Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1888-12-31
NFANTILE MARRIAGES.
English Children OF Very Tender Years
United in Wedlock.

United in Wedlock.
Many persons will be considerably as
tonished to hear how recently our social
annals disclose the frequency of juvenile
unions in England and Scotland We
do not refer to those well-known in
stances of princes and potentates being
contracted in marriage while still chill
dren and for grounds of state alone, but
to the general custom in other classes to
as late date as the last two centuries.
These marriages were not mere betroth-
ais, but genuine marriages, celebrated
''in the face of the church, and duly
sOlemniZed according to the book of Com
mon Prayer, says London Tid-Bits. Per-
haps the youngest bride on record in En-
glish annals was the daughter of Sir
William Brereton, who was married in
the sixteenth century at the age of two to
husband who was year older than
herself. In this case the children were
carried into church and their elders spoke
for them.
But in another case, where a little boy
of three was married to bride of five,
he was carried by Il clergyman, who
coaXed him to repeat the necessary for
mulas. The task was not easy, how
ever, as the child said he had
learnt enough lessons for that
day before he was half through,
and was only kept up to it by the
priest saying, "YOu must speak a little
more, and then go play you In n
further instance recorded i'll Lancashire
the bridegroom was bribed to go TO church
by the present of au apple. Frequently
the brides were d year or two older than
their lords and masters, as IN the case of
Fergery Vernon, who, in 1862
she being nearly ten years
old-was married to Randle
More, who was but eight Another re-
cord tells how Gilbert Girard and Emma
Talbot were married at Leigh church,
when the boys uncle held up the bride
groom, who was five years old land spoke
the words of matrimony for the child $
part, and the woman-who was not six
years of age spake for herself as she
was taught.
1t seems incredible that during the
reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI.
Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth it was
quite customary for persons of all ranks
in life to marry their children at aston
ishiugly early ages. But the bish-
ops registry at ChesIer-not to speak of
could testify to many misunderstanding
ces too, among people anxious for the
intellectual progress of their day, and
among whom sOrdid reasons for such
marriages were not supposed to exist.
William ChadertoH-successive bish-
op of Chester and Lincoln-a well known
scholar and distinguished ecclesiastic of
the reign of Elizabeth, and who was no.
table for the encourage he gave to
ministers and his zeal in establishing
lecturships and daily morning prayer
did not scruple to marry his daughter
Joan, in 1882, at the age of nine, to
Richard Brooke, then nearly eleven
Four years later the marriage was rati-
fied-as was usual in such CASSIDY the
consent of the young people, the lengthy
documents testifying to the rati-
fication being still extent in the records
of Chester. Unfortunately their
early love did not develop into an en-
during love, and twenty years later we
read that the bishop had emo great COM
forts of that matrimony'' of his only
daughter, and that she was separated
from her husband.
1t sometimes happened, when years Of
consent were attained, i. e., twelve for
the girl and fourteen for the boy, that
the child bride and child bridegroom dis
liked each other so heartily that they
refused to ratify the contract, and then
an action for divorce was undertaken and
the marriage declared void. Juvenile
marriages in those days were fortunately
always voidable, and where it could be
proved that there had been no renewal of
promise, no exchange of gifts, messages
or meeting between the children, the
union was annulled, and each was set
free.
The divorce court was at that time the
scene of many appeals from the most
useful couples until about the beginning
of the seventeenth century, when Strype
notes that ''the nation became scandal
Gus for the frequency of divorces, especi
ally among the richer sort, and one occa-
sion was the covetousness of the nobil-
ity and gentry, who used often to marry
their children when they were young
boys and girls that they might join land
to land, and, being grown up, they many
times disfiked each other and then sepa-
ration and divorce followed to the break
ing of espousals and displeasure of Cod