[399] During the Andros period Rev. Charles Morton—who was installed as pastor of the church in Charlestown, Nov. 5, 1686—began to solemnize marriages. He was probably the first Congregational minister in New England who did so. See Edes, Mem. Hist. of Boston, II, 315.
[400] Rhode Island Col. Rec., IV, 490; Rider, Supp. Pages to the Digest of 1730, 258, 259; Acts and Laws (1745), 176. Cf. Arnold, Hist. of R. I., II, 113; Green, Short Hist. of R. I., 152, 153.
[401] Conn. Col. Rec., 136. As the law stood in 1769, marriages might be solemnized by magistrates and justices, each within his own county, and by any ordained minister within his town or society during his continuance in the work of the ministry: Acts and Laws (New Haven, 1769), 144.
[402] Acts and Resolves, I, 61. On this act Judge Sewall makes the following characteristic entry in his Diary: "Nov. 4, 1692. Law passes for Justices and Ministers Marrying persons. By order of the Co[=m]ittee, I had drawn up a Bill for Justices and such others as the Assembly should appoint to marry: but came new-drawn and thus alter'd from the Deputies. It seems they count the respect of it too much to be left any longer with the Magistrate. And salaries are not spoken of; as if one sort of men might live on the Aer. They are treated like a kind of useless, worthless folk."—5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 368. The marriage fee was fixed by this act at three shillings.
[403] Charters and General Laws (Boston, 1814), 285; Acts and Resolves, I, 209, 210. In Nov., 1704, James Gardner, "preacher of the Gospel" at Dartmouth, that town being destitute of an "ordained minister," was allowed to solemnize marriages: ibid., VIII (Appendix, Vol. III), 92.
[404] Acts and Resolves, IV, 622; Charters and Laws, 655. Cf. the earlier act of 1716-17: Acts and Resolves, II, 60.
[405] Acts and Resolves, V, 231; Charters and Laws, 679.
[406] In Hutchinson's time marriages were usually performed by the clergy. "Although," he says, "the law admits of its being done by a justice of the peace, yet not one in many hundred is performed by them;" and he adds in a note: "Perhaps, in a few years, the people of England will be equally well satisfied with the provision made by the late marriage act, and no body will be at the pains of a journey to Scotland to avoid conformity to it."—Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass., I, 392, 393.
[407] See Gilman, The Story of Boston, 177, 178, for an account of the marriage ceremony in the time of the Mathers.
[408] Lodge, Short History, 462.