IV, That Lord Lyndhurst's Act did not declare any then existing incestuous marriage to be good, but prevented any suit in the Ecclesiastical Court for declaring void such existing marriage, whether the parents were living or not; but as to any future incestuous marriage, declared it void, and so allowed it to be set aside after the death of the parents.
Fortunately, I am enabled thus to state the law without fear of contradiction, on the authority of the very recent case of Fenton v. Livingstone, decided by the House of Lords in July, 1859, and reported in the "Jurist" of the 3rd December, 1859.
Our opponents frequently represent the Act of 1835, commonly called Lord Lyndhm-st's Act, as that which first invalidated the marriages in question, saying, that till then they were only voidable[1]. I stated in the House of Commons ten years ago that this was a gross mistake, that such marriages were absolutely invalid at all times by our law, and from the time of Henry VIII. had been so dealt with by statute. The mistake arose in the manner described by Lord Brougham in moving the judgment of the House of Lords in Fenton v. Livingstone. There a Scot domiciled in England, had in the year 1808 (long before Lord Lyndhurst's Act)
- ↑ I observed that two of our more respectable papers, the "Globe" and "Daily News," in commenting on the proceedings at Willis's Rooms, fell into this common blunder, and much of their reasoning was built on this false assumption.
