Note 28 — Chapter II

[Footnote 28: It is remarkable that this clause on one occasion proved an obstacle to the punishment of the abettors of such a marriage. In 1793 the Duke of Sussex married Lady Augusta Murray, first at Rome, and afterward, by banns, at St. George's, Hanover Square. And when the affair came to be investigated by the Privy Council, Lord Thurlow denounced the conduct of the pair in violent terms, and angrily asked the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott, why he had not prosecuted all the parties concerned in this abominable marriage. Sir John's reply, as he reported it himself, was sufficiently conclusive: "I answered that it was a very difficult business to prosecute; that the act, it was understood, had been drawn by Lord Mansfield, the Attorney-general Thurlow, and the Solicitor-general Wedderburn, who, unluckily, had made all persons present at the marriage guilty of felony. And as nobody could prove the marriage except a person who had been present at it, there could be no prosecution, because nobody present could be compelled to be a witness."—Thorp's Life of Eldon, i., 235.]