Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The aim of the project was to transcribe and analyse the records of all declarator of marriage and declarator of freedom cases in the Edinburgh Commissary Court between 1684, when a register of extracted decreets began to be kept, and 1830, when the court was wound up and its functions transferred to the Court of Session.

Marriage in Scotland could be 'regular' (a ceremony in church after the proclamation of the banns) or 'irregular', the latter being as legally binding as the former. An irregular marriage could be constituted in three ways: <i>per verba de praesenti</i> (a mutual agreement to marry at that moment), <i>per verba de futuro subsequente copula</i> (a promise to marry in the future followed by sexual intercourse), and 'habit and repute' (cohabiting in such a way as to imply that mutual consent to marriage had been given). As witnesses were not required, the scope for equivocation, not to mention outright fraud, was great, and litigation was an inevitable result. Until 1830 the Edinburgh Commissary Court was the only one in Scotland that could declare a marriage legally valid, though litigants had the right of appeal to the Court of Session and, after 1707, to the House of Lords. Two types of actions could be raised: a declarator of marriage to prove a marriage and a declarator of freedom and putting to silence to disprove a marriage.
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The data consist of transcriptions of the gist of all declarator of marriage and declarator of freedom cases between 1684 and 1830 in the process papers and registers of decreets of the Edinburgh Commissary Court (or, where the papers were missing, in printed Session Papers in the Signet Library).

There are 506 declarator of marriage and declarator of freedom cases, plus 24 cases of legitimacy and bastardy, raised when one or both parents were dead.