It appears, then, that civil marriage, side by side with religious marriage according to the rites of each denomination, was lawful until 1715. By the so-called "Vestries Act" of that year, for the establishment of the Church of England in the province, magistrates are authorized to join people in wedlock only in "such parishes where no minister shall be resident." If any layman, except in such parishes, presume to act, he shall be fined five pounds, one-half to the parish for the use of the poor, and one-half to the resident minister or incumbent. After license or banns no marriage may be lawfully celebrated by minister, priest, or magistrate contrary to the table of marriages, which the church wardens and vestry are to have set up in every church or chapel.[769] But there is no invalidating clause for neglect. Already in 1704 some provision had been made by statute for registration.[770] Now it is enacted that the "inhabitants and freemen of each precinct" by majority vote are to elect three freeholders, from whom the governor or commander in chief is to choose one as register of deeds; and until there be a clerk of the parish church, such register is to record betrothals and marriages. Every "master or mistress of a family who shall neglect to register the birth or death of any person born or dying within his or her house or plantation; and every married man who shall neglect to remit to the said register a certificate of his marriage and cause the same to be registered, for longer than one month," must pay a fine of one shilling a month for the period of delay, provided the whole penalty do not exceed twenty shillings.[771] [Footnote 769: _N. C. Col. Rec._, II, 212, 213.] [Footnote 770: _Ibid._, 877, 878.] [Footnote 771: IREDELL-MARTIN, _Public Acts of the Assembly_ (Newbern, 1804), I, 18, 19.] The act of 1715 fixes the minister's marriage fee at five shillings; and to retain a monopoly of this perquisite at all hazards was the unswerving purpose of the Episcopal clergy throughout the colonial period. The governors, too, found the stipend for issuing marriage licenses a lucrative source of revenue. In 1730 the royal instructions to Governor Burrington declare, "to the end Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the Bishop of London may take place in that our Province so far as may be We do think fit that you give all countenance & encouragement to the exercise of the same excepting only the collating the Benefices Granting licenses for Marriages and probate of Wills which we have reserved to you our Governor and to the Commander in chief of our said Province for the time being as far as by law we may."[772] The license fee was fixed at ten shillings.[773] [Footnote 772: _N. C. Col. Rec._, III, 110, 111.]