Note 1303 — Chapter X · RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE

This marriage act of August 24, 1653, is contained in Scobell's Acts and Ordinances of Parliament, 236-38, though, to the disgust of the historical student, not in any of the various editions of the Statutes. I have here used a copy of the act contained in a contemporary newspaper entitled Several Proceedings of Parliament, from Tuesday the twenty-third of August, to Tuesday the thirtieth of August, 1653, found in the fine collection of seventeenth-century pamphlets in the Sutro Library, San Francisco. An inaccurate copy of the principal provisions of the act is given by Burn, Parish Registers, 26-29; and there is a good summary in Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 322, 323. On this act and the views of the Independents see Cook, "The Marriage Celebration in Europe," Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 255-57.