Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Keith, Alexander (d.1758)
KEITH, ALEXANDER (d. 1758), Mayfair parson, was in 1730 appointed to officiate at a newly built chapel in Mayfair, and soon afterwards commenced to advertise in the daily journals his willingness to celebrate marriages without either banns or license. Persons of all ranks consequently resorted to Mayfair Chapel, and Keith, as Horace Walpole says, ‘constructed a very bishopric of revenue.’ His irregular proceedings were denounced by Dr. Trebeck, the rector of St. George's, Hanover Square, who instituted a suit against him in Doctors' Commons. Keith appeared in person, defended himself at great length, and alleged that he had been admitted to priest's orders by the Bishop of Norwich, by letters dimissory from the Bishop of London, about 13 June 1731, and that at the time of his nomination he held the appointment of preacher at the Rolls Chapel. The court gave judgment against him. On 27 Oct. 1742 sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him by Dr. Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, Keith impudently retaliating by excommunicating within the walls of Mayfair Chapel the diocesan, the judge of the court (Dr. Andrews), and the rector of St. George's. On 24 Jan. 1743 a significavit was issued for Keith's arrest, and in the month of April following he was committed to the Fleet prison according to one authority, to Newgate according to another, ‘for the contempt of the Holy and Mother Church.’ Though Keith was in prison, marriages were celebrated for him in a house in Mayfair, which he had fitted up as a chapel, by four Fleet parsons, named respectively Peter Symson, Francis Devenan, John Grierson, and Walker. The ‘Daily Post’ for 20 July 1744 announced in an advertisement: ‘To prevent mistakes, the little new chapel in Mayfair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner house opposite to the city side of the great chapel, and within ten yards of it, and the minister and clerk live in the same corner house … and the … fees … amount to one guinea as heretofore, at any hour till four in the afternoon.’ In 1749, while Keith was still in prison, his wife died. He caused her body to be embalmed, and to be kept above ground at an apothecary's shop in South Audley Street until he could attend her funeral. In this way the body was kept unburied for many months, in order to excite public curiosity (Daily Advertiser, 23 Jan. 1750). Four of his sons also died while he was in prison, and were buried at Norwood. The corpse of one who died in 1748 he caused to be carried on a bier by two men from the Fleet prison to the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. On the way thither the bearers halted several times, in order to enable the assembled crowds to read an inscription upon the coffin-lid referring to Keith's persecution (Craftsman, 6 Aug. 1748). In 1747 Keith published an uninteresting pamphlet, consisting of thirty-two pages, entitled ‘Observations on the Act for preventing Clandestine Marriages,’ with an engraving inscribed ‘The Rev. Mr. Keith, D.D.’ No copy is in the British Museum. While Keith remained in the Fleet prison the contemporary gossips declared, without authority, that he had a little chapel there, where in one year he married thousands of people; and others declared that he had been transported. He died in the Fleet prison on 13 Dec. 1758, after an imprisonment lasting nearly fifteen years.
[Burn's Hist. of the Fleet Marriages, ed. 1834, pp. 142–5; Gent. Mag. 1754, p. 141; Craftsman, 6 Aug. 1748; Daily Advertiser, 23 Jan. 1750; examination of the Fleet Registers at Somerset House.]