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[...]... its meaning intheeighteenth century, any more than the Gothic revival of the early nineteenth century should lead an outsider to assume architectural continuity from the Middle Ages 8 MarriageLaw and Practiceinthe Long 18th Centuryin strict accordance with the requirements of canon law. 29 Both the negative andthe positive aspects of this should be stressed: the failure to comply with thelaw was... marriagein any eighteenth- century text, andthe term ‘irregular marriage but rarely;27 by contrast the term ‘clandestine marriage , widely used intheeighteenth century, had a specific meaning, and one that is crucial for the correct interpretation of contemporary legal texts and cases Although to modern readers the term ‘clandestine marriage might suggest secrecy and romantic elopements, inthe eighteenth. .. if this inspires greater confidence inthe results actually obtained Without giving away the ending, it is worth making the (somewhat obvious) point that the ability to ascertain that a particular marriage occurred depends on the information available, both about the couples in question and inthe archives Searching for a marriage is far easier if (as inthe case of the settlement examinations) the parties... questions For example, in determining whether a particular practice was a full alternative to a regular marriage, we need to know what its status was inthe eyes of the law; in examining how far the 1753 Act was an innovation we need to be able to situate each of its nineteen provisions inthe legal context of the time; andin assessing how far the courts’ interpretation of the Act was harsh, there is no substitute... relation to each the same questions are posed: given thelaw and practice of the time, what would the impact of the 1753 Act have been? Was each of these practices a full and/ or functional alternative to a regular marriagein church? Chapter 6 then examines the reasons for the 65 66 67 69 Such as the Europe-wide increase in illegitimacy inthe second half of theeighteenthcentury despite the lack of legislative... thelaw was not the sole defining feature of such a marriage, since exchanges that did not involve an Anglican clergyman30 were not described as clandestine marriages.31 The term ‘clandestine marriage will therefore be used in this book inthe way in which it would have been understood intheeighteenthcentury This usage also has the advantage of drawing a sharp distinction between marriages that were... has explored the case law on the interpretation of the Act in any depth.21 And there is very little information about the way in which ordinary people experienced the law: few parish-level studies have been devoted to the specific issue of conformity When I began to look at the operation of thelaw of marriage intheeighteenthcentury I was constantly surprised by the disjunction between the claims made... Parker, Informal Marriage, who employs the term ‘informal marriagein a similar fashion At least in England and Wales, in contrast to the position in Scotland: see e.g., T C Smout, ‘Scottish Marriage, Regular and Irregular, 1500–1940’, ch 9 in R Outhwaite (ed.), Marriageand Society (London: Europa Publications Ltd, 1981), and, on the differing terminology of the Bill that dealt with Scottish marriage law, ... of information and detected misspellings of names in 10 per cent of the entries, different forenames in 0.6 per cent, and different surnames in 0.4 per cent 18 MarriageLaw and Practiceinthe Long 18th Century Several couple as been married at our church during that clerk’s time which was not entered inthe Redgester, owing to his negligence, he being a very Drinking Man.61 The simple fact that the. .. immediately before and after 1754, when the Act came into force:23 too often in other accounts, as we shall see, evidence from the sixteenth, seventeenth, or nineteenth centuries is pressed into service as ‘evidence’ of trends intheeighteenthThe extent to which the 1753 Act was an innovation, andthe impact that it had, can only be judged by examining lawandpractice as it stood intheeighteenthcentury . Cambridge
Recent series titles include
Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century
A Reassessment
REBECCA PROBERT
The Rise and Fall of the English Ecclesiastical. England in the Later Middle Ages
J. G. BELLAMY
William Sheppard, Cromwell’s Law Reformer
NANCY L. MATTHEWS
MARRIAGE LAW AND
PRACTICE IN THE
LONG EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
A