Note 243 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (continued 2)

Macqueen, op. cit., 469. "This bill is often, but erroneously, referred to as the earliest example of parliamentary divorce (Shelford, 373). It is not a divorce bill; neither did it proceed upon the principle of a divorce bill. Its object was merely to declare that the adultery of the first wife, followed by the ecclesiastical sentence, entitled the Marquis to take a second wife. The principle on which the act passed assumed the jurisdiction of the Church Court, to dissolve the marriage proprio vigore. The act did not divorce the parties, but merely declared them to be already, by the ecclesiastical sentence, sufficiently divorced to admit of the Marquis marrying again."—Ibid., 469 n. e. On this case see also Law Review (Eng.), I, 358, 359; Report of the Royal Commission on Divorce, Parl. Papers, 1853, 57 ff.; Geary, op. cit., 17; Woolsey, Divorce, 169-71; Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, II, 174, 175; Burn, Ecc. Law, II, 503a-503b; Reeves, Hist. of Eng. Law, V, 80, 81; Morgan, Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce, II, 229 ff.