Glamorgan

The Marriage Act 1836 laid the foundations of the modern law of marriage. It introduced the possibility of marrying in a registered place of worship or register office, brought Jewish and Quaker weddings within a new legal framework, and introduced a system of civil registration for all marriages, including those celebrated according to Anglican rites. Nonetheless, it cannot be assumed that all couples were able to marry as they chose even the 1836 Act. How any given couple could marry depended on local factors, and how they navigated the options available to them can tell us a lot about what they valued. In this talk Professor Rebecca Probert will review the take-up of the options introduced by the 1836 Act, explain the constraints that might determine couples’ choices, and identify the clues that lie within the marriage certificate itself.'

Our speaker: Rebecca Probert

Rebecca Probert is Professor of Law at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the law and history of marriage, bigamy, divorce and cohabitation, and her publications include Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment (2009); The Legal Regulation of Cohabitation: From Fornicators to Family, 1600-2010 (2012), Marriage Law for Genealogists (2012), Divorced, Bigamist, Bereaved? (2015) and Tying the Knot: The Formation of Marriage, 1836-2020 (forthcoming). She has appeared numerous times on TV and radio, including Harlots, Heroines and Housewives, A House Through Time and Who Do You Think You Are?