Scientific, medical and anecdotal evidence indicates that malaria was endemic in coastal marshes of England before the early twentieth century. However the lethality of historical malaria in England remains contested. One of the most influential anecdotes regarding malaria is Daniel Defoe’s early eighteenth-century account of agues in the Essex marshes. Defoe reported that marsh farmers had very high rates of remarriage because they married brides from upland parishes who were unused to marsh diseases and who suffered very high mortality rates as a consequence. We tested the veracity of Defoe’s anecdote using marriage registers for Essex parishes. Contrary to Defoe’s claims, we found no evidence of high remarriage rates for marsh grooms and no evidence that men from marsh parishes married women from ‘upland’ parishes in unusual numbers. These results suggest, as Defoe himself hinted, that his informants may have been exaggerating the exceptionalism of marsh conditions, and that this anecdote should not be used as evidence for the health impacts of malaria in early modern England.