Marriage Customs in England

Wedding Banns 1819

I am fascinated with genealogy. When I am searching the records that document the evidence of my ancestors’ lives, I feel like a detective, tracking the confirmation of their lives to discover who they are. Yesterday I discovered my ancestor’s wedding banns.  I was so excited because I had read often about banns.

Wikipedia explains that "The banns of marriage, commonly known simply as the 'banns' or 'bans' (from a Middle English word meaning 'proclamation') are the public announcement in a Christian parish church of an impending marriage between two specified persons specified persons for three consecutive weeks." 

Wedding Registry 1754

  
“The purpose of banns is to enable anyone to raise any legal obstacle to the marriage, so as to prevent marriages that are invalid. Impediments would be such things as a pre-existing marriage that has not been dissolved or annulled, lack of consent, or the couple’s being related within the prohibited degrees of kinship."


There have always been laws concerning marriage. In 1215 Catholic Canon law enacted a law to prevent clandestine marriages. The Council of Trent on November 11, 1563 went  further; they made the law more precise; this stated that before any marriage, the names of the wedding couple should be announced publicly by the parish priests of both parties on three consecutive Holy Days (publishing the banns). This law also required each parish to keep a register of marriages; however many parishes ignored this order—only about 800 records exist from the 1500s.


Some couples did not want to wait three weeks to marry, so marriage licenses were introduced in the 14th century. However, these licenses were not cheap; the groom paid a fee, and made a written oath on that there was no "canonical impediment" to the marriage. Sometimes the groomsmen also had to post a hefty bond to ensure the legality of the marriage. 

Marriage Registry 1726

After the wedding the marriage was recorded in the parish records; sometimes the priest recorded all the names, other times the bride and groom wrote their names.


In the 1600s, many people had begun marrying without publishing banns. It was possible for eloping couples to be married clandestinely by an ordained clergyman and it became more and more common for couples to marry in “irregular” or “clandestine” marriages.

“Clandestine" marriages were those that had an element of secrecy to them; perhaps they did not take place at the home parish, without either banns or marriage license. An "irregular" marriage was one that took place either away from the home parish of the spouses (but after banns or license), or at an improper time. 

Marriage Registry 1689

A Fleet Prison marriage in London is the best-known example of a “clandestine” or “irregular” marriage; it took place in the Fleet Prison environs. As a prison Fleet Prison was outside of the jurisdiction of the church, and eventually the whole area around the Fleet Prison became a lawless area which operated under “fleet rules.”  


An Article called “Thorley’s Fleet Marriages,” (From the Thorley Archives, With acknowledgements to: - Fleet Marriages of Hertfordshire People to 1754, Jack Parker, Published by Hertfordshire Family & Population History Society 1999, Bill Hardy, May 2003) gives an interesting insight into Fleet marriages:

Fleet Marriage Certificate (NOT my Ancestor)

 “No banns or licenses were required but a record was kept by an accompanying register keeper and hence many of these records now survive in The Public Record Office. Strangely, unlike parish registers of that period, these records contain details of occupations, marital status and home locality and are therefore of interest to those trying to track down their family history in counties surrounding London.”


 Wikipedia states, “The Marriage Duty Act 1695 put an end to irregular marriages at parochial churches by penalizing clergymen who married couples without banns or license. By a legal quirk, however, clergymen operating in the Fleet could not effectively be proceeded against, and the clandestine marriage business there carried on. In the 1740s, over half of all London weddings were taking place in the environs of the Fleet Prison. . . .


“During the 1740s up to 6,000 marriages a year were taking place in the Fleet area, compared with 47,000 in England as a whole. . . It was not merely a marriage center for criminals and the poor, however; both rich and poor availed themselves of the opportunity to marry quickly or in secret.”


The government was determined to prevent these irregular marriages and Parliament passed Lord Hardwick's Act of 1753, wherein marriage was only legally valid if the banns had been called or a marriage license had been obtained. The only exception was if a bishop's license (a common license) or the special license of the Archbishop of Canterbury had been obtained. Lord Hardwick’s Act of 1753 also required a separate marriage register to record witnesses, signatures of all parties, occupation of groom and the residences of the couple marrying.
 

Gretna Green Marriage Registry--Not my ancestor

After the Act of 1753 law, elopers had to leave England and Wales in order to contract a marriage to avoid these formalities. Scotland, in particular Gretna Green, the first village over the border from England, was the customary destination, but became less popular after 1856 when Scottish law was amended to require 21 days' residence. I was excited to find an example of a Gretna Green marriage online. As an avid reader of romance novels, I was thrilled to see that it was a wedding between nobles—Lady Mary Beauclair and Lord George Wm. Coventry on 11 Jun 1811 (they are not my ancestors).


In 1763, the minimum age of marriage was set at age 16; marriage without consent of parents was set at 21 years of age. This law also stipulated that parish records should be written on lined papers with various columns for each category to make the records more readable. 


Each law made marriage more secure, made records more permanent and accessible; each law protected the rights of the wives and children of the marriage.

St. Peter's Church, Blackley, Lancashire where my ancestor's worshiped

But not everything was perfect. Most of my British ancestors are from Manchester in Lancashire County in England. However, they lived in tiny communities, Blackley, Ashton Under-lyne, Newton Heath, and Oldham. I was surprised that often they were married, and baptized in the Manchester Cathedral rather than their own parish chapels, St. Mary’s, St. Peter’s, All Saint’s, Chorlton Chapel. 

Manchester Cathedral

At first I thought that it was more romantic to be married in the great cathedral. Then I discovered the real reason—money. The Collegiate Church of Manchester (the Cathedral) was the Parish Church for the parish of Manchester. In 1421 the warden and fellows of Manchester Cathedral decided that under their charter they could claim fees for any marriage within the geographical parish of Manchester. Therefore, anyone married in their own parish (such as Blackley) had to pay marriage fees to their local church, plus the Manchester Cathedral.  However, if a couple married only in the Manchester Cathedral, they only had to pay one marriage fee. 

Free BMD Index 1838

Also, the Manchester Cathedral often conducted many “irregular” marriages, and couples would not have to schedule a wedding, but just appear and get married. One report also indicates that they did multiple marriages of poor people in the Manchester Cathedral in the 1800s.

  

In July 1837, the government Introduced General Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths in England and Wales. This is the basis of all “FreeBMD Indexes” that Genealogists love; these record all civil birth, marriages and deaths from the year 1838 and after. These are government records, not parish records and very reliable. Note, its index is by three-month period. From these you can locate the original record.

1851 Census of Newton township, Lancashire

Censuses, beginning with 1841, tried to document families and individuals for many purposes. If you are a genealogist, censuses are a great way to find names and information. 

Censuses list all those who live in each house, their names and their ages, sometimes their occupations, and where they come from. This gives you an idea which year someone was born and how many children there are at that year so you can locate information about the children.

But today marriage is becoming less and less an option for people. Many are not marrying at all; the government records their birth and death, but those are the only official records of their life. No marriages, children with no fathers, same-sex couples with marriages recognized in some states and not in others. Marriage vows that are not official, but merely made up, and dissolved as easily. Couples that live together as long as it convenient and then move on with or without the children they had with that individual. 

People move so much today that no census can track them. When I was researching my ancestors near Blackley, I could tell which were mine because they were at Blackley. If someone with the same name were from Yorkshire, I knew he was not related. But now, although we’ve lived in the same place for 23 years, the census has recorded us here for only one of those censuses. In 1990, we didn’t move here until after the census, so we were recorded in California; in 2000, we were recorded here; in 2010, the census recorded us in Los Angeles where we were living while Ed received his new lung. So how could any census track anyone in a society as mobile as ours?

Can you imagine a genealogist of the future trying to make sense of the chaos of family situations in the future? I’m just glad I’m researching my past—and not the future generations.