Was Your Ancestor Really Married? was the subject of a
talk given by Dr. Colin Chapman, the well-known historical author and lecturer.
He has made a detailed study of the customs and rules governing marriages from
the Middle Ages until recent times. Before Henry the Eighth, the Catholic Church was the sole arbiter on matters relating to
morals, and its views
were promulgated through regulations known as Canon Laws. Strictly speaking, a wedding
to be valid, only needed a couple to make individual declarations to live
together. However, a minister and witnesses had to be in attendance to
ensure the event followed a certain procedure, and was properly recorded. Thus
any children could be declared legitimate. and would therefore be entitled to inherit the property of their parents.
In 1727, Hardwicke introduced his Marriage Act, which attempted to arrange a standard procedure to cover weddings throughout
the kingdom. As a result a service could only take place between 8 a.m. and noon, and certainly not
in Lent or on Holy Days. It was illegal for close relatives such as cousins or in-laws to
marry, and special rules applied to lunatics,
However Colin pointed out that dispensations from these regulations could be obtained by applying to the Church
authorities although this was an expensive procedure and not available to the ordinary citizen. Indeed
in many cases he had found that flawed marriages had proceeded without these dispensations,
and he therefore feared that many in his audience had an unsuspected streak of illegitimacy in their ancestry.
Tony Johnson
...
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