Marriage Act

Historical Context Essay

Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Resources

According to Lawrence Stone (in

The Family, Sex and Marriage, 1500-1800

), pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon society appears to have been quite casual about marriage, with polygamy and concubinage quite frequent, and where the lower orders were concerned these attitudes appear to have lasted well into the Early Modern period, formal or church marriage being largely a matter for the wealthy and a means of ensuring lines of descent for wealth. For the rest, oral spousal and divorce by consent appear to have been normal. Through the Anglo-Saxon period, and particularly after the Norman conquest, the Church struggled to establish monogamous, indissoluble marriage as the norm, with consequent prohibitions on adultery, fornication and incest.

By the early eighteenth century although church marriage had

944 words

Citation: Batchelor, Jennie. "Marriage Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=689, accessed 19 March 2024.]

689 Marriage Act 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.