<<I'd be grateful if someone could tell me the year when English clergy were permitted to, and did, marry. Don Tomkinson>> Dear Don, clergy were first explicitly permitted to marry in 1549, when Edward VI's government passed the Act to take away all Positive Laws against the Marriage of Priests. Mary reversed the change when she succeeded to the throne a few years later (in the few years since Edward's act had been passed almost a quarter of the parish priests, along with 4 bishops, had married and were deprived of their livings by her), but when Elizabeth succeeded clergy marriage was again permitted, notwithstanding that she herself disliked it. The Thirty Nine Articles of 1563, which were given legal effect by Parliament in 1571 and still form the basis of Anglican doctrine today, specifically stated that clergy could marry. Before 1549 clerical marriage had been forbidden, and at times severely punished (Henry VII's Act of Six Articles of 1539 not only reiterated the ban but imposed the death penalty on a second conviction). Nevertheless clerical marriage probably did occur, though perhaps not quite as much as has been suggested: there is a difference between married priests and fornicating ones. For some reason the medieval mind was far more scandalised by the former than the latter, and most of the priests' children referred to were probably illegitimate and many wives no more than cohabitees. Matt Tompkins

Many thanks Matt. I'm grateful for your information. Don ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tompkins, M.L." <mllt1@leicester.ac.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 6:36 PM Subject: RE: [OEL] MARRIAGE OF CLERGY