A Problematic Solution:
Responses to the Marriage Reform Act of 1753

Six: Conclusions

There was no single motivating factor for those who supported or opposed Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act. Those reacting to the law spoke from a wide variety of perspectives. The volume and diversity of their reactions makes any attempt to synthesize them an intimidating task. Horace Walpole, one of the statute’s most vocal opponents, recognized that difficulty in his Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second. He classified the statute as “an Act of Such notoriety, and on which so very much was said at the time, and on which so much has since been written since, that it would be almost impossible, at least very wearisome, to particularize the Debates.”[1] Against Walpole’s better judgment, the previous four chapters have attempted to do just that. Central to the debate were fundamentally incompatible understandings of its intended effects. Supporters maintained that the law was a necessary reaction to failures in the existing marriage system. They built their arguments on specific examples of abuse and fears aroused in the upper classes by marriages that crossed class boundaries. Opponents, on the other hand, attacked the law as ineffective and unfair. Many also criticized the class-rhetoric employed by supporters or attacked the Lord Chancellor personally. A substantial number of commentators on both sides of the divide felt that they had much at stake in the fate of the Marriage Act. In the end, the two sides frequently argued past one another; their distinct primary assumptions prevented them, for the most part, from finding a common ground on which to debate.

While the act had strong proponents among the upper classes, there is little evidence to suggest that it gained the support of the general populous. It is notable, then, that no attempt was made to repeal the act during the next session of Parliament. Such an attempt would not have been unprecedented. Just before the legislature had adopted the Marriage Reform Act in the spring of 1753, it had passed legislation which permitted the naturalization of foreign-born Jews. That act was as unpopular as the Marriage Act, but it lacked strong support among Parliamentary leadership. When Parliament reopened in November 1753, its first move was to repeal the act. Hardwicke’s statute, meanwhile, remained unchallenged until after he died in 1764. Even after his death, his family felt bound to defend it. Almost immediately, an attempt was made to repeal the statute, and his family “fought every step with the general support of Opposition.”[2] Together, they succeeded in forcing the bill into committee, where “because of the debates on general warrants, further consideration was delayed until 6 March, at which time the committee reported in favour of repeal; a bill to this purpose was introduced, 20 March, but allowed to expire in committee.”[3] At least one proponent of repeal refused to extend his dislike of the law to its late author: “If this law has been attended with ill consequences, not foreseen by [Hardwicke], we should consider it in no other light, than as one of those failings inseparably annexed to the condition of humanity, and which, in characters of such transcendent merit, seem only designed to remind us, that they were but men.”[4] Clearly, the author held Hardwicke in high regard. Other critics were not so generous.

Another push to alter the law was made in 1781, led by one of its earliest opponents. Henry Fox—whose speech against the bill had earned him Hardwicke’s wrath when the act was first passed in 1753—attempted to exact revenge for his ruined political career on the statute. On 28 May, Fox spoke against the act in the Commons. On 7 June, he again railed against it, calling the whole Act “tyrannical and absurd, oppressive and ridiculous”[5] and proposing a motion to amend the Marriage Act. That motion passed in the House of Commons on 27 June, but was defeated after its second reading in the Lords on 12 July. In the end, Hardwicke’s Marriage Act effectively outlived him by ninety-two years. It was repealed in 1836, but remained in force practically after the passage of an essentially identical statute. It was not until 1856 that Parliament again mandated substantial marriage reform, finally allowing religious dissenters and Roman Catholics to marry in their own churches. It also reestablished civil marriage ceremonies for the first time since Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth nearly two centuries earlier.

Despite its eventual repeal, Lord Hardwicke’s Act for the better preventing of clandestine Marriages was an important step in the development of modern law. It had important ramifications for the relationship between the Church of England and Parliament. One legal historian has noted that, while “marriage in a Church was now compulsory, the act was the first major attempt made by civil authorities to make the formation of marriage a secular matter.”[6] William Holdsworth agreed, arguing that Hardwicke’s Marriage Act was “the most important enactment in the sphere of ecclesiastical law”[7] during the eighteenth century. By stripping Anglican courts of their authority over marriage cases, the law effectively asserted Parliament’s supremacy over the Church of England. Equally important, the statute represented the first attempt to standardize British marriage practices. As such, it served as the foundation for all future efforts at Parliamentary marriage legislation. An understanding of the debates which surrounded this 1753 law can foster a deeper understanding of the roots and meanings attributed to modern marriage.