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stood that a permission or tacit sanction of polygamy must be assumed, as part of the common law of the community.
Say, then, that the enactments in question stood thus: —
None to intermarry with those near of kin.§ 1. Be it enacted, that none shall inter-marry with any related to them, whether by blood relationship or by affinity, within the following degrees, as set forth in the annexed schedule:—
Schedule of Prohibited Degrees.(Then suppose Archbishop Parker's Table of Prohibited Degrees here annexed as the Prohibited schedule.)
The Act would then continue:—
Brother to marry deceased Brother's Wife to raise up seed unto his Brother.§ 2. Provided always, that, in reference to the above prohibition of the brother taking his brother's widow, it shall yet be lawful, authorized and required (under penalty of a stigma of disgrace, to be attached to him who fails in compliance), that in the case of a man's brother dying childless, in order to prevent the extinction of a house in Israel, his brother shall take the deceased brother's wife, and raise up seed unto his brother; and, therefore, that the first-born child of such union shall succeed in the name of the brother who is dead, and be accounted and taken by the law of this land as not of the family of the second brother, but of the first, and shall be the heir, both in name and possessions, of that deceased brother, whose widow's child he is.
But none to take a wife to her sister, beside the other in her life-time.§ 3. But, inasmuch as in the case of two brothers having married two sisters, the enactment of the preceding section might, and, in the event of one brother dying childless, would, authorize and require a man to take to wife two sisters, his brother's widow being in such case his own wife's sister, and whereas, if his own wife should at such time be alive, this might lead to rivalry and vexation, be it further enacted, that nothing herein enacted, in the previous section
