Hello bluemale38,
You seem to have two questions:
1. Why were James & Catherine getting married so late in life - after (if I understand you correctly) living together for years as man and wife, and having children together?Obviously I don't know their circumstances so can only suggest some possible reasons.
(a) One reason
might be that one or both of them had not been free to marry in the past i.e. one or both of them
might have had a living spouse who had now died leaving them free to marry.
(b) Another possibility is that they
had always been free to marry and, by being generally regarded as man and wife by their community, were therefore legally married under Scots Law. But presumably they did not have a marriage certificate to prove this. That is, they had
neither had their marriage celebrated by a minister of religion (in which case they would have been given a marriage certificate and the marriage would automatically have been entered into the Statutory Register)
nor had they gone through the alternative procedures needed to have their marriage entered into the Statutory Register and be issued with a marriage certificate.
Why would they want a formal marriage certificate now? This could be for any number of reasons - perhaps so Kate could easily prove that she was James's widow in the event of his death, etc, etc.
2. What does the wording on the marriage certificate mean?In Scotland, there was no equivalent to a Registry Office (civil) wedding until the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1939 came into force in July 1940! People who didn't want a religious ceremony usually married by Declaration (a legal form of marriage in Scotland - see later); usually did this in front of witnesses; then presented the signed Declaration to the Sheriff Substitute who would warrant that the marriage was proven (my understanding is that, by the 1920s, the office of the Sheriff Substitute actually had forms ready for people to use for their declaration); and then took the paperwork to the Registrar who would enter the marriage in the Statutory Register and issue a marriage certificate.
3. Irregular Marriage in ScotlandThis is a general explanation much of which I have already posted elsewhere on RootsChat, for example at:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,227262.0.htmlScots 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 were free to marry, 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.
The Church wanted all couples to be married by a Minister. 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'!!
The offensive - in my view - word ‘irregular’ even passed into official usage when Statutory Registration began.
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 were married (by declaration, or habit & repute, ...). 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 were married to each other according to Scots Law), 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 increasingly simpler procedures and ease until the 1939 Act finally introduced civil marriage in a Registry Office by a Registrar but, up till then, the misleading word 'Irregular' still appeared on marriage certificates – and has caused a lot of quite unnecessary worry to people researching their family trees.
JAP
