Note 255 — Chapter XI · HISTORY OF SEPARATION AND DIVORCE UNDER ENGLISH AND ECCLESIASTICAL LAW (continued 2)

Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 315, perhaps with too much emphasis, thus describes the effects of 32 H. VIII., c. 38: "It rendered wedlock easier of entrance, but closed all the many gates which had hitherto afforded spouses the means of escape from conjugal wretchedness.... The Elizabethan jest, that compared matrimony to a public rout, was no less applicable to wedlock in Catholic than to marriage in Protestant England; but whereas our ancestors before the Reformation could always get out of the press by a few permissible falsehoods and the payment of money, the marriage law of Protestant times declared that, having once forced their way into the crowd, they should remain in it till death came to their relief."