MORGANATIC MARRIAGES. THE ancient Romans had three forms of marriage-the confarreatio, the coemtio, and the usus. The first was a civil as well as religious contract, effected in the presence of a priest and of ten witnesses, and the offspring of such union were patrimi et matrimi. Less dignified and important in the eyes of the law was the coemtio. It was a merely civil engagement, completely binding, yet conferring not the honour of the patrimi and matrimi on the children. Still less honourable was the third form of matrimonial union, the usus. To constitute it binding in law, no forms or ceremonies whatever were required, but merely twelve months' uninterrupted cohabitation.

With the overturn of the mighty empire of the Cæsars, Roman laws and customs were diffused all over Europe, and while the confarreatio was adopted by nearly all the rest of Christendom, the coemtio got into fashion with German princes and nobles. The Roman secondary form of marriage was found to be extremely convenient to counteract the effects of the lex salica, and the absence of a law of primogeniture; and thus there arose, not long after the fall of Rome, first among the Lombards, and afterwards in the Teutonic empire north of the Alps, the matrimonium ad morgengabam, or, as subsequently called, ad morganaticam. The barbaric word was of Lombard origin; an allusion to the ancient German custom of making a present to the newly married wife the morning after the celebration of the nuptials-literally, a 'morning-gift.' According to this new form of matrimonial union, a revival of the coemtio, a German prince or great noble, when allying himself to a person of inferior rank, conferred only his hand, but not his title and fortune; or at least not more than was conveyed of the latter in the Morgengabe, the free gift on or after the wedding-day.

In Germany, about the fifteenth century, the matrimonia ad legem morganaticam contracta came to be greatly in fashion with younger sons of royal and princely houses. At the death of Duke William of Brunswick-Lüneburg, in 1400, his seven sons, among whom, according to custom, the land was to be divided, made a common agreement, to the effect that only one should take unto himself a princely consort, and the rest be content with morganatic spouses. The lot for a royal bride fell on the sixth son, Prince George, who accordingly married a high-born princess; while his

VOL. XVIL

PRICE 1d.

eldest brother remained a bachelor, and the others took refuge in vulgar alliances ad morgengabam. The fourth son, Prince Frederick, was fortunate in his choice, for, marrying the beautiful daughter of his private secretary, he had a numerous family, the descendants of which prosper to this day, as Barons von Lüneburg. As customs gradually become law, so did the system of morganatic marriages in course of time produce a royal code of matrimony, in which the marriage of princes with persons of lower rank, in other than morganatic form, was subjected to high penalties, particularly as respected the fair sex thus aspiring. The barbaric law was not unfrequently carried into execution. Duke Ernest of Bavaria, in the year 1416, had a beautiful girl, Agnes Bernauer of Straubingen, condemned to death, for daring to marry his son, Prince Albert; and all the tears and entreaties of his family did not save the fair young creature from the scaffold. The princely tyranny so created soon shewed its fatal effects on the morals of the high-born class itself. Flatterers argued that if crowned heads were allowed to adopt a particular form of marriage, not legal with subjects, they also were not bound to conform to the monogamic principles of the lower classes, but might marry in morganatic fashion over and above the ordinary way. The insidious advice was listened to with pleasure by several princes, who forthwith carried out the new doctrine by taking second wives ad legem morganaticam. Landgrave Philip of Hesse, one of the champions of the Reformation, was among the first to inaugurate the new fashion. This was before he had been made acquainted with the teachings of Luther; for he had no sooner become a Protestant than he began to feel scruples as to the righteousness of the second marriage. He accordingly consulted the most eminent of the new Reformers, soliciting them to state their opinion on the subject; and Dr Martin Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Corvinus, Adam, and Melander, replied to the appeal in the following curious declaration, dated July 1539, and signed by all of them:

'We cannot advise that the licence of marrying more wives than one be publicly introduced, and, as it were, ratified by law. If anything were allowed to be known on the subject, your Highness easily comprehends that it would be understood and received as a precept, whence much scandal and many difficulties would arise. Your Highness should be pleased to

consider the excessive scandal; that the enemies of the Gospel would exclaim that we are like the Anabaptists, who have adopted the practice of polygamy, and that the Evangelicals, as the Turks, allow themselves the licence of a plurality of wives. . . . . But in certain cases, there is room for dispensation. For example, if any one, detained captive in a foreign country, should there take to himself a second wife, for the good of his body and health. In this and like cases, we do not know by what reason a man could be condemned who marries an additional wife, with the advice of his pastor; not with the purpose of introducing a new law, but of satisfying his own necessity. Nevertheless, even in this case, the marriage ought to take place secretly, so that no scandal may arise.' The upshot was, that Landgrave Philip of Hesse kept his second morganatic spouse, and induced others to do the like.

The above strange document, the genuineness of which has been often doubted, but with no show of reason, was published for the first time in 1679, by the Elector Palatine, Charles Ludwig, son of the unhappy winter-king' of Bohemia, and brother of famous Prince Rupert. Even at this period, the custom of marrying a morganatic spouse, over and above the first wife, had not fallen entirely into abeyance; but being in bad repute, the elector thought of propitiating public opinion by an appeal to the Fathers of the Protestant Church. His Highness had been married for several years to the Princess Charlotte of Hesse, when he fell in love with her lady of honour, Maria von Degenfeld, and resolved to unite himself to her in morganatic fashion. He did so with considerable solemnity, notwithstanding the protest of his wife and her friends; but maintaining to the last that his second union was perfectly legal, according to the ancient laws of Germany in respect to princes. Maria von Degenfeld brought her morganatic husband fourteen children, nearly all boys, who bore the title of Counts of the Palatinate. But the son of the elector by Charlotte of Hesse succeeded to the throne without protest. Public opinion, meanwhile, had declared itself strongly against the open bigamy of Prince Charles Ludwig; and though morganatic marriages continued to flourish in Germany, his was the last involving a plurality of wives. Out of the empire, the custom was not more successful. Several Polish kings tried the practice of morganatic bigamy, but became very unpopular in consequence: and King Emmanuel of Portugal, who died in 1580, and left a son by a morganatic union, utterly failed in getting him adopted by the states of the realm.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the matrimonium ad legem morganaticam came to attract the attention of the highest legal authorities in Europe, owing to an attempt, on the part of a German prince, to destroy the civil consequences of such marriage-contract, and to give it the same value as that of the ordinary matrimonial union. Duke Anton Ulrich of Saxe-Meiningen, in the year 1711, united himself ad morganaticam to Elizabeth Schurman, the beautiful daughter of a captain in the army, a lady of superior education, and exquisite tenderness of mind. Becoming more and more enamoured of his young wife, the duke after a while determined to make her his full and real consort, so as to lift her up to the rank of duchess, and enable her and his children to succeed him on the throne. As a first step to this effect, he petitioned the emperor, Charles VI., to grant the title of Princess of the Empire to her; and while the appeal was pending, he made such arrangements as he thought would secure the succession to his children. Thereupon a violent storm arose in the princely world of Germany, every family protesting against the contemplated desecration of highborn privileges. Loudest in their protests were the princes of Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Anhalt, and Saxe-Eisenach, the nearest heirs to Duke Anton Ulrich, in the absence

of legitimate offspring; and seeing their advice to his Highness disregarded, they concluded a family pact among themselves, declaring all morganatic marriages ineffectual, even if changed into ordinary alliances, and pledging each other to oppose, if necessary by arms, the advent of any of the children of Elizabeth Schurman. Against this decidedly illegal pact, the duke appealed to the emperor, reiterating at the same time his demand for the grant of a title to his wife. The emperor wavered long in giving his reply. The most eminent lawyers of Europe were unanimous in asserting for Duke Anton Ulrich the full power to marry either princess or commoner, and to instal his consort in all the rights and privileges of a real wife, as well as to give the same rights to the children of such union. The sovereign princes of the empire, on the other side, energetically opposed this declaration of principle, stating it as the basis of princely law in matrimony that there should be Ebenbürtigkeit (equality of birth), and protesting against any infringement of this law as utterly pernícious to the welfare of the realm. The emperor, though leaning personally towards the cause of Duke Anton Ulrich, was forced at length to give way to the pressure exercised upon him by the body of electors and sovereign princes, and declared against the rights of succession of the duke's children.

The German kaiser having vanished from the world, and the empire being dead, this decision, though confirmed by the diet of 1747, is probably at present but a piece of waste paper. The important question of the validity of morganatic marriages, as regards the claim of children to the rank and property of the father, has in reality never yet been definitely settled. George I. himself, it is certain, was married in morganatic fashion to Fräulein Schulenberg, afterwards Duchess of Kendal; and though the offspring of this union, represented in Lord Chesterfield's descendants, has no claim to legitimacy, the same cannot be said of other royal marriages of the same kind. Without speaking of the morganatic marriage of William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, with the Countess-Dowager of Waldegrave, September 6, 1766, which is of no particular importance, or of that of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, with Lady Ann Luttrell, on October 2, 1771, which is scarcely more consequential, although in virtue of it a certain lady continues to claim some ten million sterling from the British crown, there remains the notable match between the sixth son of George III., the Duke of Sussex, and Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the Earl of Dunmore. The marriage-ceremony took place at Rome, in the presence of an English clergyman, April 4, 1793, and, to leave no doubt of its legality, was repeated at St George's, Hanover Square, December 5, 1794. The union, which only became known some time afterwards, was declared illegal and invalid by the English ecclesiastical court, as being contrary to the Royal Marriage Act of 1772; but the question having been revived in later times, great doubts were expressed by the most eminent jurists whether the annulment of the union was not the most illegal part of the whole proceeding. The offspring of the duke's marriage were two children, Augustus Frederick, born June 13, 1794, and Augusta Emma, born August 11, 1801. The former entered the army at an early age, under the name of Augustus d'Este, and gradually rose to the rank of colonel. lived at first a very retired life; but the successive deaths of the elder sons of George III. opening the perspective of the throne of Great Britain to the Duke of Sussex, he put his claim to legitimacy prominently forward. He did so particularly in the year 1830, during the season of general political agitation. The claim excited great interest among continental jurists, on account of the involved succession to the kingdom of Hanover; and a whole legion of books

He