10 - Conclusion

Summary

Throughout this book, my central contention has been that the marriage law and practices of the long eighteenth century have been misunderstood by modern scholars – and, indeed, ever since the judgment of Sir William Scott in Dalrymple in 1811. I have shown that marriage in the Church of England (if not always in the right church) was the accepted and (outside London) almost universal mode of marrying both before and after 1754. We therefore have to reject any idea of a system ‘in chaos’ before the passage of the Clandestine Marriages Act: the Fleet certainly had its unruly elements, but it was certainly not representative of all marriages, or even all clandestine marriages. Nor was there a mass of individuals unsure of their marital status. There was, of course, always the risk of a third party claiming a precontract, or indeed an actual marriage, with one's spouse, but few people could have been in doubt about what was required for a valid marriage. A contract per verba de praesenti should be understood as a contract, rather than a marriage, as it was understood at the time.

Similarly, we must acquit the legislators who passed the 1753 Act of being motivated purely by self-interest. No doubt some individuals did vote with an eye to their own interest, whether in exercising control over minor children or securing an heiress against parental opposition.