In the year 1810, Chief Justice Parsons, then on the bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, rendered a decision, in which he denied that according to the common law a valid marriage could be made, by the mutual agreement of the parties alone.[42] Chancellor Kent, however, in 1809, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, held that: “No formal solemnization of marriage was requisite. A contract of marriage, made _per verba de praesenti_, amounts to an actual marriage and is as valid as if made _in facie ecclesiae_.”[43] This latter exposition of the common law of England has been generally followed in the United States, and may be said to obtain, generally, in all the states, other than those mentioned above, except where the local statutes provide otherwise.[44] Clearly, by the law of nature, marriage may be constituted by the mutual present consent of two competent persons, of the opposite sex, without other formality than the performed inclination of the individuals concerned and so the common, or unwritten law, recognized the legality of such a contract. The law of nature was adopted as the surest guide to the law of man, in this relation. Considerable uncertainty and some confusion resulted in England as to the essentials of a valid marriage and the acts necessary to constitute a marriage, prior to the eighteenth century, but during the reign of George II., in 1753, a statute was passed,[45] requiring all marriages to be celebrated by a clergyman and in a church, unless by special dispensation by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This statute was repealed in 1836 when a purely civil marriage before only a Registrar, was permitted by the law of England, in lieu of the ecclesiastical ceremony.[46] Touching the issue as to the validity of a marriage not solemnized by religious ceremony, is the interesting and famous case of The Queen vs. Millis,[47] wherein the House of Lords, erroneously decided that such a marriage was void, according to the English law, in the year 1843. The Irish Court of King’s Bench was equally divided upon the issue and in the House of Lords, after the decision of the English judges had been given against the validity of the marriage at which no clergyman had been present, Lords Lyndhurst, Cottenham and Abinger were for holding the marriage void, while Lords Brougham, Denman and Campbell, were in favor of its validity, but on account of the precise form in which the question was put to the House, the effect of the division was to hold the marriage void, and thus a mere accident gave the decision in favor of the erroneous view that from the earliest time in English law, the presence of an ordained clergyman was essential to the celebration of a valid marriage, when, as we have seen, from the decisions and history of the law, this was not the case, either in England or according to the Roman law, until the Council of Trent.[48]