Marriage Fines
In the feudal times, the lord might object to the marriage of a bondman’s daughter with a stranger, even of her own condition; and by marriage with a freeman she became free during coverture, if not free for ever; this and the lord’s approval of her marriage being purchasable by fine. At Swincombe, in Oxfordshire, the bondman could not get a husband for his daughter, and could not take to himself a wife, without the lord’s permission.
Although a fine used to be paid by a freeman in the occupation of bond-land, on the marriage of his daughter, there was no more degradation in such a fine than there now is in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s charge for a marriage-licence. At Southfleet, Friendsbury, Wouldham, and other places in their neighbourhood, a tenant who wished to give his daughter in marriage had to announce the marriage to the warden or bailiff of the village, and to invite him to the wedding; the girl could not be married to any one out of the manor without the lord’s good-will; an heiress could not be married even to a neighbour without the lord’s consent. A tenant at Headington, Oxon, paid no fine on the marriage of his daughter within the manor—he paid two shillings for leave to give her in marriage to a stranger; but we are told that payment was on account of the chattels which might be removed out of the manor with her. When we consider the lord of a manor to be the patron and protector of all within it, there seems to be nothing very offensive in this arrogation of assent to the marriage of his tenant’s daughter.