Sometimes, however, contracted persons declined to set each other free, and forbade the publication of banns with any other person. In 1689, one John Meikle was cited to appear before the Presbytery of Ayr, to show cause why he forbade the banns of Janet Campbell. He pleaded that Janet had been engaged to him, and on that ground he objected to her becoming the wife of any other man. The Presbytery decided that Janet was free to do so. In 1777, a woman applied to the Kirk Session of Mauchline to have her banns stopped, on the ground that she had changed her mind, and had become engaged to another man. The first lover opposed the application, pleading that she was his "by the covenant of God." The Kirk Session did not admit his plea. The publication of banns was stopped, and a minute of the Session justifies this decision, on the ground that "there would be an obvious impropriety in proceeding further in the proclamation, after being certified by the woman of her resolution not to marry the petitioner." There were some superstitions connected with marriage as to lucky and unlucky days and seasons. Perthshire couples refrained from wedlock in January, and everywhere it was declined in May. In the Lowlands, Friday was considered an unlucky day for weddings, but in the Highlands, it was the day generally chosen for the ceremony. These notions had no weight with the compilers of the First Book of Discipline, who expressed their opinion that Sunday was the day "most expedient." On the other hand, the Westminster Assembly advised that marriages should not be solemnised on the Lord's day. The latter may have been influenced by the same reason that moved the Kirk Session of Perth to adopt, in 1584, a resolution that "forasmuch as sundry poor desire to, because they have not to buy clothes, nor to make bridals, marriages should be as well celebrated on Thursday, within our Parish Kirk in time of sermon, as on Sunday." The former, on the other hand, probably had in view the disorderly scenes to which a wedding was often the prelude. The General Assembly, in 1645, adopted the view of the Westminster Directory, and marriages from that date were generally solemnised on the day of the weekly lecture.