subs. phr. (old).—See quots.
1508. SHAKESPEARE, 2 Henry IV., i. 2, 56. Page. He’s gone into SMITHFIELD to buy your worship a horse. Falst. I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in SMITHFIELD; an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.
1621. BURTON, The Anatomy of Melancholy, III. III. iv. 2. Hee that … buyes a horse in SMITHFIELD … shall likely have a jade to his horse.
1662. J. WILSON, The Cheats, v. 5. Your Daughter has marry’d a Gentleman:—Is not this better, than a SMITHFIELD BARGAIN?—Give me so much money, and my Horse shall leap your Mare.
d. 1704. T. BROWN, Works, iii. 54. By the procurement of these experienc’d matrons, a marriage is struck up like a SMITHFIELD BARGAIN. There is much higling and wrangling for t’other ten pounds.
1731. WARD, Terræ Filius, 4, 39. He can no more speak without breaking the fourth commandment than a SMITHFIELD jockey can sell a horse without giving the purchaser a lye into the BARGAIN.
1753. RICHARDSON, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1812), vi. 44. Women when … urged to give way to a clandestine or unequal address … are pleaded with to rise against the notions of bargain and sale, SMITHFIELD BARGAINS you Londoners call them.
1772. R. GRAVES, The Spiritual Quixote, V. xv. The Devil take me, if I would marry an Angel upon the footing of a mere SMITHFIELD BARGAIN.
1776. FOOTE, The Bankrupt, ii. 1. You deposit so much money, and he grants you such an annuity; a mere SMITHFIELD BARGAIN, that is all.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. SMITHFIELD BARGAIN. A bargain whereby the purchaser is taken in. This is likewise frequently used to express matches, or marriages, contracted solely on the score of interest, on one or both sides, where the fair sex are bought and sold like cattle in Smithfield.
1881. DAVIES, A Supplementary English Glossary, s.v. SMITHFIELD BARGAIN.… A marriage of interest, where money is the chief consideration: the allusion is to buying a wife in Smithfield. Cf. BRETON, Olde Man’s Lesson (1605), p. 7: ‘Fie on these market-matches, where marriages are made without affection.’
