Ancestry puts London marriage licences online

The latest genealogical information put online by Ancestry.co.uk are the London Marriage Licences 1521-1896.

More than 25,000 weddings spanning over 350 years are documented in this latest Ancestry collection to be digitised; although many people may be surprised to find that some of their ancestors may never have been legally married.

This is because until the Marriage Act of 1753, ‘legal’ marriages were generally the preserve of the aristocracy - as well as being very different to the traditional marriage of today.

Marriage licences were made obligatory under the Act in order to abolish the so-called ‘common law’ marriages. These were rife in Britain’s slums and inner cities during the Restoration period. Usually performed by bogus priests, it meant that bigamy, under-age marriage and secret ceremonies were commonplace.

Although the changes to the law saw a flood of church marriages, few official documents remain. Before 1837, clergymen weren’t obliged to keep certificates so they were often lost or destroyed. Nor was it standard practice to give copies to the bride and groom or the state; making originals extremely rare.

In the collection, surviving records of famous names from British history include the marriages of Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1676; artist William Hogarth to Jane Thornhill in 1728 and Thomas Fairfax, the commander-in-chief of the parliamentary army who married in 1637.

The collection also shows the stark differences between a typical 18th century wedding and today’s ‘traditional’ wedding ceremony.

Typically traditional bridal gowns were multi-coloured or blue; early wedding cakes, known as ‘bride’s pies’, were made of savoury meat or sweet mince and contained a glass ring. Instead of throwing the bridal bouquet, tradition had it that the lady who found the ring would be the next to be married.

Olivier Van Calster, Ancestry.co.uk’s managing director said: “The London Marriage Licences collection illustrates the change from an unregulated and chaotic marriage system to the ordered, controlled and traditional arrangement we have today.

“These records will be of great value to anyone interested in or researching their family history as they contain such rich information and stretch far back beyond early UK census records.”