In England marriage was held to be a religious service to be performed by no one other than a priest of the Church; and Parliament, after abolishing the Prayer Book and the canons of the Anglican Church, was compelled to enact another law making provision for the performance of the marriage ceremony as a civil contract. The new law directed that justices of the local courts perform marriages and record them, if desired, in the court records. The people of Virginia paid no attention to this law except, as far as is known, in one case in Northumberland County. In the year 1656 a man and woman in Lancaster County, instead of going to the minister, if there were one, or to the reader of the parish, went to a county official of Northumberland and were married according to the Act of Parliament. Their marriage was recorded in the court order book and there nine months later the new incumbent, Samuel Cole of Lancaster, found it. He thereupon declared openly that the law of Virginia was in effect in his parish and not the Acts of Parliament. The affair ended when the parson required the wedded couple to consider themselves unwed until he could announce the banns of matrimony for them on three separate Sundays and then perform a Christian marriage. He then took occasion to go to the Northumberland county court and record his certificate of marriage of the couple in the court order book. The two certificates still appear in the order book of the county court of Northumberland County in the following words: Certificate of Marriage, 11 Sept. 1656. John Merryday [i.e., Meredith] and Mrs. Ann Nash, als. Mallet, were married by Coll. Jno. Trussell, according to Act of Parliament, 24 August, 1653. Witnesses Geo. Colclough, Leonard Spencer and Jno. Carter. Rec. 20 Sept. 1656. To all such whom it may concern. These are to certifie that John Meredith & Ann Nash, being three times Published according to Law, were married at Currotomon on the 14th of this instant July, 1657 per mee, Samuel Cole, minister, _ibidem_ 20th July 1657 this certificate was recorded. The colony of Virginia in affairs of both church and state exercised more independence of action under the Commonwealth than it ever exercised before or afterward until the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The General Assembly, after it made a treaty of peace with Cromwell's commissioners, elected the several governors of the colony until the Restoration of Charles Second in 1660 took that authority from them. The Burgesses had agreed to discontinue the use of prayers for the King and the royal family in public services, and the General Assembly enacted a law directing each parish to decide for itself whether it would continue or discontinue the use of the _Book of Common Prayer_. All questions of parish administration were left to the several vestries. If a parish did not wish to use the old form of worship it might use such form as it desired.