There is no doubt that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Marriage laws, as we now understand them, were somewhat lax, and it is possible that it was so long before that time, for in Edward VI.'s time an Act was passed (2 and 3 Ed. VI., c. 21, s. 3) entitled "An Act to take away all positive laws made against marriage of priests." Section 3 provides that it shall not "give any liberty to any person to marry without asking in the church, or without any ceremony being appointed by the order prescribed and set forth in the book intituled "_The Book of Common Prayer, and administration of the Sacraments_, &c." Mary, of course, repealed this Act, and it was revived and made perpetual by 1 Jas. 1. c. 25, s. 50. It was only after the Council of Trent, that the offices of the Church were considered indispensable, for that Council decreed that a priest, and two witnesses were necessary for the proper celebration of the Nuptial tie. Still, the law of England, like the law of Scotland, allowed the taking of a woman as wife before witnesses, and acknowledging her position, which constituted at common law a good and lawful marriage, which could not be annulled by the Ecclesiastical Court. That many such took place among the Puritans and Sectarians of the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth is undoubted, for it needed an Act of Parliament (12 Chas. II. c. 33) to render such marriages legal. This enacted "That all marriages had, or solemnized, in any of his Majesty's dominions since the first day of _May_, in the year of our Lord, one thousand six hundred forty and two, before any justice of the Peace, or reputed justice of the Peace of _England_, or _Wales_, or other his Majesty's dominions,... shall be, and shall be adjudged, esteemed, and taken to be, and to have been of the same, and no other force or effect, as if such marriages had been had, and solemnized, according to the rites and ceremonies established, or used in the Church or kingdom of _England_; any law, custom, or usage to the contrary thereof notwithstanding."