A Brief History of Marriage
By Samantha Callan - Care for the Family
Trends in marriage
Until the 1750s marriage was largely a private matter between two individuals and their kin. Clandestine marriages ie. those done secretly, were valid in the eyes of the church and the law. But the Marriage Act of 1753 took control over marriage from the hands of individuals and vested it in the state. From the point at which the law took effect, in 1754, marriages which had not taken place in the church of England or the synagogue were rendered invalid. Diverse interest groups had problems with this. The Quaker Daniel Defoe considered it testimony to the increasingly successful alliance between property and patriarchy. In other words, the interests of the state and the landed gentry coincided with those of the established church and although mere consent as the basis for matrimony created significant problems their resolution in the form of the Marriage Act provoked enduring ill-will. The resentment generated by the established church’s ‘ownership’ of marriage is evident in the historical record and also in current attitudes. Due to the Act’s requirements large sections of the population were tipped into common law or informal ways of living together as ways of living were sought which suited local and particular interests and preferences rather than the wishes of the state. So for example we had the infamous “jumping the broom” which I shall describe later. “Living tally” was the phrase for a permanent and respectable relationship outside formal marriage, which might be avoided because of a woman’s wish to retain personal and financial autonomy. After marriage a woman’s right of settlement was removed to her husband’s parish. If he deserted then neither of the parishes would necessarily take responsibility for her. We need to recognise that the private ordering of family relationships is likely to have always existed alongside the public ordering. Having said this, the act of marriage has been caught up in the wider social movement from status to contract. Status is fixed and unchanging but contract is dissoluble. So we need to think in terms of the ebb and flow of marriage in a historical context but also of a linear progression away from the idea that when you became a marriage partner that altered your status permanently and towards today’s contractual view of marriage in which exit from the married state is being made increasingly easy.
