What were the Marriage practices in 1700 UK?
Could a couple have an illegit child baptised in the church? (2) Could that same couple get married in that parish church two years later?
This would be taking place in St. James, Islington, Clerkenwell, Middlesex 1760.
Answers
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I have seen this before. An unmarried couple take their child to a different parish and get the child christened. I guess this was their only option in your example.
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Well if this is the same family they had a daughter baptized in 1760, married in 1762, had another daughter in 1763, and a son in 1767. Looks strange but wouldn't surprise me in today's world, not so sure about 18th century. Thanks for your thoughts.
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Illegitimate children can be baptised, they are usually noted as such (baseborn or illegitimate child of Mary Jones) Sometime they mention the reputed father's name.
If they lived in a parish and wanted to get married they would have to get married in the parish one or both parties lived in. Even if that happened to be where the mother had her out of wedlock child baptised. I'm sure everyone in the parish knew what had happened.
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Occasionally the "sweetheart" leaves for work before the pregnancy is known. Examples are military, some fishermen, a work opportunity many counties distant or abroad. Most working class had limited literacy skills.
A child may be baseborn when the father is known but absent and a marriage has not yet occurred.
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Thanks that makes sense. You answered my question about could they still get married there. If their marriage license states both the husband and wife are from the same parish is it possible that one of them had been raised in a nearby parish not really the same parish?
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Not only can illegitimate children be baptised, they should be baptised. However, they should also be described in some fashion as illegitimate / base-born, etc. Presenting the parents as married would be naughty!
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Sometimes, as a test to see if the bride-to-be could bear children (often, but not always, to ensure heirship to the eldest son to pass land--even leased land--down in the family), some couples produced off-spring out of wedlock. It happened with some frequency in most societies, where the marriage came well after the first child born to a couple.
So it's a wise search strategy when seeking to discover all children born to any and all ancestral couples to thoroughly search the parish registers for a possible missing child (or more) prior to a known wedding date just to ensure you've identified all of the children born to a mother. This requires, of course, to learn the maiden surname of the mother and then search parish registers for christenings/baptisms under both her (the mother's) maiden name and the father's surname. Some reading and testing this key strategy, will subsequently discover one or more heretofore undetected children born under these types of circumstances. And further more, and this will sound a bit out of the ordinary, but it's been my personal experience that once all or as many as possible of the children have been successfully identified for an ancestral couple, that brick walls have a tendency to come tumbling down and progress is made on finding next-generation ancestry...
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Wow, I can't believe they would do this, as this would not be what the church or society taught.
From what you say, they weren't waiting for a pregnancy, they were waiting for a baby, likely a healthy baby boy.
I've always checked for pre marriage children, I will look more carefully at couple with these children.
And if the baby was a girl.....perhaps the father would try again? With the same mother or a new one?
What a risk for the woman if she didn't meet the requirements of the man or his family.
I learned recently of a son born to a single mother he had a bio dad who was an apprentice, so the apprentice had a choice, keep apprenticing, or quit and get married. He chose to keep apprenticing and the mother married someone else later on.
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I have to say that the idea of, what you might flippantly call "Try before you buy...", is well known - but like many "well known facts", there may be less to it than some think. One of the noted authorities on marriage laws in England and Wales is Professor Rebecca Probert and in one of her books ("Marriage Law for Genealogists"), she investigated an area or two in detail, looking at the relative timing of baptisms and marriages, and found very little evidence for "try before you buy". As suggested, the Church was very much against illegitimacy (fornication was a sin and people could be tried before the Church courts - though by the 1770s, this becomes rare) and civil authorities (Overseers of the Poor Law, etc) could chase errant fathers for support payments. This hardly lines up with the idea that this happened on a general basis or even general in a specific area.
Of course illegitimacy happened and advice to look beforehand is sound - but I suggest that it's very much individuals only, who were running risks of major disapproval.
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