Marriage North of the Border
Leah Leneman describes the traps for the unwary caused by the marriage laws of 18th-century Scotland.
Everyone knows about Gretna Green. After Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 barred ‘irregular marriage’ (compelling all marriage ceremonies to take place before a minister and within the parish church), eloping English couples fled across the Scottish border where the Act did not apply. This custom continued until quite recently, when domiciliary requirements were tightened. Indeed many couples still go to Gretna, which has become as indelibly associated with marriage as Reno is with divorce. But what about the Scots? So Anglocentric is the historiography of British marriage that no one has thought to ask what effect the very different law north of the border had on the Scots themselves. Did they take advantage of the law which accepted an irregular marriage as valid, or was it only the English who spotted its opportunities?
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