marriage licence - how could they afford it.

[243rose]

i have just downloaded a few marriage licences from the LMA website.
I see that they seem to have cost £200.
The ancestors that married in this way were labourers.....
How could they have afforded this ?

iain

[stanmapstone]

Are you sure it is not the Bond that is £200?

A visit to the clergyman issuing the licence resulted in three documents. An allegation or affidavit, a marriage bond and the licence. The marriage licence was given to the parties concerned and normally does not survive. The allegations were on printed forms with spaces for the relevant details. The marriage bond was a promise by two people to pay the church a very substantial sum of money if the marriage proved to be invalid. Allegations and Bonds were retained by church officials, and there are published indexes.

[243rose]

Ah.

sounds like the bond and allegation in that case.
So, they just had to promise to pay £200, not actually pay it.
I take it the 2nd person was a friend/relative usually ??
do you know whether they had to prove that they had the money ?

cheers
iain.

[stanmapstone]

Bonds were a very common legal device. By entering into a bond a person would agree for instance that a statement was true, in this case that there was no "lawful let or impediment" to the propsed marriage. If this was not the case  a penalty was due to the church official concerned. By the late 18th Century the penalty was £200.
I would expect that they would not have to prove they had the money. Bonds were not required after the 1823 Marriage Act. According to various books some second Bondsman were usualy a legal fiction, "John Doe" having offered more collateral than anyone else 

Stan

[Nick29]

I'm not sure that many ordinary people in those days would have been able to prove that they could stump up £200 if required, because it was a huge sum in those days.  I suspect it was more of deterrent value - failure to pay such a sum would probably get you 20 years hard labour or export to the colonies, so I doubt whether many tried to fool the system.

[Berlin-Bob]

You can find several discussions about Marriage Allegations and Bonds in the
RootsChat Reference Library => Lexicon ^{(click here)}
(Tip: click on a category - on the right - for related topics)

Bob

[Galium]

According to various books some second Bondsman were usualy a legal fiction, "John Doe" having offered more collateral than anyone else 

Stan

That answers a question I had after downloading a marriage bond yesterday, which names the groom and 'John Doe' as bondsmen.  I have also come across John Doe named as one of the parties on an administration document.

Why was it necessary to use this non-existent character?

[charlotteCH]

]



Why was it necessary to use this non-existent character?

Just another conspiracy to make the life of  family history hunters more perplexing.
Presumably your John Doe is down at the same pub as all my "unable to be found" lot, having a pint and laughing at us and our endeavours.

charlotte