Love and marriage in the age of Jane Austen

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Notes

1 These conditions were first laid down in 1759 but continued during the period explored by Muir: see Rebecca Probert, Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment (CUP 2009).

2 Hansard, HC Deb, 19 June 1827, vol 17, col 1345.

3 On such elopements, see Brian Dempsey, ‘Making the Gretna Blacksmith Redundant: Who Worried, Who Spoke, Who was Heard on the Abolition of Irregular Marriage in Scotland’ (2009) 30 Journal of Legal History 23.

4 On the development of this action, see Saskia Lettmaier, Broken Engagements: The Action for Breach of Promise of Marriage and the Feminine Ideal, 1800-1940 (Oxford UP 2010).

5 Initially by the Marriage Act 1822 and then, after a brief period when the 1753 Act again applied, by the second Marriage Act 1823.