RootsChat.Com

By a weird coincidence I came across a case in a distant branch of my family in 1863.  A lodger was accused of stealing a sovereign from his landlord (they were sharing a bed!).  Landlord's daughter - lodger's "sweetheart" - testified against her father and accused was bailed to appear at Quarter Sessions next month. By then the pair had married so case had to be dropped.
It appears that a wife couldn't even testify in defence of her husband, though she may have changed her testimony - she was dead within the year.

Now we're back on track, I seem to remember a piece in the old BBC Tonight programme in the sixties about a village in the Netherlands where the strong Calvinist tradition coexisted with the practice of waiting for the woman to become pregnant before marrying.
And Thomas Hardy records the time when a number of London stonemasons went to get stone for, I think the Embankment, from Portland Bill in Dorset. The same practice was usual there, and the men thought they had died and gone to Heaven until they found that the second part of the contract was compulsory.
In communities where fertility was essential for their continuance - either economically or socially - the custom would be likely, unless there was the possibility of divorce. And even Martin Luther didn't think Henry VIII had the right to get rid of Katherine of Aragon.

(Kind of strange that the English Parliament is often called "the mother of Parliaments"?!)

Yes it is often called that, often by MPs who should know better.  The actual quote is from the mid-Victorian writer John Bright who said "England is the mother of parliaments".  Being mid-Victorian he quite possibly meant Britain.

He also originated the phrase "muddle through" but he applied that to the USA, so here's hoping.

Don't go, PharmaT. All you were doing was respond with a set of examples to counterract a sweeping generalisation about different education systems.  Both sets of examples were anecdotal, but of equal validity.
As it happens I was equally surprised by the original post from ankerdine, but it isn't anything to do with intelligence.  Bing interested in history, and having had some success in quizzes in the past, I am often surprised but try to remember that there are huge areas of knowledge which I know nothing about.  My view is that you should never be embarrassed about not knowing something you never learned, nor should you be proud of it.
Unfortunately, being an arrogant b***** I still shout at contestants on the television.