Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/210

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Son. Nay, Sir, I cannot tell what to say; if you will have it be so, it must be so; then I need not go indeed.

Upon this, the young Man yielded, and the Contracts being finished, they were married by Proxy, as great Men are; but the Consequence was, that he went to another Lady whom he loved, and had been in love with for some Years, and letting her know the Distress he was in, they consulted together what to do; and the result was this, they went together, and were privately married, and the Marriage fairly consummated, at least a Month before the other, and confirmed by good and substantial Witnesses.

But concealing it entirely from his Father, he wickedly went and married the other Lady too, in publick; by which indeed, he obtained an irreversible Settlement of his Father's Estate; so that when it came to a discovery, his Father could not take it away again, or disinherit him, the Estate being fully and fairly settled.

The Lady was indeed grosly injured and abused, for though she was fairly married, yet he was not; and upon a long, and to him, shameful Hearing, in a Court of Justice, the first Woman was declared his lawful Wife, only the other being left to take her Remedy against him at Law, which yet she would not do.

But the Consequence did not End here; for the Gentleman carried it so obligingly to her who he had not loved, and managed so dextrously, with her who he had both loved and married, that he brought them to consent to Poligamy, and they both lived with him, andthat