16() UNIVERSALITY OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



Marriage by consent of both parties. In French 

 civil marriages of the present day, traces remain of 

 the two other forms of marriage by common con- 

 sent which preceded it. 



(a) The marriage ~by simple agreement, which held 

 good throughout Christian Europe until the Council 

 of Trent, is still valid in Scotland. Gretna Green 

 marriages (Gretna Green being a village situated on 

 the Border, near Carlisle) were notorious. In ac- 

 cordance with an old custom, the blacksmith of 

 Gretna Green kept the register of these marriages, 

 and the union was contracted in his presence. 1 



After the Council of Trent, marriages in facie 

 Ecclesice came to be alone recognized by the 

 Church : all marriage to be valid must be sanc- 

 tioned (if not actually celebrated) by the parish 

 priest of one contracting party, in the presence of 

 one or more witnesses. The legislation of the 

 Council of Trent became French law after the 

 Ordinance of Blois in 1574, until the law was 

 revised in September 1792, when civil marriage 

 was definitely established in France. 



1 Viollct, Histoire du droit civil franqais, p. 428. 



"These marriages, about which everyone has heard, were not 

 an invention of Scotch law. Like most legal curiosities, they 

 find an explanation in survival from a former condition of 

 things, persisting in a singularly original and peculiar form. 



"The blacksmith and his register were not necessary in them- 

 selves to contract a marriage ; they merely constituted evidence 

 that it had taken place. In 1804 a Scotch man and woman 

 merely declared themselves man and wife in writing, and in 

 1811 they were recognized as legally married by Scotch law." 



