Note 1441 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE
Reading edition
By 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 85, sec. 1. But by 19 and 20 Vict., c. 119, sec. 11, celebration by a clergyman of the Church of England on certificate of the superintendent registrar is not obligatory: cf. Hammick, op. cit., 87, 282, 313; Geary, Mar. and Fam. Rel., 58, 80, 85, 88, 94.
"In the year 1884, out of 144,344 marriages according to the rites of the Established Church, 128,107, or 89 per cent., were by banns, 12,188, or 8.5 per cent., by ordinary licence, 68, or .05 per cent., by special licence (of the archbishop), and 3,523, or 2.4 per cent., on superintendent registrar's certificate."—Hammick, op. cit., 63, note. In 1889, 698 marriages in every 1,000 were according to the rites of the English church; and of these only sixteen were by certificate: Geary, op. cit., 58, note. See the discussion and the tables of statistics of marriages, 1841-88, in Moore, How to be Married, 111-17, 166, 167.