A History of Matrimonial Institutions (Vol. 1-3). George Elliott Howard

      I. CROMWELL'S CIVIL MARRIAGE ACT, 1653

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      It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that the ideas of the early German[1280] Reformation relating to the temporal nature of marriage gained ascendancy in England, and then only for the brief period of the Commonwealth. Yet the civil-marriage act of 1653 is of extraordinary historical interest, not only as an example of the statesmanship of Cromwell, so often anticipating the reforms of our own age, but especially as being mainly the result of the revolt of the Puritans, more particularly of the Independents, against the unnatural union of church and state produced by the compromise of the sixteenth century, and of their intense hatred of the formalism and ceremonial of the "Romanizing" party in the established church. The act is of special significance for our present purpose, since it reveals the conceptions which shaped the matrimonial laws of New England. Paradoxical as it may at first glance appear, it cannot be doubted that the first establishment of obligatory civil marriage in England owes its origin chiefly to the desire of an intensely religious party to separate all things worldly from the functions of the clergy and the church.[1281] True, a foreign people, closely related by blood and speech, with whom England had long had intimate relations and to whom the Puritans were drawn through sympathy with their heroic resistance to ecclesiastical oppression, had already provided a model, which may have had a certain influence. For in the Netherlands, on April 1, 1580, after the independence from Spain had been declared, the provinces of Holland and West Friesland had established a civil-marriage form, permissively even for the members of the Reformed church; and in principle this was adopted by the States General for the United Provinces in 1656, three years after the appearance of the English statute under consideration.[1282]

      Familiar as many Englishmen probably were with Dutch institutions,[1283] and close as had been the relations of Dutch and English Puritans,[1284] so important an event as the introduction of civil marriage can hardly be due primarily to imitation. Though Holland may have provided a model, it must be essentially the product of English religious history. Already in the reign of Elizabeth there are signs of discontent with the established ritual and with the quasi-sacramental character of marriage as conceived by the Anglican clergy. Especially obnoxious to the Protestant non-conformists, as appears from the well-known controversy between Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright, leader of the English Presbyterian party, are the use of the ring, the "worshipping" of the bride by the bridegroom, requiring the newly married pair to partake of the communion, and certain customs popularly connected with the wedding celebration, but not enjoined by the liturgy. "As for matrimony," runs a passage in the celebrated Admonition to the Parliament, published in 1572, "that also hath corruptions, too many. It was wont to be counted a sacrament; and therefore they use yet a sacramental sign, to which they attribute the virtue of wedlock, I mean the wedding-ring, which they foully abuse and dally withal, in taking it up and laying it down: in putting it on they abuse the name of the Trinity, they make the new-married man, according to the popish form, to make an idol of his wife, saying 'with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship,' etc. And because in popery no holy action may be done without a mass, they enjoin the married persons to receive the communion (as they do their bishops and priests when they are made), etc. Other petty things out of the book we speak not of, as that women, contrary to the rule of the apostle, come, and are suffered to come, bareheaded, with bagpipes and fiddlers before them, to disturb the congregation, and that they must come in at the great door of the church, else all is marred [with divers other heathenish toys in sundry countries, as carrying of wheat-sheaves on their heads, and casting of corn, with a number of such like, whereby they make rather a May-game of marriage than a holy institution of God]."[1285]

      In his Answer to the Admonition Whitgift denies that the ring is looked upon as a "sacramental sign," and admits that "it is not material" whether it "be used or not;" while he quotes with approval Bucer's opinion[1286] that the "ceremony is very profitable, if the people be made to understand what is thereby signified, as that the ring and other things, first laid upon the book, and afterward by the minister given to the bridegroom to be delivered to the bride, do signify that we ought to offer all that we have to God before we use them, and to acknowledge that we receive them at his hand to be used to his glory. The putting of the ring upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand, to which, as it is said there cometh a sinew or string from the heart, doth signify that the heart of the wife ought to be united to her husband; and the roundness of the ring doth signify that the wife ought to be joined to her husband with a perpetual band of love, as the ring itself is without end." Cartwright in his Reply declares that "if it be M. Bucer's judgment which is alleged here for the ring, I see that sometimes Homer sleepeth. For, first of all, I have shewed that it is not lawful to institute new signs and sacraments. And, then, it is dangerous to do it, especially in this which confirmeth the false and popish opinion of a sacrament." Next he ridicules Bucer for his "fond allegories" touching the ring, and thinks that having "the minister to preach upon these toys" savoureth not of his learning and sharpness of judgment.[1287] Whitgift, however, further defends the practice on the score of "convenience" and because it is "void of all manner of superstition."[1288] Moreover, he sustains the requirement of communion, again quoting Bucer in its favor; accuses Cartwright of weak argument and of trying to make "schism in the church" by bringing forward popular customs, "mere trifles" not sanctioned by the "book" which is the real object of his attack; and rightly points out that "worship" implies not idolatry, since it signifies merely to "honor" and not to "adore" according to the more modern devotional sense.[1289] Indeed, it is historically instructive that already in the sixteenth century the original meaning of "worship" should have passed out of common use.

      But the attack of the sixteenth-century reformers was not directed solely against the ceremonies and phrases of the marriage ritual. A bold step was taken toward civil marriage when resistance was made to ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matrimonial causes on the ground that these belong to the temporal judge. On this subject Cartwright has a characteristic passage, disclosing his usual ignorance of history and his confusion of mind—of which Whitgift does not fail to take advantage—but nevertheless revealing plainly enough the new ideas which more and more came to the front during the Puritan revolution. "Another thing," he says, "is that in these courts (which they call spiritual) they take the knowledge of matters which are mere