Abstract
This article examines the historiography, the law, and the practice of irregular marriage in Britain. It argues that there has been a confusion of terms in the historiography of irregular marriage that has served to obscure its meaning, pattern, and incidence. Using evidence from Scotland where irregular marriage continued to be legally valid until 1939 (with one form remaining legally valid until 2006), the article argues that despite its legally valid status, the interpretation of what constituted irregular marriage was extremely limited and that it served as a de facto or functional equivalent to civil marriage. In the formal legal sense Scotland had stood virtually alone amongst Western European countries in enshrining simple exchange of consent as sufficient basis for marriage. However, in practice Scotland was very similar to other countries in what was regarded as acceptable forms of contracting marriage and the same stigma was attached to informal or irregular unions that we see elsewhere. However, as elsewhere, the majority of people conformed to the legal rules and the legal paradigms of marriage, but equally there was no neat correspondence between legal codes and social practice with ordinary people adopting a more flexible definition of marriage than the official one.
Highlights
The fluidity of marriage and its boundaries, as well as its fragility, have been documented since at least the early modern period
There is no consensus with regard to the chronology of the pattern of irregular unions, the reason for the pattern or the incidence and popularity of this social practice
Some have suggested that the dissolution of traditional agrarian society and the decline of close and tightly regulated rural communities with their well-defined hierarchies of authority, resulted in a loosening of moral codes and a revolt against the traditional morality of church and community with a consequent increase in co-habitation, bigamy and desertion in the industrial period. Others see these phenomena as the triumph of pre-industrial customs and practices over attempts to increase regulation and control of sexual life and popular morality. Even among those who argue that cohabitation and irregular unions were associated with urbanization and industrialization, there is a divergence of opinion over its chronology
Summary
There is no consensus with regard to the chronology of the pattern of irregular unions, the reason for the pattern or the incidence and popularity of this social practice. Some have suggested that the dissolution of traditional agrarian society and the decline of close and tightly regulated rural communities with their well-defined hierarchies of authority, resulted in a loosening of moral codes and a revolt against the traditional morality of church and community with a consequent increase in co-habitation, bigamy and desertion in the industrial period. Others see these phenomena as the triumph of pre-industrial customs and practices over attempts to increase regulation and control of sexual life and popular morality. How significant was this apparently more relaxed and tolerant legal attitude towards irregular unions in terms of shaping official attitudes and popular practices? Did it result in widespread social acceptance of informal unions which put them on a par with regular marriage and differentiated Scotland from its English and European neighbors?
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