ABSTRACT
Divorce Bills have a history which must be traced from the Reformation. Before that time, though marriage was indissoluble, there was no valid ceremony if the proper Ecclesiastical Court could be satisfied that there had then been incapacity on either side, by reason of pre-contract, affinity, previous marriage, physical impotence, mental imbecility or insanity. Of these five recognized grounds, all but the two first were capable of strict proof. Pre-contract, however, and in a still greater degree affinity, gave to the canonists opportunities for much subtle reasoning. The prohibited degrees of Scripture were greatly enlarged; and it came to be held that affinity might be constituted by mere commerce between the sexes.1 In strictness, there was no divorce, which implied marriage ties, whereas the ground for each decision was a disability to contract, and therefore no actual union.
