I have heard that Mr. F. was always regarded as an eccentric man, if not deranged. I think I have heard that the bride was a milk girl, with whom the reverend gentleman fell in love because "she reminded him of his first love!" The marriage was decidedly opposed by his relatives and friends, which led to the above-mentioned singular occurrence. I believe, before performing the ceremony himself, Mr. F. publicly inquired "whether there was any one provided to marry him?" As there was not, he proceeded to the performance of the ceremony himself.
I have heard also of some such case of a clergyman marrying himself in Ireland. But the marriage was, I believe, pronounced null and void, and the clergyman deposed from the ministry.
Connected with this subject, I would relate another circumstance related to me as a fact by a clergyman, now a surrogate, who for very many years was curate of the parish adjoining that in which it occurred. He related it to justify and to explain his own somewhat unusual practice of using the _surnames_ as well as Christian names of the parties throughout the Marriage Service, saying that in the parish of B----y, Gloucestershire, the not doing so led to the _wrong couple being married_, owing to the stupidity of the parties and their friends! The rector, Rev. Mr. M----d, on discovering the mistake, formally pronounced the whole proceeding null and void, and then married the right couple!
A correspondent lately inquired whether a person could be buried in a garden! In N----h, Gloucestershire, such a thing occurred about sixteen years ago. An eccentric old gentleman built a kind of summer-house in his garden, and prepared his own tomb in it, and was there buried according to his directions. I rather think the funeral service was read, under the express sanction of the bishop, by the rector of an adjoining parish, who was a friend of the deceased.
_Algernon Sydney_ (Vol. v., pp. 318. 426.).--I can hardly suppose that MR. H. DIXON can have made any progress in his inquiries as to Algernon Sydney, without having met with the "authorities" mentioned by your correspondent C. E. D.; and yet it is certainly strange that, if MR. DIXON had seen these authorities, he could have called Sydney "an _illustrious patriot_." It may be therefore as well to state that the specific evidence which destroys Sydney's claim to the title not merely of an "_illustrious patriot_," but even of _an honest man_, and shows him to have been a corrupt traitor of the worst class, is to be found in the Appendix to Sir John Dalrymple's _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 339. 386. (8vo edit. 1790), where are transcribed the secret despatches of the French ambassador, Barillon, to Louis XIV., detailing the _bribes_ by which he engaged Algernon Sydney to that factious and traitorous opposition which had, for a hundred years prior to Dalrymple's publication, passed off for _patriotism_. I shall be very curious indeed to see what light MR. H. DIXON may be able to throw on this curious and infamous case; of which the best that even Mr. Macaulay can say is, that Barillon's _louis d'ors_ were "a temptation which conquered the virtue and the pride of Algernon Sydney."--_History of England_, vol. i. p. 228.