The history of marriage in the middle and the New England colonies leads us to a similar result. From the facts brought to light in the Lauderdale Peerage case, backed by the testimony of Rev. John Rodgers in 1773, it is almost certainly established that the common-law marriage was valid in New York province, and that for eighty-four years preceding the Revolution no other law relating to the subject was in force.[601] In New England the formalities prescribed by the statutes were doubtless usually observed. Yet there were many clandestine and other irregular marriages, and in some instances we know that these were treated as valid.[602] Such was the case in the Plymouth jurisdiction, where "self-marriage" was punished only by a fine. In Massachusetts similar cases of "hand-fasting" and "self-gifta" appear. In one case, that of Governor Bellingham in 1641, the contract was not declared void by the court, although the grand jury had presented his excellency for his offense. Fifteen years later Joseph Hills, "being presented by the grand jury for marrying of himself contrary to the law of the colony," confessed his fault and was merely "admonished by the court."[603] Moreover, at no time during the colonial and provincial periods did the statutes of Massachusetts expressly declare marriages void for disregard of the celebration or other formalities prescribed;[604] and the same is true of the daughter-colony of Connecticut. By the Rhode Island acts of 1647 and 1665 the issue of a union not formed by the "due and orderly course of law" is pronounced illegitimate; but it is very suggestive that the words of nullity do not appear in any of the later statutes of that province. Occasionally in the colonies statutes were enacted to validate irregular marriages previously contracted. Such were the acts of Rhode Island, 1698; of North Carolina, 1766; and of Virginia, 1780. But it would clearly be rash to infer that the marriages concerned were in fact void without such special intervention. Notoriously this is but a speedy and simple way of quieting doubt as to the status of the children or their rights of property and inheritance. Whether a court would nullify the contracts in question is a different matter. On the whole, the evidence seems clearly to show that the colonial statutes sustained the same relation to the English common law as did the constitutions of the English church requiring the solemnization of wedlock before a clergyman. The colonial statute, like the ecclesiastical constitution, might determine the legal forms which must be observed to escape a penalty; but the common-law marriage was nevertheless valid unless expressly declared null and void in the act itself. Furthermore, it is by no means certain that the colonial assemblies were generally competent, even in this way, to set aside the common law. [601] Chap. xiv, sec. i, _c_). [602] Chap. xii, sec. vi.