The Local Marriage Law, 1907

Guernsey Evening Press and Star, Friday 01 November 1907. Letters to the Editor. 'The local marriage law.' Lackadaisical record-keeping has been a feature of parish registers since the Tudor period - it can lead to confusion and problems in researching family history even today!

Sir,—Some time ago, the Rev. G. E. Lee, the esteemed rector of Saint Peter Port, said in the States that a revision of the Marriage Law was necessary; and although he somewhat qualified his statement by saying that the first thing was to put the existing law in force, yet it is evident to all those who have read the law that it cannot be enforced in its entirety without some substantial emendations. In its main object, the establishment of a marriage contract, legal and binding, for those who did not wish to be married in the Parish Churches, the Law has worked well. And yet Nonconformists would like to obtain what has been granted to their brethren in England. 1. An extension of legal hours, so that marriages might be celebrated until three o’clock in Chapels as well as in Churches. 2. A shorter delay for obtaining licences, namely one clear day, as in England, instead of eight days. 3. Some arrangement would be useful by which two or more marriages might be celebrated at the same time in our different Chapels. These are easy questions. Indeed, if the needs of Nonconformists only were affected by the necessary revision of the Law, the revision would have taken place long ago. But the matter is more delicate than would appear at first sight. The Law passed in 1840 had not only for its object to facilitate marriages out of Church. It provided also for a uniform Registry of all marriages in the record of the Greffe, and in this important part of its aims, the Law, tolerably explicit in itself, has been allowed to become a dead letter.

Whilst the Registrar General in London has correct details of all marriages celebrated in all Churches or Chapels or Registrar’s Offices in England, Wales, or the Isle of Man, he can obtain no information from Guernsey. True, the Law of Guernsey establishes ways and means by which all marriages in Churches are to be reported to the Greffe every month, but the Law also contains an Article XV which says: ‘' Nothing in the present Ordinance shall interfere with the Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths as it is now established by Law.” And by some curious defect in the Law itself, or in the administration of the Law, things have gone on in Parish Churches as if no such law had ever been voted by the States and sanctioned by the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty. And the result is that in many Parish churches the Registration of Marriages is after the use and wont of the Middle Ages. A respectable Guernseyman was duly married some years ago in one of our country Parish Churches: he was not asked to sign the Register, and being somewhat exact in his habits, he went after a few days to fetch his Certificate of Marriage. The Rector found no mention of the marriage in the Parish Register, interviewed his curate who had performed the ceremony and found that the names of the parties had been pencilled on the back of an envelope and forgotten in the curate’s pocket! What else can be expected of a system of registration that leaves out the one essential voucher of marriage, the signature of the parties to the contract and their witnesses?  Evidently a revision of the Law is wanted that will bring modern ways and modern registers within the purview of our belated Rectors.

And what shall I say of the Article of our Guernsey Law which declares legal marriages celebrated without the Registrar in the Roman Catholic Chapel? It affects now a large number of people whose marriages are not registered in any public register; it specially affects French people who can be married in Guernsey, to find later on that their | marriage is void in French Law.

The subject is delicate and I do not wish to press it further. But it will be evident to all that Catholic marriages must be registered at the Greffe as well as all Protestant marriages, and that such registration to be effective must mean some possible interference of the Civil in the operations of Canon Law. The exact relations to be established between the various Registers is a difficult question in all countries, but it must be faced in Guernsey as everywhere. And the sooner the better.

Believe me, dear Sir, Yours truly,

M GALLIENNE.