Kindred and Affinity

Matthew Parker was a pious, scholarly divine who took unto himself a spouse in 1547, when it was still illegal for clergymen of the Church of England to marry.* In 1560, as Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker was set to draw up a list of marriage prohibitions. The resultant Table of Kindred and Affinity, Wherein Whosoever Are Related are Forbidden in Scripture and Our Laws to Marry Together stands prominently in every Anglican church in England to this day (see cut).

Since 1907, successive Acts of Parliament have cut Archbishop Parker's prohibitions from 30 to 20. First to fall was No. 17, ended by the Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act. But the Church of England held fast, continued to frown on a woman who married her brother's daughter's husband or a man who married his wife's father's sister. Though these three marriages and seven others of their ilk are now legally permissible in England, many a clergyman has refused to perform them, has solemnly shown the Parker table to awestruck applicants.

Suave Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop Parker's present successor, is a bachelor. But he has an interest in matters matrimonial--as he showed during Edward VIII's abdication crisis in December 1936. Last week His Grace's Commission on Kindred and Affinity as Impediments to Marriage handed him a report. It recommended that the Church henceforth give its blessing to a man marrying his: father's brother's wife, wife's father's sister, wife's mother's sister, wife's sister, brother's wife, mother's brother's wife, brother's son's wife, sister's son's wife, wife's brother's daughter, wife's sister's daughter. If the report is accepted, the Church of England will once more be in line with civil law. The commission still urged "grave biological and some other objections to marriage between first cousins." quoted famed Biometrist J. B. S. Haldane, who testified that if first-cousin marriages were prohibited, England would have fewer mental defectives, deaf-mutes, still-born children.

* Under Edward VI, shortly afterwards, Parliament and Convocation legalized clerical marriage.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.