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Hands across the Water: The Making and Breaking of Marriage between Dutch and Scots in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Rab Houston  and
Manon van der Heijden
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Extract

At the time of the Reformation in the 1560s Scotland and the Netherlands already had long-established commercial links. Scots soldiers fought in the wars that ravaged the Low Countries and much of northern Europe in the two centuries after Calvinism gained a foothold. Goods, people, and ideas were readily exchanged in the North Sea basin. With the foundation in 1575 of the avowedly Protestant University of Leiden, academic and intellectual intercourse were added to trading ties. By the mid-seventeenth century Leiden had an international reputation for legal and medical education. Expatriate Protestant churches were established in the early seventeenth century, notably the Scots kirk, Rotterdam. There were nineteen English and Scottish religious communities in the Dutch Republic by the end of the seventeenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Fall 1997 , pp. 215 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1997

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43. Macfarlane, Marriage and Love, 127; Stone, Road to Divorce, 125.

44. De Groot, Inleidinge, vol. 1,5, 17. Manon van cler Heijden has evidence from seventeenth-century Rotterdam to substantiate the fact that minor children could sometimes marry without consent, van der Heijden, “Secular and Ecclesiastical Marriage Control,” 56.

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50. SRO CC8/6/17, doc. 10. Traditionally, women in Scotland (and Holland) had retained their maiden name after marriage, though in eighteenth-century Scottish cities widows and some married women began to follow the English style of taking their husband's surname.

51. Ibid., doc. 18.

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54. SRO CH2/121/7, p. 229.

55. SRO JC7/18.

56. SRO CH2/122/11b, f. 204v.

57. Smout, “Scottish marriage,” 234.

58. See ibid., 207, on parental fears.

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60. Topham, Letters, 94. Leith was Edinburgh's port, then a separate town to the north of the city proper.

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63. SRO JC6/14. Personal clothes and jewelry were classed in law as “paraphernalia” and therefore beyond the reach that husbands had over most of their wives’ other moveable property.

64. SRO CH2/121/11, p. 429.

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66. SRO CC8/6/15.

67. SRO JC7/28, p. 87.

68. Ibid., pp. 86-164.

69. SRO CC8/6/9.

70. SRO CC8/6/14.

71. SRO CS234/E/1/10; Ewen, Lorna, “Debtors, Imprisonment and the Privilege of Girth,” in Perspectives in Scottish Social History, ed. Leneman, Leah (Aberdeen, 1988), 53–68Google Scholar; Hannah, Hugh, “The Sanctuary of Holyrood,” Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 15 (1927): 55–98Google Scholar.

72. Stott, “Incorporation of Surgeons,” 257.

73. SRO CC8/5/9, 127.

74. SRO CC8/6/18, doc. 16.

75. Edinburgh City Archives, annuity tax 1751; Gilhooley, James, A Directory of Edinburgh in 1752 (Edinburgh, 1989)Google Scholar; Houston, Social Change, 131. Dr. George Young lived in the “second bounds.” It and the adjacent third bounds had easily the highest average wealth of the eight into which the city was divided for taxation purposes.

76. Stott, “Incorporation of Surgeons,” 256-57.

77. SRO CC8/6/18.

78. Gemeente Archief Leyden, Doopregister Waalse kerk te Leyden, nr. 8.

79. SRO CC8/6/17, docs. 14, 15.

80. Houston, “The Consistory of the Scots Kirk, Rotterdam.” The Waalse kerk in contemporary Rotterdam was deemed to be rather deftig or up-market.

81. SRO CC8/6/18. doc. 16.

82. SRO CC8/6/17, doc. 13.

83. Smith, “Sexual Mores,” 50. On the earlier law, see James D. Scanlan, “Husband and Wife: Pre-Reformation Canon Law of Marriage …“in An Introduction to Scottish Legal History, 69-81; Guthrie, Charles J., “The History of Divorce in Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review 8 (1910): 39–52.Google Scholar

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86. The Echtregelement of 1656 had been enacted by the States General but only covered the Generaliteitslanden or southern parts of the Dutch Republic. See Groenewegen, Simon van, “Introduction,” in Groot, Hugo de, Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche rechtsgeleerdheid (Amsterdam: Jan Boom, 1738), 14Google Scholar; van Apeldoorn, Geschiedenis, 183.

87. van der Heijden, “Secular and Ecclesiastical Marriage Control,” 32-33. According to Apeldoorn deserted spouses could take legal action in order to force their husband or wife to re-turn to their homes. See Geschiedenis, 195-96. See also Koorn, Florence, “Illegitimiteit en eergevoel. Ongehuwde moeders in Twente in de achttiende eeuw,” Vrouwenlevens. Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis, 1500-1850 8 (1987): 74–99Google Scholar.

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89. Groenendijk, De nadere reformatie, 14-18. Exchange of ideas among Protestant moralists of the North Sea basin was, of course, extensive.

90. van der Heijden, “Secular and Ecclesiastical Marriage Control,” 32.

91. Joor, Johan, “Echtscheiding en scheiding van tafel en bed in Alkmaar in de periode 1700-1810” Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 3 (1985): 197–230Google Scholar; Haks, Huwelijk en gezin, 175-84.

92. As noted by Bankton, Lord in An Institute of the Laws of Scotland in Civil Rights, with Observations upon the Agreement or Diversity between Them and the Laws of England, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1751), 149–50Google Scholar. Bankton also discussed Scottish marriage (105-38) and divorce (138-41). See also Macfarlane, Marriage and Love, 224-25; Phillips, Roderick, Untying the Knot. A Short History of Divorce (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; Smith, “Sexual Mores,” 50. In England prior to 1858 no act of Parliament ever gave a divorce on the grounds of the husband's adultery.

93. In contrast with England, divorce actions were brought before the Commissary Court as often by women as by men. The middling (mostly professional) classes are also better represented than in England where most divorces were sought by the elites. Marshall, Rosalind K., Virgins and Viragos. A History of Women in Scotland from 1080 to 1980 (London, 1983), 97, 196-97, 201.Google Scholar

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95. Marshall, Virgins, 196. Perhaps there were more unhappy partners in the age of rapid population growth after 1770, but it may also be that legal changes were making it easier to secure a divorce. A similar trend is evident in England and Holland.

96. SRO CC8/6/18. The Dutch originals have all but disintegrated through damp. The translations are not included with the other loose papers.

97. SRO CC8/5/9, 113-273.

98. This was the most common ground for divorce in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Holland. Haks, Huwelijk. 208.

99. SRO CC8/5/9, 133-34.

100. Ireland, “Divorce,” 96.

101. G. Campbell H. Paton, “Husband and Wife: Property Rights and Relationships,” in An Introduction to Scottish Legal History, 99-115 at 110. Marshall, Virgins, 96, explains the complex procedure and there is an example in Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 71-72. This course of action would also imply that she was aware of the 1573 statute's provisions and that she regarded it as a viable option since her husband was in England or Ireland at the time. Furthermore, the rights of a deserted wife to material restitution were a subject of legal debate.

102. Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 81.

103. SRO CC8/5/9, 125, 134-36; Ireland, “Divorce,” 95; Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 97.

104. SRO CC8/5/9, 202-36; Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 108-9, outlines the legal precedent created. The commission to the magistrates of Leiden (December 1749) is recorded in O.R.A. Leiden, “Notulen vergadering Schout en Schepenen 1745, nr. 150-8.” The list of Leiden witnesses (March 1750) is in Dingboek V (1746-55), ff. 126-30.

105. Deposition SRO CC8/5/9, 249-51. The baptismal certificate is transcribed at 136.

106. SRO CC8/5/9, 243-44.

107. Ibid., 265-68.

108. Ibid., 264-65.

109. Stone, Uncertain Unions, 5.

110. Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 54-55.

111. On the distinction between the branches of the medical profession, see Dingwall, Edinburgh, 230-39. There were thirty-five master surgeons working in Edinburgh in 1752 and at least twenty-six physicians. Ibid., 233, 238.

112. Meikle, Henry W., “An Edinburgh Diary,” Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 27 (1949): 112–13Google Scholar. The formal booking of Edinburgh youths was rarer than that of young men coming in from outside the city. It may also be that George senior gave his son his early training.

113. SRO CC8/5/9, 132; Cameron, Charles A., History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (Dublin, 1886)Google Scholar.

114. SRO CC8/5/9, 114. In being married and divorced young, the couple followed a pattern discovered in late eighteenth-century France. There, some 20 percent of women were married before age twenty-one but 40 percent of those petitioning for a divorce under the “liberalised” 1792 laws on marital dissolution had been married before that age. See Phillips, Untying the Knot, 79. The average marriage that ended in a divorce before the Commissary Court of Edinburgh during the eighteenth century lasted eleven to twelve years. Marshall, Virgins, 196.

115. SRO CC8/5/9, 118. See Guthrie, “The History of Divorce in Scotland,” 51, for the notional constraints on remarriage of the parties.

116. Paton, “Husband and Wife,” 110; Walton, Consistorial Decisions, 72-73.

117. SRO CC8/5/9, 249-55.

118. Ibid., 126.

119. Houlbrooke, English Family, 69.

120. Smout, “Scottish marriage,” 213-14.

121. Ibid., 214-15.

122. There is evidence that some fathers were prepared to take a gentler line with their children than did George Young. Peter A. G. Monro, ed., “The Professor's Daughter. An Essay on Female Conduct by Alexander Monro (primus),” Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 26. Supplement 2 (1996): 92 and passim seems to modern readers a model of moderation and sensitivity.