Note 1382 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

For these cases see Howell, State Trials, XIV, 559 ff., 1327 ff. The facts are summarized by Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 344-46. The case of "Barbara late Dutchess of Cleaveland" against Feilding, with much concerning Feilding's other adventures, may be found in Cases of Divorce for Several Causes (London, 1715). Elopement with heiresses is discussed by Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, I, 29 ff. Of Haagen Swendsen, "who was, in 1702, convicted and executed for stealing Mrs. Rawlins," he says: "Nowadays, he would have been unhesitatingly acquitted, even if he had ever been presented, as there was no real case against him, and Mrs. Rawlins married him of her own free will."

In the Report of the Royal Commission, 1868, xxi-xxiii, it is estimated that one-third of all the marriages in the eighteenth century were "irregular;" whereas, after 1834, when the ministers of all denominations could solemnize, irregularity became a "stigma," the number of such contracts now (1868) being in the ratio of 1 to 1,000.