ABSTRACT
Amongst the notebooks of the Clerk of the Court of Wards is to be found a brief entry that, on 9 May 1562, a certain John Clavell paid four shillings pro maritagio sui ipsius. To the technicalities and obscurities surrounding the marriage contract, feudal law added technicalities of its own. There is a great deal of evidence which shows that many child marriages had nothing whatever to do with feudal tenures; nor did the abolition of feudal tenures in 1660 lead to the disappearance of child marriages. Royal marriages were, of course, usually ‘arranged’ and were a long-standing item in international relations. Many of the evils, if evils they were, of feudal marriage were the result of the contemporary attitude to marriage, made worse only by the fact that feudal marriages could be bought and sold on the open market. The fashion amongst the gentility, as Clare told Scarborrow, was ‘to marry first and love after by leisure’.
