[160] Before Innocent III., 1215, who reduced the number to four: Woolsey, Divorce, 121.
[161] Thwing, The Family, 83. Cf. Woolsey, op. cit., 118 ff.
[162] It is interesting to find Wolsey writing in Henry VIII.'s name "to remind her of the 'divine ordinance of inseparable matrimony first instituted in paradise,' protesting against 'the shameless sentence sent from Rome'": Tait, in Dict. of Nat. Biog., XXXVI, 155.
[163] Henry Stuart (Stewart) was made Lord Methven by Margaret's son, James V. She "attempted to get rid of that nobleman by a sentence of the ecclesiastical court, on the ground that before the marriage she had been (as the record expresses it) carnaliter cognita by her husband's fourth cousin, the earl of Angus."—Riddell, Scots' Peerage Law, 187; Law Review, I, 354. On Margaret's marriages and divorces compare Thwing, The Family, 83; Woolsey, Divorce, 169, who says she "got from Rome a separation from her second husband, the Earl of Angus, on the pretext of a pre-contract between him and another lady;" and especially the very accurate account of Tait, in Dict. of Nat. Biog., XXXVI, 150-57.
[164] Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 310, who quotes the following verses entitled "A Poem on the Times of Edward II." from the Percy Society Publication:
"If a man have a wyf,
And he love her nowt,
Bring her to the constery,
There trewth schuld be wrowt.
Bring twei fals wytnes with hym,
And hymself the thrydde,
And he shall be deperted,
As fair as he wold bydde,
From his wyf;
He schal be maynteyned fulle well
To lede a sory lyf.
"When he is deperted
From hys trew spowse,
Take hys neyghboures wyf
And bryng her to howse,
Yif he have selver
Among the clerkes to send,
He may have hir to hys wyf
To hys life's end,
With onskylle,
Thei that so fair with falseness dele
Godde's corse on her bille."
[165] Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, II, 194. For other examples see Huth, Marriage of Near Kin, 118-20.
[166] 32 H. VIII., c. 38: Statutes at Large (London, 1763), II, 298.
The facility with which dispensations could be secured is illustrated by a Scotch case in 1426-28. On April 11, 1426, Pope Martin V. granted a dispensation to Alexander of Hume and Marion of Lander to marry, though of double fourth degree of consanguinity. Curiously enough, perhaps because this dispensation had not yet been received, on Oct. 6, 1427, Hume appeared before the rector sitting as judge and proposed that his marriage could not stand of right because of consanguinity. The marriage was therefore pronounced null and void, and the parties were given license to marry whom they pleased. On the fourth day of the following January Hume and his former wife presented a petition to the papal see, announcing that, aware of their consanguinity, they had contracted marriage per verba de praesenti and begotten children; that when their ordinary heard of the consanguinity he rightly celebrated a divorce, which they obeyed; but they feared scandal, and for this and other reasons they desired to be joined in marriage. The pope therefore granted another dispensation and declared their offspring legitimate: Hist. Manuscripts Commission, XII. Report, App. VIII, 122, 123. In another case, 1459, the earl of Rothes declares on oath that he had within the last year obtained certain knowledge of the impediment of consanguinity as set forth in his libel, and that formerly, for the space of thirteen years after birth of the last of his living children, he was altogether ignorant of it: ibid., IV. Report, 507.