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Visit our Streaming Guide. The Clandestine Marriage A period movie, set around an English country house whose owners want to arrange a marriage of convenience between their elder daughter and an aristocratic heir of a hard-up noble family. The planned marriage suffers a last-minute upset when the would-be husband switches affections to the bride's sister.
Imagine, if you can, an early 18th century English audience not in the mood for Shakespeare, the sitting Poet Laureate, or anything so heavy. Cricket match is rained out and Bedlam is closed for renovation. These folk just want to stroll down to the local corner playhouse on half-price Wednesday, pick up a cheap bottle of wine and some greasy chips and have a nice chortle, cahoot, yuk, etc.
They would be splendidly satisfied if the The Clandestine Marriage were playing that evening.
The English Bride: Secret Unions
No long soliloquies, preachy speeches or inside jokes. No heroes or sympathetic characters.
It was binding since it was conducted by a clergyman, following the ritual prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. But it could be irregular in a number of ways, the primary cause being that it was done in secret rather than in public. The second section examines the advantages which increased the demand for clandestine marriage, the primary one being secrecy. A key group who catered to such demand was surrogates authorised to issue marriage licenses, explained in the third section.
The fourth section looks at the parliamentary legislation between and , where more than ten bills were introduced in order to stop the clandestine marriage business.
Clandestine Marriage
The fifth section examines Fleet marriages between and The sixth section explores the demands for reform. Fleet marriage , laity , clergy , clandestine marriage , parliamentary legislation , secrecy , surrogates , secret marriage. Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Soon after the case was settled, Elizabeth was married to a wealthy gentleman of her class. But she was lucky that she was able to marry so well after this act of indiscretion.
Other ladies were not so lucky.
- I Remember Daniel Brown.
- Frida Kahlo (The Great Hispanic Heritage).
- The Clandestine Marriage.
This next story of clandestine marriage will serve to warn all young ladies of the dangers of succumbing to the sly thief of our virtue: In the first decade of our century a Mr. John Harcourt and a Miss Frances Hunt both from families of wealth in Norfolk were supposedly privately married by their friend Mr. Baispoole in that man's private residence while the two young people were visiting.
After this ceremony, the two began sleeping together, and made no effort to hide it from other guests, even Frances's mother. When this visit ended, John accompanied Elizabeth to her mother's estate, where they continued to sleep together openly, and treated each other as man and wife. The Hunts did not have enough evidence to prove John's clandestine marriage to Frances. After this affair, Frances was not able to find a suitable husband. Her reputation was already tarnished.
John had had his fill of illicit sex.