One would have hoped that after four hundred years further consideration of Cranmer’s views on divorce—the latter-day representative of Cranmer’s Church would have been able to give King Edward VII. at least as good counsel as his predecessor gave to Edward VI. No doubt the Minority Report that he ultimately wrote fairly represents the narrower views of modern ecclesiastics, but it is a sad thing to see the leader of a great Church absolutely out of touch with the practical reforms that those who know the lives of the poor admit to be necessary. I should regret if, in a moment of spiritual insight, it should be made clear to our good archbishop that in signing the Minority Report his right hand had been guilty of offence, or that he should think fit to discipline himself after Cranmer’s example; but if he had thrust his Minority Report into the fire, Church and State might have sung a joyful psalm of conflagration and congratulation. Alas! Edward VI. passed away without reform, and our brave King Edward VII. changed his world whilst the Commissioners were still commissioning, and maybe it will be Edward VIII.’s turn some four hundred years hence to sign the new divorce law. Let nothing be done in a hurry.
From Cranmer’s day until 1857 no divorce law was passed. In the meantime, if you were a peer with a naughty wife, you got an Act of Parliament passed to divorce her. It was an expensive proceeding and, incidentally, of doubtful legality. But the eugenics of nobility and the purity of breed in the peerage made some such machinery necessary, and so you had “An Act for Lord Roos to marry again,” and others similarly entitled. Only the very rich at the rate of two or three a year could avail themselves of this procedure, and, of course, the very poor had not a look in at all.
It was a judge who awakened the world to the iniquity of it all, and he did it by a jest. There are some funny things said in the High Court to-day, but they do not seem to be designed to push the world along as this witty speech did. It was Mr. Justice Maule—a sly dog, the hero of many a good circuit story—that one about the threatening letters, for instance—it was Maule J. in a bigamy case, Regina v. Thomas Hall, tried at Warwick in 1845, who woke up the country to the fact that there was a divorce problem, and that it wanted solving.
Hall was a labouring man convicted of bigamy and called up for sentence. Maule, in passing sentence, said that it did appear that he had been hardly used.
“I have indeed, my Lord,” called out poor Hall, “it is very hard.”
“Hold your tongue, Hall,” quoth the judge, “you must not interrupt me. What I say is the law of the land which you in common with everyone else are bound to obey. No doubt it is very hard for you to have been so used and not to be able to have another wife to live with you when Maria had gone away to live with another man, having first robbed you; but such is the law. The law in fact is the same to you as it is to the rich man; it is the same to the low and poor as it is to the mighty and rich and through it you alone can hope to obtain effectual and sufficient relief, and what the rich man would have done you should have done also, you should have followed the same course.”
“But I had no money, my Lord,” exclaimed Hall.
“Hold your tongue,” rejoined the judge, “you should not interrupt me, especially when I am only speaking to inform you as to what you should have done and for your good. Yes, Hall, you should have brought an action and obtained damages, which probably the other side would not have been able to pay, in which case you would have had to pay your own costs perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Oh, Lord!” ejaculated the prisoner.
“Don’t interrupt me, Hall,” said Maule, “but attend. But even then you must not have married again. No, you should have gone to the Ecclesiastical Court and then to the House of Lords, where, having proved that all these preliminary matters had been complied with, you would then have been able to marry again! It is very true, Hall, you might say, ‘Where was all the money to come from to pay for all this?’ And certainly that was a serious question as the expenses might amount to five or six hundred pounds while you had not as many pence.”