expect from these parson-adventurers, very few of whom could spell, and most of whom lived in a chronic state of drunkenness?
They married people sometimes by their Christian names alone--very often under assumed names.

What consideration had they for heirs-at-law in the future, when under the soothing influence of a gin-bottle in the present?
I thought of all these circumstances, and I was half inclined to despair of realising my idea of an early marriage.