Note 470 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
A manuscript in the Cottonian library, Faustina A. xi., written about 1562 in a very hostile spirit, endeavours to prove from the want of testimony, and from some variances in their depositions (not very material ones), that their allegations of matrimony could not be admitted, and that they had incurred an ecclesiastical censure for fornication. But another, which I have also found in the Museum, Harl. MSS. 6286, contains the whole proceedings and evidence, from which I have drawn the conclusion in the text. Their ignorance of the clergyman who performed the ceremony is not perhaps very extraordinary; he seems to have been one of those vagabond ecclesiastics, who, till the marriage act of 1752, were always ready to do that service for a fee.