I must here note that in 1844, in the case of _The Queen against Millis_, the House of Lords _seemed_ to decide that there could not have been a valid marriage in England, even before Lord Hardwicke’s Act, which in 1753 completely changed the law, in the absence of an ordained ecclesiastic. The arguments and the judgment fill the half of one of Clark and Finnelly’s bulky volumes, and never was matter more thoroughly threshed, and winnowed, and garnered. The House was equally divided; and the opinion of the Irish Court of Queen’s Bench, which maintained the necessity of the priest’s presence, was affirmed. The real explanation, I think, is that, though the old canon law and the old common law were as I have stated, yet English folk had got so much into the habit of calling in the Parson that his presence came to be regarded as essential. The parties, even when they disobeyed the church by leaving undone much they were ordered to do, would still have “something religious” about the ceremony. In 1563 the Council of Trent declared such marriages invalid as were not duly celebrated in church; but Elizabeth’s reign was already five years gone, both England and Scotland had broken decisively with the old faith, and the Council’s decrees had no force here. In England both church and state kept tinkering the Marriage Laws. In 1603 the Convocation for the Province of Canterbury declared that no minister shall solemnise matrimony without banns or licence upon pain of suspension for three years. Also, all marriages were to be in the parish church between eight and twelve in the forenoon. Nothing so far affected the validity of the business; and “clandestine marriages,” as they were called, became frequent. In 1695, an Act of William III. fined the Parson who assisted at such couplings one hundred pounds for the first offence, and for the second suspended him for three years. This enactment was followed almost immediately by another, which mulcted the clergyman who celebrated or permitted any such marriage in his church as well as the bridegroom and the clerk. The main object of this legislation was to prevent the loss of duties payable upon regularly performed marriages; but it strengthened ecclesiastical discipline.