RT Review
T1 Wives and mistresses in eighteenth-century Scotland
JF Women's history review
VO 8
IS 4
SP 671
OP 692
A1 Leneman, Leah 1944-1999
LA English
YR 1999
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1876731516
AB Throughout the eighteenth century and beyond, under Scottish law mutual consent was the only thing required to constitute an irregular but legally binding marriage. If either party denied that a marriage existed it was open to the other to raise a declarator of marriage action before Edinburgh Commissary Court and provide evidence – for example, letters, or verbal acknowledgements – which would enable the court to decree that a legal marriage existed. Witnesses' perceptions of disputed relationships emerge from the records. Less than a third of the women whose cases were contested succeeded in proving a marriage, and accounts of cases in which women were decreed to be wives and those in which they were decreed to be mistresses reveal what a fine line there was between the two.
K1 Rezension
DO 10.1080/09612029900200224