event clandestine marriages, that is, marriages which
were not made by a priest or in church. These marriages were common and
they were mischievous because not to be proved. They made descent and
inheritance uncertain when the parties belonged to families of property
and rank. In form, the decrees of Trent provided for publicity. Marriage
was to be celebrated in church, by the parish priest, and before two
witnesses. This action was not in pursuance of a change in the mores. It
was a specific device of leading churchmen to accomplish an object. In
view of the course of the mores, it may be doubted if any effect ought
to be attributed to the decrees of Trent for their immediate purpose,
but two effects have been produced which the churchmen probably did not
foresee. First, it became the law of the church that the consent of a
man and a woman, expressed in a church before the parish priest,
constituted a marriage without any voluntary participation of the
priest. The Huguenots in France, for more than a century, married
themselves in this way, a notary being employed to make a record and
certificate. Secondly, this law became the great engine of the church to
hold its children to their allegiance and prevent mixed marriages. To
win the consent of the parish priest to perform the ceremony the parties
must conform to church requirements,--confession and communion. The
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were occupied by struggles of
living men to regulate their interests in independence of these
restraints.

+437. Puritan marriage.+ The Puritan sects made marriage more secular,
as the Romish Church made it more ecclesiastical. Although they liked to
give a religious tone to all the acts of life, the Puritans took away
from marriage all religious character. It was performed by a civil
magistrate. Such was the rule in New England until the end of the
seventeenth century. However, there was, in this matter, an
inconsistency between the ruling ideas and the partisan position, and
the latter gave way. There has been a steady movement of the mores
throughout the Protestant world in the direction of giving to marriage a
religious character and sanction. It has become the rule that marriages
shall be performed by ministers of religion, and the custom of
celebrating them in religious buildings is extending. The authority and
example of the church of Rome have had nothing to do with this tendency.
They are not even known. It has bee