Divorce
Before
1858, divorce was rare. In 1670, Parliament passed an act allowing John
Manners, Lord Roos, to divorce his wife, Lady Anne Pierpon. This created a
precedent for parliamentary divorces on the grounds of the wife's adultery,
according to the National Archives.
This
marked "the start of modern 'divorce'," says Rebecca Probert of the
University of Warwick School of Law.
It
also set the precedent for more than 300 cases between the late 17th and
mid-19th Centuries - each requiring an act of Parliament. It was only in 1858
that divorce could be carried out via legal process. Even then divorce was too
expensive for most people, and there was the added challenge for wives of
proving "aggravated" adultery - that their husbands had been guilty
of cruelty, desertion, bigamy, incest, sodomy or bestiality, Probert says.
The
gates for divorce opened with the Divorce Reform Act of 1969. Instead of
pointing the finger, couples could cite marital breakdown as the reason for the
split.
"Prior
to 1969, the script was that marriage was for life" says Bren Neale, a
University of Leeds sociologist. "The divorce law meant that people trapped
in bad marriages need not stay in them forever." The emphasis on marriage
shifted from a long-term commitment at all costs to a personal relationship
where individual fulfilment is important, she says.
State
control
The
Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753, popularly known as Lord Hardwicke's Act,
marked the beginning of state involvement in marriage, says sociologist Carol
Smart of the University of Manchester. "You've got these parallel strands
going on of the secular and the religious sides, and that clearly hasn't gone
away," Smart adds.
The
act required couples to get married in a church or chapel by a minister,
otherwise the union was void. Couples also had to issue a formal marriage
announcement, called banns, or obtain a licence.
Most
prospective newlyweds were already following these directives, which were
enshrined in canon law. But with the act, "the penalty for not complying
became much, much harsher," Probert says.
"You
can see it as the state increasing its control - this is almost too important
just to leave to canon law, this needs a statute scheme and specific penalties
if you don't comply," she says. "[It] put the formalities required
for a valid marriage on a statutory footing for the first time."
Civil marriages
The
Marriage Act of 1836 allowed for non-religious civil marriages to be held in
register offices. These were set up in towns and cities across England and
Wales. The act also meant nonconformists and Catholic couples could marry in
their own places of worship, according to their own rites. Apart from a brief
period during the 17th Century, marriages had been overseen by the Church of
England - even if the couples weren't members.
"If
you were Baptist, you might not want to get married in the Church of England
but that was what you had to do," Probert says. "There's no point in
going through a ceremony that didn't give you the status of a married
couple."
The
state also started keeping national statistics for marriage around this time.
Non-Anglican couples were required to have a civil official present to document
their marriages. "They're not actually trusted, in a sense, to record
marriages themselves," Probert says.
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