Note 1417 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE
Reading edition
Cf. Green, Hist. of English People, IV, 212, 124, 176 ff., 257; May, Const. Hist., I, 15 ff., 263 ff. By the Toleration Act of 1 Will. and Mary dissenters were formally recognized and relieved from the pains and penalties attaching to non-conformity; hence thereafter marriages "according to their own forms and usages" were "treated as marriages de facto." The Hardwicke act robbed them of this privilege: Hammick, Marriage Law, 14.