** According to the book "Marriages, regular and irregular", by "an Advocate" (William Hodge, Glasgow, 1893), any of these irregular marriages only are legal if both parties are free to marry, and both consent to the apparent marriage. Gordon.

Gordon Johnson wrote: > ** According to the book "Marriages, regular and irregular", by "an > Advocate" (William Hodge, Glasgow, 1893), any of these irregular > marriages only are legal if both parties are free to marry, and both > consent to the apparent marriage. That sounds like an interesting book. Does he say anything about the mechanics of Irregular Marriages, and in particular, how a marriage "with habit and repute" or by "promise 'subsequente copula'" might have been brought in line with the separate legal requirement to register marriages? The mechanism for having marriages "by declaration" accepted by the Registrar are fairly well known, but I am puzzled as to how the other two types might have been homologated - or how the "deserted wife" of such a marriage might have gone about having her errant "husband" brought back into the conjugal fold. Gavin Bell