Note 1203 — Chapter IX · THE PROTESTANT CONCEPTION OF MARRIAGE

In Nichols's Progresses of King James the First (London, 1828), II, 513 ff., "will be found two accounts (one by Camden) of the ceremonial of the Affiancing of the Princess Elizabeth in 1612. It took place in the Banquetting House at Whitehall, before dinner; Sir Thomas Lake, as Secretary of State, read the words from the book of Common Prayer, in French, 'I Frederick take thee Elizabeth,' etc., after which the Archbishop gave his Benediction: 'The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, bless these Espousals, and make them prosperous to these Kingdoms, and to his Church.' This appears to have been the whole of the office, and the service was probably not longer in ordinary cases. In the Contract for the Princess's marriage, executed the same day (Dec. 27), is a clause, 'Quòd Matrimonium verum et legitimum contrahatur inter eos in Angliā ante initium mensis Maii, et interim Sponsalia legitima de praesenti.' 'It would be no difficulty,' remarks Mr. Anstis, Garter [Leland's Collectanea, V, 329-36], 'to show the antient custom of such Espousals by the daughter of the Crown of England as distinct acts from the office of Matrimony, and that they frequently were performed some months or years before the marriage was actually celebrated.'"—Burn, Parish Registers, 140 n. 2. As shown in the case of Princess Elizabeth, even the banns followed the public betrothal: Nichols, II, 524, 525. In the fifth year of Henry V., the espousals of Thomas Thorp and Katerina Burgate were publicly celebrated: Napier's Swincombe, 65; Burn, op. cit., 144. "We find, under date 1476, that a certificate was given by the minister and six parishioners of Ufford, in Suffolk, to the effect that since the death of a certain man's wife he had not been 'trowhplyht' to any woman, and that he might therefore lawfully take a wife."—Wood, The Wedding Day, 212.