The early colonial laws, generally, required that all marriages should be celebrated before a justice of the peace or other magistrate, sometimes under penalty of nullity for those solemnized in any other way.[363] Where no statutory provision to the contrary existed the common-law marriage by private consent was valid.[364] The question now arises as to the causes which determined the establishment of civil marriage in the New England colonies. Was it set up in imitation of the practice in Holland? Did it come as a natural result of the general tendency of Protestant, and especially of Puritan, thought? Or was it perhaps the product of both influences combined? Already in the middle of the eighteenth century colonial historians were at a loss to account for it. Thus Governor Hutchinson makes a difficulty of understanding why the lay celebration was introduced. "Their laws concerning marriage and divorce," he says, "are somewhat singular. I suppose there had been no instance of a marriage, lawfully celebrated, by a layman in England, when they left it. I believe there was no instance of marriage by a clergyman after they arrived, during their charter; but it was always done by a magistrate, or by persons specially appointed for that purpose.... It is difficult to assign a reason for so sudden a change, especially as there was no established form of the marriage covenant."[365] [Footnote 363: The fact that ministers as such were not allowed to celebrate in New England until near the end of the seventeenth century is, of course, well known to students. Very many, however, who now insist on the religious ceremony are ignorant of the fact; and it is not a little surprising to find so reputable a writer as AUGUSTE CARLIER, speaking of the "émigrants dans la Nouvelle Angleterre," declaring that marriage "se formait sous les yeux et avec l'approbation du chef de famille; il était consacré par le pasteur; d'après les prescriptions impératives de la loi, mais surtout pour obéir à la conscience d'un devoir religieux."--_Le mariage aux États-Unis_, 8, 9.] [Footnote 364: BISHOP, _Marriage, Divorce, and Sep._, I, 176, 178; FRIEDBERG, _Eheschliessung_, 471, 472.] [Footnote 365: HUTCHINSON, _Hist. of Mass._, I, 392. Compare COOK, "Mar. Celebration in the Colonies," _Atlantic Monthly_, LXI, 351, who, following Hutchinson, thinks that the colonists instituted "a form of marriage celebration unique in modern times."]