Hi Richard,
The Minister was not performing an ‘irregular’ marriage but giving church recognition to an ‘irregular’ (but perfectly legal) marriage which had already taken place.
The explanation below consists of slightly amended extracts from the many posts I have made on the topic of Irregular Marriage.
JAP
Irregular Marriage in Scotland
Scots Law (which was, and remains, different from the Law in England & Wales in certain respects) viewed marriage essentially as a contract between two people.
Up until the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1939 came into force in July 1940, three forms of marriage were recognised in Scotland:
(a) marriage by declaration i.e. two people agreeing to marriage. There was no need for the declaration to be made in front of witnesses for the marriage to be legal - however, most couples preferred to make their declaration in front of witnesses in order to mark the occasion and (importantly) so that the marriage could be proved
(b) marriage by habit and repute (e.g. a couple who lived together, had children together, and were viewed as man and wife by their community)
(c) a promise of marriage followed by consummation.
Marriage by a Minister was essentially a version of the first form. Normally Banns would be proclaimed in the Church on two or three successive Sundays, after which (if there had been no objections) the couple would be married (i.e. would make their declaration of marriage) with the Minister conducting a ceremony; often this took place in the bride's home or in the Minister's home.
Of course the Church couldn't gainsay the Law but what it did do was to describe marriages with benefit of clergy as 'Regular' and all other marriages as 'Irregular' – a most unpleasant choice of words in my view.
So all that Thomas & Janet would have had to do in order to marry was to declare to each other that they took each other in marriage. It is entirely probable that they would have committed their marriage agreement to paper, and would have had it signed by witnesses.
The local Minister wouldn’t have liked it at all but there was nothing he could do about it; the marriage was legal. But he might well have pressured and/or shamed the couple until they agreed to have their marriage recognized by the church. The Minister would then record something in the parish register like the entry you quoted or a more extensive entry like: 'John A and Elizabeth B produced lines of irregular marriage dated (place) the xth day of x, xxxx and were here declared married'. So now they were not only legally married under Scots Law but also in the eyes of the Church (the blessing of the Church might have been given with a good or a bad grace!). Sometimes the parties were rebuked by the Church and sometimes they were required to pay a fine (often paid to the parish poor box).
The offensive - in my view - words ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ even passed into official usage.
From 1855 (when Statutory Registration started in Scotland) until the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1939 came into force in July 1940, marriages involving the church were entered into the Statutory Register as a matter of course but other marriages – though perfectly legal – were not unless special application was made.
Many such couples, of course, wanted to have a marriage certificate. But they could only have their marriage formally registered in the Statutory Register and get a Marriage Certificate if they could prove to the Registrar that they actually had married each other. The standard mechanism for this was
(a) to obtain a formal Warrant of Sheriff Substitute (i.e. documentary proof that the Sheriff Substitute accepted that the couple had married each other), and
(b) then to take the Warrant along to the Registrar and have the marriage registered and a marriage certificate issued.
This could be done promptly, or within a specified time period, or with special dispensation or court proceedings well after the event. But the marriage remained legal whether or not it had received a Warrant of Sheriff Substitute and whether or not it had been registered, and there was no requirement for either
The certificate issued by the Registrar would include reference to the marriage having been ‘Irregular’ and to the Warrant of Sheriff Substitute. This continued with vastly simpler procedures and ease until the 1939 Act finally introduced civil marriage in a Registry Office by a Registrar but, up till then, the horrid and misleading word 'Irregular' still appeared on marriage certificates – and has caused a lot of worry to people researching their family trees.
