The Law and Custom of Marriage

Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses the law and custom of marriage. The second section discusses modes of courtship. There were three modes of courtship in early modern England, each of which was characteristic to one of three groupings that divided the population. The third section looks at customary unions and concubinage. Some scholars of the family believe that in the early modern period, more especially in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, considerable numbers of English men and women lived in a condition of customary concubinage, illegal according to the law of church or state but recognised by the neighbourhood.