CLANDESTINE MARRRIAGES

There has been a pub on the site of The Squirrel at Laymore since the 16^th century and it is possible that as well as being a drinking hole it was a cut-price marriage shop.

Held in a variety of venues,  these marriages either took the form of ‘handfasting or trothplights’, known as ‘the country manner’ or  were  solemnised according to the order of service laid down by the Common Prayer Book.  Officiates were not always ordained and some were defrocked priests.  The 1695 Marriage Duty Act introduced  a tax on church marriages which increased demand.  Cut price marriage shops undercut the cost and were a popular alternative to church weddings. Couples who took their vows in front of witnesses and sealed their marriage cum cupola were legally married in the eyes of the Church until the law changed in 1753 when irregular marriage was outlawed by the Hardwick Marriage Act.

Among the 89 parishioners who signed the 1723 Devon Loyalty Oath, 17 are among Thorncombe’s missing marryers, fathers of children baptised in Thorncombe during 1674-1723 but not listed in the marriage register. Altogether 708 children were fathered by  295 missing marryers  during for this period. While some may have been returning emigrants or immigrants who married in church ceremonies elsewhere, others may have undergone civil marriages under Oliver Cromwell’s administration, been married in non-conformist establishments or participated in clandestine marriage ceremonies.

Either way these events are not easily traceable.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, some of Thorncombe’s missing marryers might be among those who patronised these covert establishments. While there is no documentary evidence a local tradition suggests a corrupt survival of what once might have been a clandestine marriage ceremony. On twelfth night, women hoping to become pregnant still jump over a burning faggot at the Squirrel Inn, Laymore on the Somerset border of Thorncombe’s parish boundary.

There has been a  public house on the same site since the seventeenth century. 

Sources

1.      http://www.foda.org.uk/main/projects/eighteenthcentury/thorncombe/quakers.htm  (accessed 13.10.2010)

2.      Wrigley, E., ‘Clandestine Marriage in Tetbury in the late 17^th century’, Local Population Studies, 10 (1973), pp. 15-21.

3.      Outhwaite, R., Clandestine Marriage in England 1500-1850, (London, 1995), pp. 20-31.

Eve Higgs, October 2010