JIECOLLECTIONS OF THE OLD ACTORS. 261 



her more closely to our readers,, we will make them acquainted with 

 old Tate Wilkinson, to whom she was indebted for the first of her 

 good fortune, and who was himself a remarkable man, and had for 

 many years been very useful to the theatres in his time. 



His father was a clergyman, who performed his clerical duties in 

 the free chapel of the Savoy, which, being within the duchy of Lan- 

 caster, was extra-parochial ; and, in executing his duties, he had a 

 regular and respectable congregation of neighbours, who associated 

 with him upon friendly terms, being members of the Church of Eng- 

 land. He likewise performed the funeral service, and the sacrament 

 of matrimony ; the latter, though otherwise similar to the way in 

 which marriages were performed in the chapels of the Fleet and 

 Mayfair, upon the whole with superior decency ; so that the Wilkin- 

 sons were growing old with as much respectability as their neigh- 

 bours, when an unforeseen accident ruined them completely and irre- 

 vocably. 



In those days, matrimony was effected with as much facility as any 

 other folly. The parties, choosing to venture, had only to put a small 

 quantity of money in their purses, and walk out to Mayfair, the Fleet- 

 side, the Savoy, and, I believe, some other places, where the parson's 

 cad whispering in their ears, " Want to be married, sir and madam?" 

 hurried them into his sanctorum, gave the tack, pocketed the fee, 

 wrote the certificate, and turned the happy, happy pair into the wide 

 world, too often leaving them to exclaim, in the words of Congreve, 



c( Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure ! 

 Married in haste, they may repent at leisure." 



To which others frequently rejoined, still in the words of the same 

 witty bard, 



" Some, by experience, find those words misplaced, 

 At leisure married, THEY REPENT IN HASTE." 



This, like many old grievances, went on, till accident ended it. A 

 patriotic Fox, which was only a commoner, gobbled up a truly royal 

 goose, she being lineally and matrimonially descended from the an- 

 cient noble, and royal house of Richmond, who being descended, 

 via sinister, from the ancient and truly royal loins of Charles Stuart 

 the Second, could not brook the disgrace of having their breed 

 crossed by the tail of a fox, procured an act to be passed, depriving 

 all persons of the power of marrying without consent of friends, ex- 

 cept by galloping off to Gretna Green in a chaise and four, and 

 punishing all persons who performed such marriages, in any other 

 manner, by transportation for life, or something like it. 



Poor Wilkinson, not having the fear of the new-made law before 

 his eyes, married Vernon, a well-known singer, to a young actress, 

 according to the good old, but now illegal practice ; and this being 

 the first public infringement of the act, all the parties were punished 

 in what was intended to be the most severe manner, though it cer- 

 tainly was not so ; for Vernon and his fair friend were freed from 

 their shackles, which neither of them cared a farthing about, and the 

 poor clergyman was sent to end his days in banishment ! His family 



