Note 1390 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

All the amendments "were designed to aggravate the aversion which the populace had conceived for a measure that appeared to them an attempt to deprive them of cheap and convenient marriage, with a view to preserve the children of the aristocracy from the misfortune of premature and imprudent matrimony.... The main object of the bill was, in the first instance, to abolish the law of matrimonial pre-contract throughout the kingdom." Therefore Henry Fox, to render it unsatisfactory to its promoters and "so ridiculous to the whole country," managed to have Scotland exempted from the operation of the law, although the suit which gave rise to the measure originated there: Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 183 ff.; cf. Burn, Fleet Marriages, 19.