MARRIAGE AND CANON LAW 245
with a husband, and himself with the certainty of labour-services,
dues, and perhaps a future inheritor. At Brightwaltham no less
than six widows, who had come into possession of their husbands'
holdings without being able to render the labour that was due,
were ordered, if they wished to retain their land, "to provide
themselves with husbands".1 A late piece of evidence conies
from the Petition of the Commons to the King in 1394, when it
was asserted that the religious houses caused their serfs to marry
free women with inheritances, so that the religious could thereby
claim the estates.2
The lord's concern to restrict marriages within the limits of
the manor no doubt seriously limited the choice of the young,
but what was still more important it brought them into diffi-
culties with the Church. "Before 1215 Canon Law forbade all
marriages of kinsfolk to the seventh degree; that is, between all
who had a common great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Innocent III, in the great Lateran Council, reduced these prohi-
bitions, * because they cannot now be kept without grievous
harm'; thenceforth, the prohibition extended only to the fourth
degree, but this must be kept with inviolable strictness ".3 It is
easy to see how impossible it was on innumerable small medieval
manors to keep this rule strictly. Either a man had to remain
unmarried, or pay the increased fine for taking a wife from out-
side, or break the law of the Church. *' Even when Innocent had
softened the law", writes Dr Coulton, "at least half the bond-
men in a normal village had probably some common great-great-
grandfather with any prospective bridegroom or bride".4 We
have only to look at die earliest parish registers to see how inter-
married village communities became, and the same thing has
continued, to a lesser degree, even down to our own day.5 Any
small village cemetery in France or Switzerland bears instant
confirmation of this fact, and it was also noted as a characteristic
of village life in the English enquiry concerning rural conditions
in Germany in iSyo.6
Closely associated with the fine for marriage was that imposed
1 Page, op. cit. 36 n. 2. z Walsingham, 258.
3 Quoted from Med. Village, Appendix 16.
* Op. cit. 473.
6 V.CJI. Survey, iv, 413 n. 31. * Land Tenure Reports, 387.