Let me add a word on the famous negative given to the demand of the clergy at Merton. No reason was assigned, or, at least, has been recorded, but a general unwillingness to change the laws of England. As the same barons did in fact consent to change them in other particulars, this can hardly have been the reason. Sir W. Blackstone speaks of the consequent uncertainty of heirship and discouragement of matrimony as among the causes of rejection,—arguments of very questionable weight. Others (as Bishop Hurd, in his Dialogues) have attributed the rejection to the constitutional repugnance of the barons to the general principles of the canon and imperial law, which the proposed change might have tended to introduce,—a degree of forethought and a range of political vision for which I can hardly give them credit, especially as the great legal authority of that day, Bracton, has borrowed the best part of his celebrated Treatise from the Corpus Juris. The most plausible motive which I have yet heard assigned for this famous parliamentary negative on the bishops' bill at Merton, is suggested (quod minimè reris!) in an Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner's Report (vol. vi. of the 8vo. printed series), viz. that bastardy multiplied the escheats which accrued to medieval lords of manors.
E. Smirke.
A venerable person whose mind is richly stored with "shreds and patches" of folk-lore and local antiquities, on seeing the "curious marriage entry" (p. 485.), has furnished me with the following explanation.
It is the popular belief at Kirton in Lindsey that if a woman, who has contracted debts previous to her marriage, leave her residence in a state of nudity, and go to that of her future husband, he the husband will not be liable for any such debts.
A case of this kind actually occurred in that highly civilised town within my informant's memory; the woman leaving her house from a bedroom window, and putting on some clothes as she stood on the top of the ladder by which she accomplished her descent.
K. P. D. E.
In that amusing work, Burn's History of the Fleet Marriages, p. 77., occurs the following entry:—"The woman ran across Ludgate Hill in her shift;" to which the editor has added this note:—"The Daily Journal of 8th November, 1725, mentions a similar exhibition at Ulcomb in
Kent. It was a vulgar error that a man was not liable to the bride's debts, if he took her in no other apparel than her shift."
J. Y.
Saffron Walden.