London
Once the Guadeloupe documents established that Anthony D. Brisson's
father was born in London, Betty Jo
Kaveney discovered their marriage record.
It indicates that Stephen (Etienne) Brisson
and Mary Dale were betrothed in a Fleet Marriage in July of 1749.
Below are two records. One entry was recorded in the minister's personal record book, known in the day as a "pocketbook" because it could be carried around to the various ceremonies he performed. He would then transcribe it to an official register. Notice how many details this abbreviated entry, combined with a little homework, tells us about Huldah Russ's inlaws:
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Stephen was a cook; a profession which in those days was equivalent to a modern chef.
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The abbreviation "Bat" signifies that Stephen was a bachelor, as opposed to a widower. We initially believed it to indicate "battalion," until surrounding entries in the book set us straight.
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Mary was a "spinster." This was a legal term denoting an unmarried woman as opposed to a widow. The word originated because it was generally unmarried women who would "spin" wool.
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"Do," means ditto, or from the same parish. Since Stephen lived in London Wall, so did Mary.
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The initials J.T. indicate the Reverend John Tarrant, one of several clergymen who performed Fleet Marriages. Tarrant operated between 1742 and 1750.
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Both records give the spelling "Bresson." All other evidence triangulates with the Le Moule records.
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The 16 July marriage of Dominic Serres and Mary Colldycutt (also misspelled), is not included in either record book, even though it falls within the registers' date range.
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This might indicate date manipulation, or more likely that a different book was used for the Serres wedding venue.
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John Dancomb's entry (after Stephen's) at left is not included in the transcription below.
The London marriage of Huldah's mother- and father-inlaw infuses this episode of the family story with a distinct Charles Dickens flavor. Dickens' Pickwick character was incarcerated at Fleet Prison for his stubborn refusal to pay up after a wrongful lawsuit. While Stephen and Mary were not prisoners themselves, Dickens' stories provide a biting social satire of daily life in old London, and draws particular attention to its legal and religious establishments.
Most London couples in the early 18th century got married at their family church, but in the 1740's, more than half of these couples chose a wedding outside the church. Requirements were much looser, and the ceremonies took place in one specific neighborhood; a maze of alleys and courtyards that included Fleet Lane, the Old Bailey, Farringdon Street, and Ludgate Hill. Little survives of this neighborhood today, but in those days it operated under the "Liberties of the Fleet."
These entries are part of a
fascinating story.
Fleet was a prison for debtors. Not just for the poor, but for all social classes. This fact related not to the couples who wanted to get married , but to the officiators who married them. There were so many clerics imprisoned for debt in those days that prisons like the Fleet became popular destinations for couples (rich and poor) who sought quick, no-questions-asked weddings. Rules were quite different in the first part of the 1700s, and some debtors could actually pay for the privilege of living outside the prison gates in the apartment-style housing of this neighborhood. They could live there with their entire families, and carry out their professions until their bills were paid off and they were released. These perfectly legal marriages were referred to as “irregular” or “clandestine.”
According to John Southerden Burn in The Fleet registers (London: Rivingtons, 1833), parsons who had no parishes often performed clandestine weddings at a residence or shop, where the wedding party would celebrate afterward. Coffee houses, lodging rooms, taverns, book shops, bakeries were also commonly used. Some ceremonies took place at the Fleet prison chapel itself, where a couple could be married any time of day or night, seven days a week, throughout the year. Grooms could be as young as 14, and brides 12. The bride and groom needed only to give their own consent to the union for it to be recognized, and witnesses were not necessary. It was a loophole in the system that was allowed to continue for decades.
From the British National Archives:
In the 1740s, over half of all London weddings were held at the Fleet (over 6500 per year) with a further thousand conducted at the May Fair Chapel. Initially, May Fair marriages were performed at St George's Chapel, Curzon Street, Mayfair, near Hyde Park Corner then, from 1744, at a private dwelling house (the 'New' or 'Little Chapel') situated ten yards away from St George's Chapel. Whereas clandestine marriages performed at the Fleet and King's Bench prisons and surrounding areas tended to attract the working classes, the May Fair Chapel was used by professional classes and the aristocracy for marriages
By the late 17th century, provided that a couple exchanged vows and had some proof of this, then a marriage would be considered valid. Marriages by a form of ceremony conducted by an ordained clergyman, but without banns or licence, and generally not in a church or chapel, usually away from the parish of the bride or groom were termed clandestine marriages. The main appeal of clandestine marriages was seemingly for reasons of cost. Other reasons for their popularity included the avoidance of the need to obtain parental consent, and also to conceal embarrassing pregnancies.
The registers of the Fleet were kept, for the most part, by the ministers (or their clerks) who performed the ceremonies, by self-appointed register-keepers, by the landlords of some of the houses where the ceremonies took place, and by persons who appear to have set up record offices at a later date and made copies of registers in the possession of others. It must be emphasised that the information in the Fleet documents (particularly those before 1714) should be treated with extreme caution as dates given are unreliable and names or indeed whole entries may be fictitious.
Stephen and Mary, however, were married by the Reverend John Tarrant on 14 July 1749.
Two days later, according to Alan Russett, Tarrant married another couple outside the proper formalities of the church. On 16 July at the new chapel in St. Bride's parish, marine painter Dominic Serres married Mary Colldycutt (her name was actually spelled Caldecott). Tarrant was paid 2 shillings 6 for performing the marriage of "Dominick Serres of St. George's Southwark Bat.[chelor]." The speculation is that because Dominic was born a Roman Catholic and Mary a Protestant, they couldn't marry in either of their churches. But there is more to the story. Serres was born in Auch, France, of well-to-do parents who expected him to become a priest. He chose instead to go to Spain and become a sailor, then a ship captain. During the Seven Years War, he was taken prisoner by the British navy and sailed with them around the Atlantic before being brought to a London prison, where he is fabled to have seduced his prison guard's daughter. Whatever the truth, he remained in England and developed as an artist, becoming a pillar of the émigré community. His paintings are quite famous today, but we are more interested in the correlation of these two couples, both of whom faced some serious decisions:
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They had to post banns (an announcement of the intended union) for three weeks prior to marriage in an English church.
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Church officials could dictate where and when they could marry. At certain times during the ecclesiastic calendar marriages were not to be performed.
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They would need parental consent if either was under the age of 21. While Stephen's birth record indicates he was 21, Mary's age is unknown.
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Residency requirements may have posed a problem. Stephen was from France, and Mary was from Staffordshire.
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Either couple may have been rushed to marry because of a child on the way.
Because there is no record of a child born to Stephen and Mary until 1754, me might conclude that marriage within the church was impossible because Stephen was Catholic and Mary was Anglican. It is striking to note that their first child was born five years later on March 24, 1754, which is the precise date that Hardwicke’s Act went into effect, under which marriages were no longer legal unless proclaimed in a parish church. Read James Hardy's wrenching story about the sequence of events that brought about the act that required formal ceremonies; shutting down the clandestine marriage centers.
There are of course other possibilities; perhaps they couldn't afford a church wedding, or couldn't secure proof of parental approval, or one or both of them was up to no good. The island records tell a different story, however, of a couple who remained together for many years, and gained prominence in their new place of residence, leaving a recorded legacy of respectability.
Brisson, Stephen Hughes Peter, son of Stephen and Mary Brisson, baptized 24 March 1754
Their first son Stephen Hughes Peter Brisson was baptized at the church of Saint Stephen Coleman Street, which was just two blocks from the London Wall. Above is his barely visible 1754 birth record. Stephen and Mary Dale Brisson's son Stephen is the progenitor of the Brissons of Bladen County.
There is a record of a daughter born after Stephen, but she does not appear in any further records, and perhaps died as a child. A few blocks away was the parish of Saint Benet Fink, where Stephen's younger brother Nicolas Francois Brisson was baptized in 1762. Stephen was 8 years old when his little brother arrived. Soon after, the family of four immigrated to the French Carribean, where in all future records father and son's names were written in the French version; Ethien (correct spelling Etienne).
According to the 1780 Le Moule, Guadeloupe parish records, Stephen married Huldah Russ.
Their youngest surviving son was Anthony D. Brisson.
Saint Stephen Coleman Street
was a parish church in the City of London district of London, England. It stood at the corner of Coleman Street and what is now Gresham Street, where bankers and merchants built their homes. The church, destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, was rebuilt on its old foundations within a decade. The walls of the medieval tower had survived the Fire, and their old masonry remained visible on the north side in the later building, barely visible from the street. Unfortunately, the church was badly damaged during bombings of World War II, and had to be torn down.
Anthony D. Brisson's father
Stephen Hughes Peter Brisson
was baptized at Saint Stephen Coleman Street
Copper engraved print of the Wards of Coleman Street and Bassishaw, from Maitland's street plan of London circa 1756, as it appeared when Stephen Hughes Peter Brisson was baptized.
Stephen's little brother, Francois
Francois was also born in London, in the parish of St Benet Fink, on 19 April 1762.
The original church building was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Because the parish and population were quite small, it is unusual that St Benet Fink was rebuilt. Perhaps there was a large donation. As with many of the churches in the City of London, the architect was Sir Christopher Wren, who built St Paul’s Cathedral. The new Saint Benet Fink, where Francois was baptized, was completed in 1675.
The City of London had appropriated the northwest corner of the church site, after the fire, for the widening of Threadneedle Street. That left Wren with an irregular site on which to build, so he built a decagonal church. A dome with a lantern sat on top, supported from within by six arches. The church had two aisles spanned by entablatures supporting barrel vaults. Perhaps Wren drew his inspiration from Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome. The walls were built from brick and rubble and faced with Portland Stone. The tower was built at the west end of the church: it had a square dome, surmounted by a bell cage, and, uniquely for a Wren church, a ball and cross instead of a vane.
The backs of houses in Sweetings Rents – a lane demolished in the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange – were partly built over the churchyard, supported by pillars forming a colonnade. This information is offered for folks researching the Brissons relocation from Saint Stephens.
A picture of the new City church of St Benet Fink can be seen hanging by the door of the present church under the bell tower.