Linda Howe makes a good point - and frankly one about which, as the
culprit whose query started this thread, I haven't yet done my own
homework.
  Three bits off-hand:
  Lorri Glover's book about South Carolina (which prompted my initial
query) deals with strictures about cousin marriage etc and the
definitions of incest in her and she suggests that actual practice in
the colonies was somewhat more relaxed than English practice. She also
quotes comments _about Virginia_ to that effect from Philip Fithian and
B. Latrobe.
  I've read, too, that Father Tom  Buckley's book on divorce in Va
mentions the passage of laws in NINEteenth-century Virginia that
tightened restrictions on cousins marrying.... (ca 1850s?)
  A footnote early in Andrew Burstein's new book on Jeffeson's Secrets
also mentions an later SEVENteenth- or early EIGHTteenth-century case of
a Virginia gentry woman who got a legal separation from her husband on
the grounds that she had come to have scruples about their too-close
affinity of blood relation....

Jon Kukla

> If I recall the original question about marriage, it had to do with the
> frequency with which widows and widowers married the sisters and
> brothers of deceased spouses. (I don't now recall whether other kindred
> relationships were mentioned.) I'll just throw this out there for your
> consideration. There was (and is) "A Table of Kindred and Affinity,
> wherein whosoever are related, are forbidden in Scripture and our Laws
> to Marry together" in every (Church of England) _Book of Common Prayer_.
> There are 30 forbidden relationships for men and 30 for women. Number 17
> on the list for a man is "Wife's Sister" and #17 for a woman is
> "Husband's Brother." If I remember correctly, there is evidence that the
> Table of Affinity was posted in some parish churches in colonial
> Virginia. Interesting, no? I've no idea whether the table actually
> figured in anyone's thinking once you get beyond not marrying immediate
> blood relatives (such as grandmother, grandfather, father's sister,
> father's brother, and so on). The Table of Affinity did not find its way
> into laws passed by the colonial General Assembly, as far as I know.
>
> Linda H. Rowe
> Historical Research
> Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
> 757-220-7443
>

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