Sat, May 19 2012
In the 1860’s, French Emperor Napoleon III desired to annex Luxemburg into France, and to that effect negotiated with the Dutch government. Bismarck, in order to gain French approval for German unification under Prussia's lead, was willing to accept a French annexation of Luxemburg. After France had limited a German confederation under Prussia's leadership to the area north of the Rhine, and when French desires for Luxemburg became public, the German press vehemently opposed it and Bismarck laid Prussian troops into the fortress of Luxemburg (a federal fortress). Napoleon's policy thus was effectively blocked. The TREATY OF LONDON of 1867 guaranteed the perpetual neutrality of an independent Luxemburg.
When the English Reformation transformed the Roman Church and ecclesiastical establishment into an English church, the marriage ceremony and the church's requirements did not change. However, the Church was willing to recognize two kinds of informal marriage, known as "sponsalia per verba de praesenti" and "sponsalia per verba de futuro." The first took place when the parties exchanged promises that they would be man and wife from that moment on. The second required an exchange of promises to be man and wife in the future, followed by sexual intercourse. When the parties presently took each other as man and wife, a valid marriage was formed. Consummation was not required. In the case of the promise to marry in the future, a valid marriage resulted only when the parties consummated their promise by intercourse.
Until the middle of the eighteenth century these informal marriages were held valid by the ecclesiastics who had the jurisdiction to determine the validity of a marriage.
In 1753 Lord Hardwicke's Act required a parish church ceremony in the Church of England, publication of banns, and a license as a condition to the validity of a marriage. The purpose of the Act was to prevent clandestine marriages, "Fleet" marriages and other fraudulent or irregular marriages. The act governed only marriages contracted in England, leaving Scottish, Irish and other marriages outside England’s soil subject to the earlier rules allowing informal marriage, and did not apply to Quakers and Jews.
Chapter 14 | Historical Facts