Page:Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs (SCA).djvu/55

Rh and for their marriage to be solemnised by the magistrate or minister of religion ‘according to the forms in use in the churches or which shall have been prescribed to the magistrates for that purpose by the States’. ‘Marriages’ not solemnised in accordance with section 3 were invalid. Similar legislation was enacted in the other provinces of the Northern Netherlands.

The provisions of the Political Ordinance on the point were received as law at the Cape when it was colonised by the Dutch East India Company. Despite the reception of the Political Ordinance at the Cape it appears that from 1665, when the first resident clergyman was appointed, marriages were solemnised by a minister of the Church. Before that date they were solemnised by the Secretary of the Council of Policy.

As far as I have been able to discover, Holland was the first European jurisdiction to permit civil marriages. In practice persons who chose to be married by magistrates were those who were not