, the direct effect was
small. It might, indeed, have been supposed that the disappearance of
the sacramental idea of marriage entertained by the Roman Church would
have ushered in the greater freedom of divorce which had been associated
with marriage regarded as a civil contract. And to some extent this was
the case. It was for some time supposed that the sentences of divorce
pronounced by the ecclesiastical courts acquired the effect of allowing
remarriage, and such divorces were in some cases granted. In _Lord
Northampton's_ case in the reign of Edward VI. the delegates pronounced
in favour of a second marriage after a divorce _a mensa et thoro_. It
was, however, finally decided in _Foljambe's_ case, in the 44th year of
Elizabeth, that a marriage validly contracted could not be dissolved for
any cause. But the growing sense of the right to a complete divorce for
adequate cause, when no longer any religious law to the contrary could
be validly asserted, in time compelled the discovery of a remedy. The
commission appointed by Henry VIII. and Edward VI. to reform the
ecclesiastical law drew up the elaborate report known as the
_Reformatio Legum_, and in this they recommended that divorces _a mensa
et thoro_ should be abolished, and in their place complete divorce
allowed for the causes of adultery, desertion and cruelty. These
proposals, however, never became law. In 1669 a private act of
parliament was granted in the case of Lord de Roos, and this was
followed by another in the case of the duke of Norfolk in 1692. Such
acts were, however, rare until the accession of the House of Hanover,
only five acts passing before that period. Afterwards their number
considerably increased. Between 1715 and 1775 there were sixty such
acts, in the next twenty-five years there were seventy-four, and between
1800 and 1850 there were ninety. In 1829 alone there were seven, and in
1830 nine.

The jurisdiction thus assumed by parliament to grant absolute divorces
was exercised with great care. The case was fully investigated before a
committee of the House of Lords, and not only was the substance of
justice so secured, but the House of Lords further required that
application to parliament should be preceded by a successful suit in the
ecclesiastical courts resulting in a decree of divorce _a mensa et
thoro_, and in the case of a husband being the applicant, a successful
action at common law and the recovery of damages against the paramour