A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 2 of 3Howard, George Elliott
History
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 2 of 3
Howard, George Elliott
Families; Marriage -- History
[Footnote 104: The ecclesiastical laws of Howell the Good of
Wales (928) show more clearly, perhaps, than is done anywhere
else the way in which the church was often constrained to put
up with barbarian custom. One-sided divorce with remarriage is
allowed each party, under penalty for repudiation without legal
cause. If the husband desert the wife within seven years, he must
pay her the dower (_agweddi_), the maiden-fee (_cowyll_), and
the maiden-dues (_gobyr_) for the lord. "If after seven years,
he leave her; let all be shared between them, unless privilege
should give precedence to the husband: two parts of the children
go to the husband, and the third to the mother. The eldest
and the youngest go to the father." "A man is free to forsake
his wife, if she notoriously attach herself to another man;
and she is to obtain nothing of her right excepting the three
things [cowyll, argyvren (paraphernalia), wyneb-werth (fine for
husband's fornication)] which are not to be taken from a woman,
and the seducer is to pay to the lawful husband his saraad," or
injury fine. "If a man deserts his wife unlawfully and takes
another; the rejected wife is to remain in her house until the
end of the ninth day; and then, if she be suffered to depart
entirely from her husband, everything belonging to her is to go
in the first place out of the house; and then she is to go last
out of the house, after all her property; after that, on bringing
the other into the house, he is to give dilysdawd (assurance) to
the first wife; because no man, by law, is to have two wives."
"Whoever shall leave his wife, and shall repent leaving her,
she having been given to another husband; if the first husband
overtake her with one foot in the bed and the other out; the
first husband by law is to have her." "For three causes, if a
woman desert her husband, she is not to lose her dower: for
leprosy; want of connection; and bad breath."--HADDAN AND STUBBS,
_Councils_, I, 246-51.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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