GRETNA ROMANCES AND RUNAWAYS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

GRETNA ROMANCES AND RUNAWAYS

ASTIR was caused 25 years ago, when over 1000 original certificates

of marriage celebrated at Gretna Hall between 1825 and 1854 were offered for sale in London.

The certificates, with the Gretna Hall "Marriage Register," were of marriages made chiefly by John Linton, who, after having been confidential servant to Sir James Graham at Netherby Hall, invested his savings in the purchase of Gretna Hall, which he turned into an inn for receiving eloping couples. Netherby will be always associated with Scott's "Lochinvar" and his bride.

Linton's inn soon became the chief marriage factory among many which have flourished at Gretna since the previous century.

One certificate proved that the Gretna Green habit co.uld be hereditary. It was of the runaway match, on November 6, 1845, of Jjady Adela Corisande Maud Villiers, daughter of the Earl of Jersey, with Captain Charles Park Ibbetson. The story of the race to Gretna Green by her grandmother, Miss Sarah Child— daughter of the famous banker, Robert Child—and her lo.ver, the tenth Earl of Westmorland, in 1782, has become a classic. The infuriated banker was on the pc'nt of overtaking the fleeing couple when the Earl succeeded in shooting one of the leading pair of horses in Child s coach. We know that he forgave them, because he left the bulk of his fortune to their daughter, Lady Sarah Sophia, who eventually married George Villiers. Earl of Jersey.

Another historic elopement was that on May 25. 1840, when Lord Drumlanrig, afterwards seventh Marquess o.f Queensberry ran off with Miss Caroline Clayton, daughter of General Sir W. Clayton,

of Marden Park, Surrey. This broke the traditional sequence of the postchaise, as the lovers rode to Gretna on hoj-seback. It may be recalled that their son became the famous peer associated with the well-known "Queensberry Rules" .governing boxing.

The history of member.s of the House of Commons, which is being compiled, will have to refer to Gretna when it deals with the grandson and namesake of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was bold enough on May 17, 1835, to elope to Scotland with Maria Grant, daughter and heiress of that beau sabreur, Sir Colquhoun Grant, of Frampton, who, at Waterloo, had three horses shot under him.- Unquestionably, fears of fathers-in-law did not affect Gretna bridegrooms. Sheridan afterwards sat for Shaftesbury between 1845 and 1852; and for Dorchester between 1852 and 1868.

One of the earliest entries in the Linton register was of the marriage, on March 8, 1820, between Edward Gibbon

Wakefield and the Cheshire heiress, Ellen Turner, then 16 years of age, who.ni he had decoyed from school by a false letter,' representing that her father's fortune depended on her compliance. Tkis is an amazing passage in til? life of a man who became one of the most distinguished Colonial statesmen in our annals. Yet there was a precedent as, 10 years before, at the age of 20, he had made a runaway match with an. heiress and a ward in Chancery. On the second accasion, however, he had to suffer three years' imprisonment, and a special Act of Parliament was passed to •nnnul the marriage. After Wakefield's release he became the chief authority on colonisation and emigration. His name still lives in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.—"Daily Telegraph."