Ancestry adds London, England, Clandestine Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667-1754

Fleet marriages, as clandestine marriages are popularly known, were marriages which skirted the strict canon of the Church of England but were nevertheless considered legal - until Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753.

The collection comprises registers of Clandestine Marriages and of Baptisms in the Fleet Prison, King's Bench Prison, the Mint and the May Fair Chapel taken from RG7 at The National Archives, Kew. There are 894,892 entries.

The records, previously available online elsewhere, are now placed on Ancestry allowing one-stop searching.

The records are indexed with original images linked which typically contain:

full names of the couple
date
marital status
residences (generally parishes)
occupation of the groom
minister's name or initials.

Some Fleet marriage entries are known to be false, such as backdated for social convenience.

For a more complete description of these records go to http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C13332