GRETNA GREEN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4444, 24 July 1922, Page 4

GRETNA GREEN.

AN ABDUCTION RECALLED; A recent article on “Three Generations of Gretna Priests"' in the Weekly Scotsman has stirred afresh the interest in Gretna romances which lives on in spite of the fact that episodes such as those which made Gretna Green famous are now no longer possible. In the course of; the article the writer, who •states that he gaiped much of his information from old newspaper flies gives the following story of the Wakefield sensation, which is of some interest in this Dominion, by reason of the prominent figure Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of the principals in the affair, subsequently became in the early history of New Zealand "The Wakefield affair caused aa enormous sensation. A rich Cheshire heiress, daughter of Mr William Turner, Shringley Ha.ll, had gone to Manchester, and whilst at her rooms there she was astonished to be intruded upon by a man whom she had never seen before. She was about to leave the room when the man spoke- “ I am commanded by your papa," ■he said, “to take you to him. You i may he sure it is no slight circumstance prevented your papai from coming himself;’’ Miss Turner replied that it was jn account of her mother’s illness that, she had been sent from home, and that she could not understood why she should be required to return, but after further conversation she accom-

panied the stranger (Gibbon Wakefield, a Londoner) to a carriage then in waiting for her. She expected to be taken to her father, but . was driven instead to HaUfax. thence to Kendal, and on to Carlyle, and her suspicions were partly allayed by what her companion told her. O'wing to bank failures ,he informed her, her father had been nearly ruined. Wakefield’s uncle, however, by a loan of £60,000, had relieved her father of his difficulties for a time, but ahother bank failure had placed him in a. worse state than before.

"In the circumstances, Wakefield said, his uncle had l required the Shringley estate as a security, but he had suggested that if Miss Turner would marry his nephew' 1 (Wakefield) the estate would be hers. Believing that her father was in flight in Scotland and would see her beyond Carlisle she raised no objections. At Carlisle the coach window was pulled up, and Wakefield's brother William said he had seen Miss Turner’s father and a Mr. Grimsditch in the city They were, he said, in a back room, and had made two attempts to cross the Border. Wihiam further told Miss Turner that her father begged her not to hesitate in marrying Wakefield. She consented because she thought her father would be ruined if she refused, and the wedding took place at Gretna Green.

"Miss Turner wrote home to her mother and the plot was revealed. The marriage was annulled by special Act of. Parliament, and the brothers Wakefield were sentenced at Lancaster Assizes to three years’ imprisonment..” 1