Note 99 — Chapter I · Marriage Laws and Customs.
Reading edition
Chambers Journal, vol. 48, pt. 2, July-Dec., 1871, p. 812.
Discussing the subject of “gallows-matches,” Wood, in his “Wedding Day in All Ages,” says: “Formerly was current a vulgar notion that if a woman married a condemned man under the gallows, she would thereby save him from execution. Certainly this exemption had a quasi-legal existence in France in the fifteenth century, as there are instances of it in the annals of that country.” (Vol. 2, p. 25.)