Dr Kat and Marriage in English History

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat and I am going to get into the meat of this video very quickly but before I do I can't ignore what's going on in the world I have to mention it because frankly it's all-consuming isn't it it's a 24-hour rolling news cycle about the fact that vast swathe the world's population are being held hostage by kovat 19 so many of us are now sharing the experience of living in some kind of isolation or lockdown I'm not going to talk about the government or medical community's response to this illness because I lack the training and in that regard it would be irresponsible of me to pass any kind of judgement because quite frankly it's not my place however I am thinking of all of you watching this and I firmly hope that every single one of you is staying well in body and also in mind but your physical and emotional needs are being met and that you are finding meaningful ways to connect with the people that you love and care about whether that is online or perhaps you've gone old fashioned and you've started writing letters and cards again in fact let me know how you are finding ways to connect in the comment section down below because perhaps it might inspire some other people in ways that they can reach out if you found any good sites for mass communication for group hangouts that are really working for you please do pop them down there so that we can all see and hopefully benefit from them we're talking about connection broadly speaking that is the topic of today's video because I want to look at marriage [Applause] [Music] [Music] if we wish to meaningfully explore the marital circumstances of people living in medieval and early modern England nine times out of ten we're going to be drawn to looking at records to do with those in the upper echelon of society and this is the case in many aspects of the historical record and when it comes to marriage if money lands and titles are on the table then there is going to simply put be more paperwork involved and so that means that for those in the lower orders of society there is a lack of this knowledge so we reliance on a best-guess and scant record the general perception is that for those who do not have lands monies or titles the marital circumstances they experience are quite different it's generally relieved they may have had more choice in a future spouse also that they probably married considerably later in their mid or even late 20s give him sufficient time to earn a small portion of money that together they might set up a household among the noble landed moneyed and even mercantile classes what I'm calling the middling sort up in society it seems that in one way or another an arranged marriage was the order of the day and in fact marriage without parental consent could have dire consequences for the couple involved among these privileged classes which of course included monarchs the arranged marriage was vital at the lower end it might be part of a business deal securing promises at the very top end it was part of national and international peace negotiations the marital futures of their children was vital it could secure lands and titles and also ensure the future financial stability of their children and the wire dynasty if a couple were to flout these prohibitions against marrying without parental consent they might expect to find themselves severely punished if a young man took a wife where parents did not know or consent then the dower that he might otherwise have expected which could have been incredibly profitable is not coming his way he is financially worse off for contracting a marriage without parental consent than he would have been if her parents have been willing equally if he is looking to inherit perhaps he is the eldest son maybe the only son if he marries that parental consent and they are angry enough they may disinherit him so this new couple does not have a dower and they also cannot bank on an inheritance it might put both of them into financial misery and penury equally I think it's worth mentioning that the couple is taking another risk particularly in the case of woman and that is a risk to their reputation if the parents involved were feeling particularly vindictive or perhaps let's say the boy of the partnership comes from an incredibly high up noble household a titled and landed family let's say he is the sole heir he can't really be disinherited his parents aren't willing to see that happen but they perhaps have more power and more sway and more money than the girl's parents well then in that case and in the case of two vindictive sets of parents they can force an annulment they can make this couple separate against their will and if the girl in the partnership had thought she was married and had consummated the marriage to her husband sexually well then she's going to find herself in a very sticky situation because what she's actually done after annulment which means the marriage never happened is that she has had sex outside of wedlock she has therefore damaged and devalued her chastity finding her another husband is going to be a very very difficult job for her parent in fact they might think it's a lost cause perhaps the best thing they can do with her is pack her off to a convent and make her into a nun perhaps she might be valuable as a gift or sacrifice to God because they can't do anything with her in the marriage market anymore if we look at Midsummer Night's Dream although it is a fictionalized staged account we perhaps get a clue as to how important and also how dangerous playing with marital negotiations may have been when we look at a giasses threats to Hermia she refuses to marry his chosen groom for her Demetrius and his response is to threaten to end her life this is of course an incredibly extreme version of what I've just been talking about but what Shakespeare is showing us is that when it comes to arranging marriages even if it means forcing them the state could be incredibly high for all involved I think we can see further evidence of just how important the arranged marriage was by looking at how early the negotiations to secure these marriages could begin and I'm talking particularly about the children of kings and queens in their case negotiations for their future marriage might begin while they were still in the cradle Mary Tudor the future Mary the first of England was betrothed when she was just six years old to her cousin Charles the future Charles the fifth of Spain Holy Roman Emperor there is one aspect of the medieval and early modern marriage that I find totally fascinating and if I'm honest thoroughly confusing and that is the fact that it doesn't seem to be immediately clear at what point on the journey towards matrimony a couple will be recognized as being husband and wife officially in the eyes of their wider community then as now there are a series of stages that people have to go through before marriage may have been completed however unlike now however many stages there may have been it doesn't seem that everybody requires a couple to go through all of them for some they will be recognized as married having just done one of the things whereas others will require the full gamut to have been run and perhaps you are now as confused as I am so I think it's best if I look with you at the potential hoops that a couple has to go through in medieval and early modern England to be considered married by their wider community let's have a look at it one stage was to patrol with the couple their engagement if you will a time for them to plight their troth to one another this could take place before God alone or it could take place before God and witnesses one member of the couple might find that having witnesses was very useful to them particularly if their partner decided to change their mind to deny that they wanted to get married to refuse to do so the spurned party could call upon those witnesses bring them before an ecclesiastical court and demand marriage take place they had been betrothed before God and witnesses this was a binding marriage they could claim however even with the evidence of witnesses it may be possible for the other person to still wriggle out of the deal because there were two types of betrothal one day future Oh to marry if possible in the future this was not binding or the betrothal could be recognized to have been de presenting something that was presently binding in effect that this couple were already married there was also the marriage ceremony when a ceremony was taking place in a chapel or a church much as it is today the expectation is that bands would be read announcing the couple's intention to marry three times before the marriage actually took place this is intended to prevent a marriage taking place when the couple are not free to marry of course the Myers will also take place in a more private setting of a royal chapel perhaps a Queen's Chapel a Hampton Court in terms of who witnessed these ceremonies in church or Chapel that is also variable it might simply be the priest maybe a couple of witnesses or in some communities the expectations may have been that the entire family and wider community also participates and witnesses the ceremony another stage on the road to having your new matrimonial state recognized by our wider community was the sexual consummation of your marriage if this occurred after a church or Chapel wedding we might expect the priest would go and bless the matrimonial bed before the couple trip to it for the first time however consummation was also potentially permissible after a betrothal even better if this betrothal was de presenting a betrothal presently recognized almost as a marriage consummation after this the couple are as good as married this is not adultery this is not sex beyond the bonds of wedlock this is a recognized betrothed couple taking to bed together in fact it has been said that for many couples the woman might go to their church ceremony already pregnant having consummated their betrothal and their marriage the church ceremony was essentially just welding that lock shut but what happens if a couple consummates a de futuro betrothal the promise to marry if in the future possible well for some the act of consummation would make the de futuro betrothal a day present a betrothal whereas for others it would simply be a woman and a man giving in to their carnal lusts beyond the bonds of wedlock and if a couple found themselves in this situation where there was some debate well then it will be up to you the couple themselves their families their wider community perhaps even their church to weigh in to try to figure out whether or not they were legally married or whether they were simply two people who had given into their corner of his iers and lusts and had thrown away that most valuable gift of their chastity consummation was evidently important and in fact the lack of sexual consummation was one of the key official reasons that was given for nulling the marriage of Henry the eighth's and anne of cleves however if we stay with King Henry the eighth for just a moment and we explore some of his other martial adventures it swiftly becomes clear that even if a couple jumps through all of these hoops betrothal ceremony and consummation they may still find that they had never really been married Catherine married Henry the eighth's in 1509 their marriage was annulled 24 years later in may 15 33 and despite how the Ryan goes divorced four-headed died divorced beheaded survived Henry never got divorced divorce recognizes that a marriage took place that it has then been dissolved annulment means that the marriage never even happened the reason for annulling catherine's marriage to Henry was down to her status as his brother's widow this of course was known when they got married they had received a papal dispensation about it but now Henry and his supporters claim that this relationship was within the prohibited degrees of affinity in modern parlance that means that it was incestuous they found evidence in Leviticus a passage which states that if a man should take his brother's wife he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness it is an unclean thing they shall be childless of course they had had many children including the surviving Mary Tudor the future Mary the first but apparently the litany of stillbirths and short-lived infants and sole surviving girl was for henry the same as being childless because it was a feature of leviticus henry and his supporters argued that the papal dispensation went too far the Pope was never able to overwrite the Word of God in the Bible to grant the dispensation had always been an error and so too had the marriage for 24 years Katherine and Henry had been mistaken for they were not husband and wife rather she was his brother's widow and his sister-in-law only before Anne Boleyn was executed by French swordsmen at the Tower of London Henry the eighth's wanted to annul his marriage to her as well in the first case he tried to annul the marriage based upon her pre contract or rather betrothal to Henry Percy by the time of Anne's execution Percy was the Duke of Northumberland he deny that any such pre-contract have taken place what would actually serve a sufficient reason for the annulment was Henry's own sexual relationship with Anne Boleyn sister Mary because he had this sexual knowledge of her sister once again their relationship was within the prohibited degrees of affinity what we would know as incestuous I think it's fair to say that in the annulments of Katherine Aragon and Anne Burrell in particularly in the reasons given for them the definition of incest is being stretched to its absolute limits and perhaps even starting to push beyond the realms of credulity nevertheless that doesn't mean that incest was always a problem on the 28th of October 15:28 a letter was sent from Cardinal campeggio he had been sent by the Pope to oversee the Kings great matter in his annulment from Catherine of Aragon campeggio is writing to the Pope's secretary Giovanni Battista Sangha in his letter he makes the following statement they have thought of marrying the princess that being Mary Tudor daughter of Henry and Catherine Aragon by dispensation from his holiness to the Kings natural son that Ben Henry Fitzroy Henry the eighth's son by Bessie Blount if it can be done at first I myself had thought of this as a means of establishing the succession but I do not believe that this design would suffice to satisfy the Kings desires so essentially what pamper Gio is explaining here is that he thinks it would be a very good thing for these half-siblings Mary Tudor and Henry Fitzroy to marry each other to secure the succession when campeggio talks about this plan not suffice to satisfy the king's desires what he is effectively saying is that the only reason that this frankly as far as we will be concerned totally incestuous marriage isn't taking place is because Henry's real concern is marrying his mistress amberlynn so in effect the only reason that Mary Chu and Henry Fitzroy aren't being married off to each other with the full support of a papal dispensation that they probably weren't able to secure is the fact that Henry loves Ann I'm sure I'm not the only one to be relieved that this did not take place as I mentioned previously Ann of Cleves did not manage to jump through every matrimonial hoop in her marriage to King Henry the eighth there had been apparently no consummation therefore the marriage was invalid and Fitch to be annulled however Henry's next wife Anne of Cleves former lady-in-waiting Catherine Howard also had her marriage to the king an old it has been alleged that while married to the king Catherine Howard conducted an illicit relationship with one of his gentlemen Thomas Culpepper but this did not lead to her marriage to the king being an old rather it was her behavior in her youth long before she had met the King she was said to have had an illicit relationship with her music teacher Henry manox but even more damaging me and disastrously it seems she had promised herself to another Francis Dereham dirham and Catherine referred to each other as husband and wife this for many would be a day present a betrothal on top of that they had had sex the betrothal was therefore consummated thus according to Canon Law Francis Dereham and Catherine Howard were a married couple before I end this video I would like to hop forward from the reign of Henry the 8th by just over 200 years to focus on the Year 1753 in this year the clandestine Marriage Act appeared the clandestine Marriage Act of 1753 marked the first time that marriage was legally and state controlled from this point a couple would require a license the calling of bans a full marriage announcement and for their marriage to be celebrated by a minister in church or Chapel for it to be deemed valid in the eyes of the state so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this discussion pop them in the comment section below this video or you can come and find me over on my social media as always I'll be leaving links to my Instagram and Twitter in the description box you can follow me there and we can continue this conversation I do hope you've enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did then please let me know by hitting the thumbs up please also subscribe to this channel and while you're there hit the little belly icon that sits next subscribe button so that YouTube will tell you and I've next uploaded I hope you're gonna have a great day whatever you're doing and I look forward to speaking to you in my next video do take care of yourself bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 59,663

Rating: 4.9709134 out of 5

Keywords: Marriage, Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Medieval, Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard

Id: bOZyVGKsfZY

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020