[1302] For a fair estimate of the character of the "Barebone's Parliament," see Inderwick, The Interregnum, 15-17; Jenks, Const. Experiments, 69-75.
[1303] This marriage act of August 24, 1653, is contained in Scobell's Acts and Ordinances of Parliament, 236-38, though, to the disgust of the historical student, not in any of the various editions of the Statutes. I have here used a copy of the act contained in a contemporary newspaper entitled Several Proceedings of Parliament, from Tuesday the twenty-third of August, to Tuesday the thirtieth of August, 1653, found in the fine collection of seventeenth-century pamphlets in the Sutro Library, San Francisco. An inaccurate copy of the principal provisions of the act is given by Burn, Parish Registers, 26-29; and there is a good summary in Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 322, 323. On this act and the views of the Independents see Cook, "The Marriage Celebration in Europe," Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 255-57.
[1304] Hence the ridicule of Butler, Hudibras, Part III, c. 2, 303-10 (Boston, 1864), II, 18:
"Others were for abolishing
That tool of matrimony, a ring,
With which th' unsanctify'd bridegroom
Is marry'd only to a thumb
(As wise as ringing of a pig,
That us'd to break up ground and dig),
The bride to nothing but her will,
That nulls the after-marriage still."
[1305] Cf. Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 322, 330. After the restriction was removed in 1656, marriages were frequently solemnized before the mayor and the minister of the parish jointly: Burn, Parish Registers, 162, 163, note; Waters, Parish Registers in England, 16. In 1658, according to the register of St. Giles in the Fields, a marriage was celebrated by William Jervis, D.D., before witnesses, and then follows this entry: "That also the sd. marriage ... hath its consummation before John Lord Berksted, Lord Lieutenant of the Tower of London" according to the act of parliament, and before Sir Jno. Sedley of the county of Kent. Apparently this was a double celebration: Notes and Queries, 3d Series, I, 228. For this case see also Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 71, who affirms that usually the "wedding was religiously solemnized in church, after or before the performance of the purely civil affirmation in the magistrate's parlour, ... in accordance with the instructions of the 'Directory of Public Worship;'" and it seems that the celebration was sometimes conducted according to the Book of Common Prayer: Lathbury, Hist. of the Book of Common Prayer, 310.
[1306] Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, 1656, c. 10, p. 394. Cf. also Burn, Parish Registers, 29. In 1658 it was permitted to use the "accustomed religious rites" if the parties preferred: Wood, The Wedding Day, 279.
[1307] Inderwick, The Interregnum, 46.
[1308] The act of 1650, c. 43: Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, 150, 151, contains a general provision for such a commission in cases of pretended marriages.
[1309] Inderwick, op. cit., 183, 184.
[1310] See the case of "John Buck and Mary his wife" in Inderwick, op. cit., 183. That the justices took a hand in these cases appears to be a reasonable conjecture.