This code, though it was never put in force, perhaps in consequence of the king's death, is regarded as a faithful index of Protestant opinion. Before referring to its treatment of the question of divorce, some of its general provisions may be mentioned. These often show the strong common-sense and lofty moral purpose of its framers. The consent of the parent or guardian is made necessary to a valid marriage. Children whose reasonable desires in matrimony are hindered by the caprice or unkindness of those having authority over them are granted the right of appeal to the ecclesiastical magistrate, who may give redress. Aged women are advised to forbear from wedlock with young men. A marriage secured through fear or violence is rendered void. An attempt is also made through severe penalties to check those crimes against women which, as elsewhere shown, were first effectively dealt with during the Puritan Commonwealth.[232] "They ordered that the betrayer of a virgin should be excommunicated until he had married his victim, if it was in his power to wed her; or until he had assigned to her a third of his property, or made some other sufficient arrangement for the support of her offspring," if on account of legal impediment he could not make her his wife.[233] [Footnote 232: See chap. x, sec. i, pp. 421-23 above.] [Footnote 233: JEAFFRESON, _op. cit._, II, 322.] Hereafter, according to the report, spiritual affinity is not to count as an impediment to matrimony. Separation _a mensa et thoro_ is not recognized; but complete divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_ is granted "in cases of extreme conjugal faithlessness; in case of conjugal desertion or cruelty; in cases where a husband, not guilty of deserting his wife, had been for several years absent from her," provided there be reason to believe him dead; "and in cases of such violent hatred as rendered it in the highest degree improbable that the husband and wife would survive their animosities and again love one another;"[234] but separation is not permitted for frequent, though not incessant or vehement, quarrels.[235] Divorce is denied where both partners are guilty of unfaithfulness; and when one is guilty, only the innocent spouse is permitted to contract another marriage. Self-divorce is forbidden. In all cases it is the province of the ecclesiastical court to determine whether there exists a just cause for separation.[236] Finally, it may be noted that adultery as a crime is severely dealt with, though the commissioners do not go to the length of prescribing capital punishment, as some of the English reformers would have desired. The guilty husband, if a layman, shall "restore to his injured wife whatever possessions she had brought him, and also surrender to her one-half of all his other property. He was, moreover, sentenced to exile or imprisonment for life. Convicted of the same offence, the wife lost her dower and all interest in her husband's property, and was consigned to life-long