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facility of marriage had always been supposed to produce populousness , —it was amazing to see a law promulgated that cramped inclination , that discountenanced matrimony , and that seemed to annex as sacred privileges to birth as could be devised in the proudest , poorest , little Italian principality . * * * The abuse of precontracts had occasioned the demand of a remedy . The physician immediately prescribed medicines for every ailment to which
the ceremony of marriage was or could be supposed liable . Publication of banns was already an established ordinance , but totally in disuse , except amongst the inferior people , who did not blush to obey the law . Persons of quality , who proclaimed every other step of their conjugation by the most public parade , were ashamed to have the intention of it notified , and were constantly married by special license . Unsuitable matches , in a country where the passions are not impetuous , and where it is neither easy nor customary to tyrannize over the inclinations of children , were by no means
frequent . The most disproportioned alliances , those contracted by age , by dowagers , were without the scope of this bill . Yet the new act set out with a falsehood , declaiming against clandestine marriages , as if it had been a frequent evil . The abuse was the temporary weddings clapped up in the Fleet , and by one Keith , * who had constructed a very bishoprick foe revenue in May Fair , by performing that charitable function for a trifling sum , which the poor successors of the apostles are seldom humble enough to perform out of duty . "
It appears , from the debates on the bill , that Horace Walpole is not correct in his statements as to the number and cheapness of the clandestine marriages . One of the speakers on that debate asserted , that at Keith ' s chapel there were 6000 married in a year , whereas at St Anne ' s Church , in a very populous parish , there were seldom above fifty marriages in a year ^ though the difference in the expense was not above eight or ten shillings . f
The debates on the bill were long and violent . " The Speaker , " says Horace Walpole , in a letter to the Hon . H . S . Conway , J " who had spoken well against the clause , ( of nullity , ) was so misrepresented by the Attorney-General , that there was danger of a skimmington between the great wig and the coif , the former having given a flat lie to the latter . " For the bill * spoke
Pelham , Wilbraham , C . Yorke , &c . ; against it , Fox , Charles Townsend , Fazakerley , and others , " Captain Saunders , who had said he would go and vote against the bill for the sake of his sailors , ( having once given forty of his crew leave to go on shore for an hour , and all returned married , ) was compelled by Lord Anson , the Chancellor ' s son-in-law and his patron , to vote for it . " §
The clause of nullity , as it was termed in the statute of George II ., ( whereby marriages , however honestly contracted , yet wanting the consent of the proper parties , were declared void , and the children consequently illegitimate , ) has been considered a very harsh and unjust enactment . Not only were the children of such marriage illegitimate , but if such children were married under age , with the consent of their supposed parents , the grand-children likewise were illegitimate . An instance of the grievous operation of this law , occurring a few years since in a noble family ,. led to the revision of the statute of George II ., and accordingly a new Marriage
? When Keith was deprived of this revenue he swore he would be revenged upon the bishops ; that lie would buy a piece of ground and outbury tUem . f Hansard , Part , Deb . Vol . XV . p . 19 . J Wtfpnlc ' t Wvrk » , Vol . V , p . 35 . § Walpole ' i Mem ., Vol . L p . 300 . . . ,
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History of the English Marriage Late , 75
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 75, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/3/
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