@article{93346,
      recid = {93346},
      author = {Probert, Rebecca,},
      title = {Marriage law and practice in the long eighteenth century :  a reassessment /},
      note = {Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05  Oct 2015).},
      abstract = {This book uses a wide range of primary sources - legal,  literary and demographic - to provide a radical  reassessment of eighteenth-century marriage. It disproves  the widespread assumption that couples married simply by  exchanging consent, demonstrating that such exchanges were  regarded merely as contracts to marry and that marriage in  church was almost universal outside London. It shows how  the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 was primarily  intended to prevent clergymen operating out of London's  Fleet prison from conducting marriages, and that it was  successful in so doing. It also refutes the idea that the  1753 Act was harsh or strictly interpreted, illustrating  the courts' pragmatic approach. Finally, it establishes  that only a few non-Anglicans married according to their  own rites before the Act; while afterwards most - save the  exempted Quakers and Jews - similarly married in church. In  short, eighteenth-century couples complied with whatever  the law required for a valid marriage.},
      url = {http://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/93346},
      isbn = {9780511596599},
}