[1140] Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 375 n. 3; ap. Pike, Year Book, 11-12 Ed. III., pp. xx-xxii.
[1141] For the growth of the doctrines of the canonists as to the age of consent and the consequences of espousals before puberty see Freisen, Geschichte des can. Eherechts, 323 ff.; Esmein, op. cit., II, 149 ff., with whom Pollock and Mitland, op. cit., II, 387 ff., appear to agree. Read also Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, I, 70 ff., 276 ff., who gives interesting illustrations of infantile betrothals and marriages; the learned monograph of Hoffmann, De aetate juvenili, 22 ff.; Lyndwood, Provinciale (ed. 1505), liber quartus, fol. cxcvi; Tancred, Summa de mat., tit. 4, pp. 4, 5.
The constitution De desponsatione impuberum of the primate Edmund de Abingdon (1233-40) runs thus: "Ubi non est consensus utriusque non est conjugium. Igitur qui pueris dant puellas in cunabulis, nihil faciunt, nisi uterque puerorum, postquam venerit ad tempus discretionis, consentiat. Hujus ergo Decreti auctoritate inhibemus, ne de caetero aliqui, quorum uterque vel alter ad aetatem legibus constitutam et canonibus determinatam non pervenerit, conjungantur; nisi urgente necessitate pro bono pacis talis conjunctio toleretur."—Lyndwood, Provinciale; quoted by Jeaffreson, op. cit., I, 74.
[1142] Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 387, 388, who cite as proof the case of Thomas of Bayeux and Elena de Morville. The king's court decided that Elena should remain in ward to the king until the age of puberty, that "she may then consent or dissent."
[1143] Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 388: ap. Littleton, sec. 36; Coke upon Lit., 33a.
[1144] Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 388, 389, and the sources there cited.
[1145] See above, chap. iv.
[1146] "A treaty of peace involved an attempt to bind the will of a very small child, and such treaties were made not only among princes, but among men of humbler degree, who thus patched up their quarrels or compromised their law-suits. The rigour of our feudal law afforded another reason for such transactions; a father took the earliest opportunity of marrying his child in order that the right of marriage might not fall to the lord."—Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 389. See the case of Grace, supposititious child of Thomas of Saleby, married at four years of age to Adam Neville, and after his death sold in marriage twice by King John: ibid., 389, 390: ap. Magna vita S. Hugonis, 170-77; and in general on early marriages, especially as a means of alliance, compare Esmein, op. cit., I, 151 ff.
[1147] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 161. For an illustration of the lord's marriage rights see the case of 1220 (H. III.) in Select Pleas of the Crown (ed. Maitland), I, 135-38.
[1148] "As knighthood prevented wardship, a father sometimes endowed his son with land to qualify him for knighthood at an early age, so as to bar the claims of the mesne lord or of the crown to wardship. An instance occurs of knighthood at the age of seven years avowedly procured for this reason."—Denton, Eng. in Fifteenth Century, 261 n. I: ap. Smith, Lives of the Berkeleys, 140.