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From: "Yvonne Purdy" <>
Subject: RE: [OEL] 15 & 16C Statistics
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:02:23 +0100
In-Reply-To: <mBy$GZAnvrmEFwPa@varneys.demon.co.uk>


Hi Eve,

Thank you for your reply, but I'm still intrigued. One of the entries I
sent even states the church in which they married.
>>
1561
5. GREAT BUDWORTH Elizabeth Banks alias Houlse c George Houlse in a divorce
suit. She was aged 13 and he was 10 at the time of the marriage and they
were married in Knutsford church and Elizabeth came from Middlewich parish -
fragment of libel and decree.<<

Presumably, they didn't set up home together, but returned to their parents
until they were of full age.

In all the cases, the parties carried the same surnames, so had they
actually gone through a marriage ceremony? If it was a contract to marry
later, would the girl not have had a different surname to the boy?

I agree that the cases were annulments of marriage, probably before they
ever got to the stage of living together, but I thought, even in mid 1500s,
that the legal age to marry was 12 and 14, so how did the parents get around
that?

Regards, Yvonne

-----Original Message-----
From: Eve McLaughlin [mailto:]
Sent: 22 June 2006 16:49
To: Yvonne Purdy
Cc:
Subject: Re: [OEL] 15 & 16C Statistics


In message <-
online.co.uk>, Yvonne Purdy <> writes
>>>On Sunday, 18 June 2006, Don Tomkinson wrote:
>
>I'd be grateful if someone could give me the statistics for average
>ages of marriage and life expectancy in the 15th. and 16th. centuries.<<
>
>Hi Don,
>
>Not specific statistics, but I've just been browsing the a2a archives and
>noted the following divorce suits.
>
>I've copied out just a tiny sample which are dated 1560, 1561 and 1562. I
>don't know if Cheshire was an anomaly, but the divorce suits seem to bear
>out, in the Cheshire area, that marriage was allowed at a very young age
>and, what surprised me more, was that divorce seemed to be more generally
>available than I'd previously thought.

These sound like annulments of marriages which never really took off,
where 'free consent' was not available. As they were handled by the
Church courts, they were formally ending what were really agreements to
marry in the future, when the parties were of suitable age. This formal
ending (which was a breaking of contract rather than a divorce as we
know it) was necessary, because otherwise, when the child/ren involved
contemplated a serious marriage, the original spouse could claim pore-
contract and the desired marriage would be invalid.
>
>Consistory Court

--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society


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