Gretna Green, a Dumfriesshire village, near the head of the Solway Firth, 10 miles NNW. of Carlisle. After the abolition of Fleet marriages (1754), English persons wishing to marry clandestinely had to get out of England. Thus the practice arose of crossing the Border into Scotland, where Gretna Green, or Springfield, as the first village, had by 1771 become the resort of runaway couples. The ' priest' or 'blacksmith' might be any one - ferryman, toll-keeper, or landlord ; his fee ranged from half a guinea to £100; and 'church' was commonly the tollhouse till 1826, and afterwards Gretna Hall. At the tollhouse nearly 200 couples were sometimes united in a twelvemonth. Coldstream and Lamberton, in Berwickshire, were chapels-of-ease to Gretna for the eastern Border, as also till 1826 was Port-patrick, in Wigtownshire, for Ireland. One of the earliest Scottish runaway matches on record is Richard Lovell Edgeworth's (1763); amongst his successors were Lords Brougham, Dundonald, Eldon, and Erskine, besides numerous scions of the noble families of Villiers, Fane, Beauclerc, Coventry, Paget, etc. In 1856 all irregular marriages were rendered invalid unless one of the parties had been residing in Scotland for three weeks previously. See Hutchinson's Chronicles of Gretna Green (2 vols. 1844).