Genealogy Chat

You can't avoid marrying in the parish church at this period. If you don't think your people were particularly wealthy, then they are likely to be dissenters. In general, nonconformists tend not to be the poor (who by necessity adopt the religion of their employers) nor the rich. Look to see whether the marriage allegations have survived. These can detail age, occupation as well as parish and sometimes give the name of the bondsman too.

Nell, Thanks for your reply. However the individuals in question did marry in their parish church (well the wife's parish) so I guess that wasn't the reason. I wondered whether they might have been some sort of extreme dissenters and wanted to avoid having banns read - but as I understand it they would still have had to marry in the parish church at that period so I don't really see how a special license would help.

Nina No, I can't. I am not sure about pre-1837 civil registration rules & regs, but I found this on clara.net, regarding post-1837 marriage certs: '(5) 'by special licence' which can only be found in a Church of England marriage. The licence has been issued by the Archbishop not the Bishop. I believe that this would allow the couple to get married in a church which is not the usual parish church for either of them but I am not sure of this.' Perhaps this applied pre-1837 too and maybe there was some strong reason why they didn't want to/couldn't marry in their usual parish church. nell

Can anyone suggest reasons why all the members of a family living in Kent in the late 1700's would have married by Special License (they were not particularly wealthy or anything).