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of the realm repelled the proposal of the bishops to udopt this maxim * a pavt of the statute law , with the celebrated answer , * ' quod noiunt leges
Anglise mutare quae usitatse sunt et approbatae . " It may be readily supposed , that whilst ecclesiastical censures retained their full vigour , few instances would occur of accidental
or contumacious opposition to the papal ordinance -, but it is clear that the courts of common law never suffered it to have the effect of making the religious ceremony essential to the general validity of the marriage .
The Reformation produced no- decided change in the respective jurisdictions of the civil and ecclesiastical courts * in the article of marriage , although the superiority of the former has been , of course , less disputable since the complete annihilation of the
supremacy of the rope . Several imperfect attempts were made , during the reigns of Henry the VII Ith , Edward the Vlth , and Elizabeth , to arrange the canons , and give them a specific statutory sanction , but nothing was effected beyond a general confirmation of " such of them as were not
repugnant to the laws of the realm . " In the year l 605 , various constitutions and canons , including some regulations on the subject of clandestine marriages , were agreed upon in the
convocation of the provinceof Canterbury , and confirmed by the king ; but these canons have been expressly decided to have no binding effect upon the laity . See 2 Atkyns , 650 .
In the times of the civil wars between Charles and his parliament , and until the Restoration , marriages were contracted before a justice of the peace : these marriages were by statute 12 Charles II . C . 33 , declared as valid as if solemnized according to the rites used in the Church of
England ; but it does not appear that this ratification * was necessary for any other purpose , than to guard against penalties and disabilities in the ecclesiastical courts . It must be admitted , however , that the enactment was
calculated to strengthen the doubts which have been agitated since that period . When the Toleration Act of the 1 st William and Mary had emancipated Nonconformists from the terrors of the ecclesiastical courts , it was natu-
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rally to be expected that the Dissenters should , very generally ; have availed themselves of their newly-acquired immunities in regard to the religious celebration of marriages . The perseverance arid ultimate-success
of the Quakers in this respect , is matter of notoriety . The validity of their marriages is not established by any positive enactment in Lord Hardwicke ' Act ; it therefore rests upon grounds and principles , which were
antecedently , common to all Nonconformists . It is equally evident , however ,-that the other sects of Dissenters did not , in any considerable numbers , refuse conformity to the established ritual in this particular ; for in the statute 6 and 7 William III . C * 6 ,
which imposed certain duties upon marriages , births and burials , there is a clause extending those duties-to Quakers and Jews " cohabiting as man and wife , although not married according to the la , w of England , " and a proviso , that nothing therein
contained , should make good any suck marriage or pretended marriage , but that they should be of the same force and no other , as if the Act had not been made—a cowardly enactment ,
which shews a reluctance to admit what it was found impossible wholly to deny , and which was calculated , and probably intended , to deter other Dissenters from following the example of their more consistent brethren .
There are , however , three reported cases in our courts of law , from which it is to be collected , that the Quakers were not the only Nonconformists who practised tbe celebration of matrimony according to their own forms . As these cases are very brief , and are
the only documents which I have been able to meet with in elucidation of this part of the history of Dissent el ' s , I subjoin them for the gratification of such of your readers , as may not have an opportunity of referring to the original authorities .
I . Uutchinson and Wife ^ v . Ihookehankc . 5 W . andM . Mich . T . C . P . Prohibition was prayed to the Ecclesiastical Court , upon sug-gestioii of the statute of the 1 st William and Mary , by which it is enacted , that no person dissenting from the Church of England , who shall take the oaths mentioned in an act of the same year , ( namely , tbe new oaths of allegiance and supremacy . ) and sliaU
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176 History mid Present State of the Law relating to Marrmga .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1819, page 176, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1770/page/40/
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