I guess the people mention here liked wedding cake. Jean in NS ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy Stockdill" <roystock@compuserve.com> To: <CHESHIRE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 10:34 AM Subject: [CHS] Dade Registers and Marriage Records Gay wrote..... >>I am also posting this email back to the list because there is a supplementary question I would like to ask about the difficulty in finding some marriage records. These are during the period when marriages were compulsorily required to take place in the local Parish Church under the 'Hardwicke Marriage Act' 1753?-1837. We have a lot of Unitarians in our Family Tree and whilst some did get married locally and some others a little further afield at Manchester Cathedral (I believe they didn't ask so many questions there), some marriages have not been found at all even though I an others have searched parishes even further afield. I have begun to come to the conclusion that they didn't officially marry at all. Could it be that due to strict adherence to non-conformist principles some simply chose not to marry<< THE only marriages allowed outside the Church of England under Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 (which came into effect on Jan 1 1754) were Quaker and Jewish ones. I'm afraid I can't point you to any specific research on this, but I suspect that given the social mores of the time, most Non-Conformists would probably have married in the CoE, even if it was against their principles, rather than live in sin! I can only suggest you widen your search for the missing ones. Perhaps it could be that some couples didn't wish to marry in their own local parish church since they were well known as Non-Conformists and might have faced opposition or reluctance from the incumbent, so moved temporarily to another parish where they weren't known? The real reason for Hardwicke's Act, BTW, was not to force people to marry in the Anglican Church for reasons of religious compulsion, but to do away with clandestine marriages. In fact, the full title of the Act was "An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriages". Until this law came in, it was possible to be married without the calling of banns or the issuing of a licence. There were certain clergymen who would marry couples when dispensing with these formalities (for money, usually). Prison chapels were particularly notorious for this, especially the infamous Fleet Prison in London, and on the day before Hardwicke's Act came into operation there were 217 clandestine marriages in the Fleet. Roy Stockdill, Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society Web page:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- http://www.one-name.org "Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845) CHESHIRE interests - PLEVIN and WILLIAMS at Nantwich/Acton-by-Nantwich, pre 1814 ==== CHESHIRE Mailing List ==== Cheshire Surnames Interest Directory: http://www.fhsc.org.uk/surnames/ --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.230 / Virus Database: 111 - Release Date: 1/25/01