HOGG SCRAPBOOK #4 from Janice Brooks-Headrick 12/26/2000

THE BISHOP OF GRETNA GREEN

"Father always took Chamber's Edinburgh Journal. How I enjoyed Old Humphry's Walks in London - a book we had. Father used to buy Chamber's Works in phamplets - excellent reading. I think better than many of the stories we get now - a - days. We lived four miles from school. (Jan: In Scotland)Nellie brings in just now an account of the famous Gretna Green .

"In the notoriety of Gretna Green a distant uncle, Joseph Paisley, figures largely. This is true both literally and figuratively as Joseph Paisley was a man of unusual height, frame and strength. He could straighten a cold horseshoe in his two hands and his voice could be hear farther than any post-horn between Carlisle and Glasgow. In consequence of high living he became enormously fat.

"He was known as the Bishop of Gretna and why?

"On your map you will find Carlisle a border town on the English side not far from which the road leading to Glasgow crosses a stream called the Sark spanned by a great stone bridge at Gretna Green, which is a hamlet with long straggling street, a score of houses, a kirk and kirk yard and manse.

"This little place has been noted since 1754 for Scotch border marriages. English law prescribes that all English subjects except Quakers and Jews must be married according to the church of England . This is the English Marriage Act of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke passed in 1754. Being in the interest of the Aristocracy of the Established Church there has always been great opposition to this law.

"When vexed lovers or debtors once crossed the middle of the bridge they were instantly safe from pursuers and only forty rods from Gretna Green, where waited Joseph Paisley to act as a witness and so make the lovers one according to Scotch law. This part he acted with great dignity for forty -three years or until his death.

" The first of the Gretna Green irregular marriages, so far as known, occurred in 1771 between John Edgar, St. Mary's Parish and Jean Scott, parish of Hetheral. This adventurous couple instead of coming by coach and four over the old post route from Carlisle escaped their relatives by boat across the Solway. They were upset by storm and an incoming time whose violence drowned one of their pursuers and caused the others to abandon the pursuit.

"This young couple ran for their lives, bedraggled with brine and sand to Gretna Green. England was aflame and Paisley was threatened with all manner of harm for marrying then, but he was canny and procured the bet Scotch legal advise and only increased in importance. Soon he gave up his tea and tobacco store, kept a commodious inn with relays of horses and chaises at convenient points for use both by pursuers and pursued to the distance of one hundred miles south into England. The floodtide of beating hearts which still sets toward this hamlet would aggregate a mightier army than Scottish king ever hurled across this weird old Scottish border. H.K.G.