_b_) _Void and voidable contracts._--It is a striking illustration of the completeness with which in social questions the English mind was dominated by theological modes of thought that no change in the law of divorce was effected until the present century. Yet there was crying need of reform. The rigid tightening of the bonds of wedlock seems to have produced its natural fruit. Immorality grew apace.[271] The lot of the married woman became harder even than before the Reformation. To the anomalies of the mediæval system, some of which survived, were added others not less harmful. Chief among them were those arising in the dualism, amounting sometimes to antagonism, subsisting between the civil and the spiritual law. Theoretically, of course, the temporal judge had no divorce competence at all. Still where dower or inheritance was involved a policy had to be defined. "Ultimately the common lawyers came to the doctrine that while the divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_ did, the divorce _a mensa et toro_ did not deprive the widow of dower, even though she was the guilty person."[272] Such was the law onward from the days of Edward III.[273] Earlier, according to Glanville, and apparently also according to Bracton, the woman "divorced for her misconduct can claim no dower;"[274] and even at a time when she was not deprived of dower through the fact of divorce, she might have the right to claim it taken away as a punishment for her crime, if she "eloped and abode" with her paramour.[275] [Footnote 271: _Cf._ JEAFFRESON, _op. cit._, II, 339, 340.] [Footnote 272: POLLOCK AND MAITLAND, _Hist. of Eng. Law_, II, 392: _Co. Lit._ , 32_a_, 33_b_, 235_a_.] [Footnote 273: _Year Book_, 10 Edw. III., fol. 35 (Trin. pl. 24): POLLOCK AND MAITLAND, _op. cit._, II, 392.]