Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/622

 point, and thinks a woman should be out of ward for all her husband's nonage; holding it a "mischievous, inconvenient, unjust, and unnatural law" that should hold a woman from her husband and her inheritance when without offence of law married, because her husband, say of nineteen, was not fully fit for all manner of horsemanship. "Be not therefore, good woman, absterred from a young husband by old natura brevium," he says encouragingly.

Another curious instance of the precocity of the times is the fact that from the age of twelve "a woman" was supposed able to work, and fit for duty. "By a statute made 5 Eliz. ca. iv., Two justices of peace in the Countrie, or the head officer and 2 Burgesses in Cities, &c., may appoint any woman of the age of twelve yeares, and under forty, being unmarried and out of service, to serve and bee retained by yeare, weeke, or day, in such sort and for such wages as they shall think meet, and if she refuse they may commit her to prison till she shall be bound to serve."

The various methods of dividing a female inheritance were odd, but the oddest of all was that "wherein, after partition made of the lands, every part being written in a scroule and lapped in a bale of wax, is put into a bonnet, which must be holden by some indifferent body, and then (as wee use to choose valintines) every partner pulleth out a part, the first borne first, the rest after her in degree of ancientry, and every one shall hold to her chance." Another mode was by "hotch-pot," which is putting all the lands and holdings together, whether given in frank marriage or left in heritage, and then dividing according to a certain fixed valuation.

In those old days, betrothal was a more serious matter than it is now—something like the present German betrothal. It was considered the "first part of marriage," and was of two kinds—the first, plain and simple, the two only binding themselves to contract matrimony hereafter; the second, when an oath was made, or something taken as an earnest or pledge on both sides, which pledge or gifts must be returned in case of no marriage.

Going on to the question of the time to be allowed to elapse between promise and fulfilment, our lawyer says that a woman may marry some one else as soon as she likes after the stated period of betrothment has passed; after two years, if her betrothment has been made without specified term, and if both she and her spouse reside in the same province; after three years, if her spouse reside in another province. A judge might prolong the period of expectancy if he would. The time of waiting before choosing another husband, if already married and deserted, was longer. "In marriage because it is in some sort dangerous to expect long the incertaine returne of an absent yoake fellow, the civil law did ordaine that aftir a husband had been gone five yeares, and nothing knowne whether he lived or no, his wife may marry again;" and so the husband if his wife had deserted him. But the common law simply commands to forbear marriage until the death of the missing one is really known. There is still the feeling abroad among the people that a woman who has not heard of her husband for five or seven years is entitled to choose another, and that her marriage with the first is null and void even should he return.

"I am affraid my feminine acquaintance will say I writ as I live. I talke much of marriage, but I came not forward: stay awhile yet, I pray you. I know many an honest woman more repenting her hastie marriage ere she was wooed, than all the other sinnes that ever she committed. It were good nature we speak a little of wooing, but to handle that matter per genus et species would take up as much roome as an Indian figge-tree, every thrid whereof when it falleth to the ground groweth to a woof." The gloves and rings, and other pre-nuptial gifts, spoken of before, must be returned in case of rupture of betrothal bonds; but a woman had more favour from the law in this regard than had the man in the donation of lands, on account of marriage. For, whatever he gave to her, she kept, marriage or none; and whatever she gave to him, she took back. And the reason was, because of the knaves abroad, who "with colour of love and collocution of marriage, cozened heiresses and poor women of their grounds, and gave them the boots when they had done, carrying the gain to their better beloved."

It is curious to mark in this old book the parrot cry of the "good old times." "It was, as I suppose, more frequent in the old time that men gave lands with their daughters in marriage than at this day," says our lawyer, when plunging into the awful labyrinth of frank marriage, dower, seisin, &c.: a labyrinth impossible for one not specially trained to thread. But one thing we can pick out, concerning "the courtesy of England." The courtesy of