Note 123 — THE HISTORY OF HAVEREL WIVES.

The popular, but mistaken, notion of the mercheta mulierum. Cosmo Innes, in his Lectures on Scottish Legal Antiquities, pp. 52-53, gives what seems to be the true meaning:—‘Mercheta is the older form of the maritagium or marriage-tax, in the charters of Robert I., and not only the servile class, but the free tenants also paid a maritagium on the marriage of their daughters.... Some learning has been brought to show that, on the Continent, this tax—mercheta mulierum—represented an ancient seignorial right—the jus primae noctis. I have not looked carefully into the French authorities; but I think there is no evidence of a custom so odious existing in England; and in Scotland, I venture to say that there is nothing to ground a suspicion of such a right. The merchet of women with us was simply the tax paid by the different classes of bondmen and tenants and vassals, when they gave their daughters in marriage, and thus deprived the lord of their services, to which he was entitled jure sanguinis.’ The reader may also find the matter very learnedly discussed in the appendix to Lord Hailes’ Annals of Scotland. It need only be remarked that prelates, being spiritual peers, and holding lands from the Crown on the same footing as their brethren of the civil estate, were entitled like them to levy the maritagium.