Banns, licences and Hardwicke's Marriage Act

A fashionable wedding at St George's Hanover Square
in 1841 from Life In Regency and Early 
Victorian Times by EB Chancellor (1926) The Marriage Act (1753)

Marriages in late Georgian England were governed by Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 which came into force on 25 March 1754 – an Act designed for ‘the better preventing of clandestine Marriages’.1
Although marriages usually took place in parish churches prior to this, it was possible to circumvent the system and get married in secret at p...