ABSTRACT
Marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister had a long history of church–state conflict, self-interest and controversy. This chapter examines the historical roots of the marriage with a deceased wife's sister quarrel. It explores the law and practice of prohibited degrees of affinity and the ways in which both laid the foundations for the ensuing sixty-five-year campaign to reform Britain's marriage laws. The chapter describes the tensions that existed between legal and religious theory and practice, including how ordinary people imposed their own morality on what constituted incest and what did not. Religious and political leaders pointed to the distinctive nature of Scottish opinion and practice, but their claims were overstated. As in England, there was ambiguity over the illegal status of sister-in-law marriage and evidence that not all Scots were as repulsed by the concept as church leaders liked to portray.
