Note 1003 — Chapter XV · DIVORCE IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

Woolsey, Divorce, 196, says, "At first, divorces were mainly, if not quite exclusively, granted by an act of a colonial legislature, in accordance, perhaps, with the practice then, and until recently, existing in England, for the House of Peers to take cases of dissolution of marriage into their own hands." This statement is of course too broad; but Cowley is decidedly in error when he declares that the "remark of President Woolsey requires modification with respect to Rhode Island, and still more with respect to Connecticut. Neither Massachusetts nor New York nor any other Colony or State knew anything of legislative divorce until a much later day."—Our Divorce Courts, 22.