Cranmer's "Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum" contains some of the best sense about divorce law reform that I have ever read. Its proposals are moderate, sensible and in harmony with the religious ideas of his day, which seem to have been broader and more rational than those of to-day. Had Edward VI. lived a little longer Cranmer's treatise would have been enacted as the statute law of the country. It is pitiful to think of the four hundred years of misery and injustice under which the citizens of this country have suffered in matters relating to divorce owing to a change of Government in 1553. The Scots did better out of the Reformation and have had a more or less satisfactory divorce law in working order since that date. Shortly, the propositions that Cranmer proposed were these, and they will be found, I think, to run parallel with the views of the common-sense citizen of to-day. He laid down the command that no husband or wife may abandon the other of his or her own free will and, in order that this might be a practical ideal, he set down the causes for which the Courts were to grant relief. Divorce was allowed for adultery, unless both parties were guilty; desertion; the unduly protracted absence of the husband; or the deadly hostility of the parties. Prolonged ill-treatment of the wife gave her a right to divorce, but even here, as long as there was any hope of improvement, the duty of the ecclesiastical judge was to reason with the husband and make him give bail for good behaviour. Only in the last resort must "she on her part be helped by the remedy of divorce." Great stress is laid throughout the treatise on the desirability of reconciliation. "Since in matrimony there is the closest possible union and the highest degree of love that can be imagined, we earnestly desire that the innocent party should forgive the guilty and take him back again should there seem to be any reasonable hope of a better way of life." Practical effect was to be given to this principle by the Court before proceeding to divorce. Cranmer was entirely at one with the more advanced thought of to-day in his detestation of "separation orders." Separation without divorce was, he realised, an overture to immorality.