Family Lessons 140: Church Weddings

My 10x great-grandparents, Roger Taylor and Elizabeth Baynes, married at St Alkelda’s Church at Giggleswick, above, in the month of September, 1655. There is nothing remarkable about that, other than the fact that church weddings had been banned under the puritan Commonwealth. To avoid ‘popish superstitions’, weddings were to be performed by either Justices of the Peace (JPs) in secular buildings rather than by clergy in churches, or in a private home by a number of witnesses to the contract, with the JPs being notified the day following. There is evidence that many ordinary people apart from the most zealous puritans preferred the traditional locations for their weddings, and John and Elizabeth were likely among them. On the other hand, North Yorkshire was a long way from the centres of hot and radical puritanism, such as south Lancashire, East Anglia and London. The local JPs might have viewed the prospects of marrying every amorous young couple in their districts with disrelish, either on grounds of principle or existing workloads. So this church wedding might have been more typical of the distant, less godly North, or, the pair might just have been naturally conservative in matters of religion. Roger’s farmhouse at Routster on Green Lane had been the family home since at least the time of his grandfather (another Roger Taylor, born 1567) and probably his father, Henry Taylor, after whom the records go silent. Therefore, the family had probably married at St Alkelda’s church for just as long, and no ‘saints’ or ‘godly firebrands’ of London were going to put a stop for this.

Although I think weddings should be official and legally recognised, non-religious and non-Christian marriage ceremonies are just as valid as anything performed in a church by a parson or pastor. It is fitting for Christian couples to be married amidst genuine worship and fervent prayer, but the marriages of unbelievers (or even believers) before a registrar is just as honoured and approved by God. Therefore, those marriages should also be respected and honoured by the spouses.

I should very much love to have been at Roger and Elizabeth’s wedding: the historical period, the fashions, the politics and ancestry would have made it truly fascinating. Today, it is not the prevalence of civil ceremonies which trouble me, but the lack of ceremonies at all, as though simply 'moving in' and exercising conjugal relations were good enough. They aren't.

Marriage is honourable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4