TAILIEUCHUNG - MARRIAGE LAW AND PRACTICE IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

This book uses a wide range of primary sources – legal, literary and demographic – to provide a radical reassessment of eighteenth-century marriage. It disproves the widespread assumption that couples married simply by exchanging con- sent, demonstrating that such exchanges were regardedmerely as contracts to marry and that marriage in church was almost universal outside London. It shows how the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 was primarily intended to prevent clergymen operating out of London’s Fleet prison from con- ducting marriages, and that it was successful in so doing. It also refutes the idea that the 1753 Act was harsh or strictly interpreted, illustrating the courts’ pragmatic approach | MARRIAGE LAW AND PRACTICE j IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A REASSESSMENT REBECCA PROBERT MARRIAGE LAW AND PRACTICE IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY This book uses a wide range of primary sources legal literary and demographic to provide a radical reassessment of eighteenth-century marriage. It disproves the widespread assumption that couples married simply by exchanging consent demonstrating that such exchanges were regarded merely as contracts to marry and that marriage in church was almost universal outside London. It shows how the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 was primarily intended to prevent clergymen operating out of London s Fleet prison from conducting marriages and that it was successful in so doing. It also refutes the idea that the 1753 Act was harsh or strictly interpreted illustrating the courts pragmatic approach. Finally it establishes that only a few non-Anglicans married according to their own rites before the Act while afterwards most save the exempted Quakers and Jews similarly married in church. In short eighteenth-century couples complied with whatever the law required for a valid marriage. REBECCA PROBERT is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick teaching family law and child law. She has published widely on both modern family law and its history. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ENGLISH LEGAL HISTORY Edited by J. H. BAKER Fellow of St Catharine s College 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 Courts 1500-1860 R. B. OUTHWAITE Law Courts and Lawyers in the City of London 1300-1550 PENNY TUCKER Legal Foundations of Tribunals in Nineteenth-Century England CHANTAL STEBBINGS Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth The Lower Branch of the Legal Profession In Early Modern England C. W. BROOKS Roman Canon Law in Reformation England R. H. HELMHOLZ Sir Henry Maine A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence R. C. J. .

• Luật học
• unacknowledged regularity
• actual terms
• marriage practices
• misunderstood
• regularity of clandestine