PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
וד
Reference :-
C.O.885
13 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
Upon this assumption, it would seem by the marriage registers that between 1814 and March 1890, there have been at least 379 mixed marriages celebrated.
1. By the chaplain of the forces from March 1814 to September 1878 by leave
of the Commander-in-Chief
2. In St. Paul's church, 1847 to 1890:-
By banns
•
83
By licence
·
By banus
8. In the church of the Holy Trinity, from 1871 to 1890: --
By licence
►
122 133
•
11
·
30
879
There have been other marriages celebrated by the regimental chaplains, of which there is no record at Malta.
An extract of the entries of mixed marriages celebrated in St. Paul's church from April 1862 to March 1890, taken from the register of that church, accompanies this report.
The mixed marriages celebrated by the Presbyterian ministers since 1849, Mr. Wisely informus me, are only seven in number; one was performed by his predecessor, in 1848, being the second Presbyterian marriage that was celebrated under a Governor's licence, and five by himself, one in February 1875, one in September 1875, and one 1876, one in November 1878, and an earlier one, the date of which he is unable to recall. September The paucity of Presbyterian mixed marriages is attributable to Mr. Wisely discouraging and frequently refusing to celebrate such marriages, not on the ground that he believed that if celebrated by him they would be invalid, but because he considered them undesirable.
The mixed Wesleyan marriages celebrated under Governor's licences, from June 1869 up to the present date, are nine in number.
(1.) 1874, Maltese woman.
(2.) 1883, woman, daughter of English father and Maltese mother, both parents being
Roman Catholics.
(3.) 1883, "Sister to above."
1885, Maltese woman,
(5.) 1887, French woman.
(6.) 1887, Maltese woman,
(7.) 1888, Italian woman.
(8.) 1888, Gibraltar woman.
(9.) 1889, Maltese (or Italian) woman.
In some few cases of mixed marriages the parties are also known to have been married by a Roman Catholic priest, but in general there is no knowledge or trace of double marriage ever having taken place. Mixed marriages have always been considered any such by the officials through whom the licences were issued, by the clergy, or ministers who celebrated the marriages, as well as by the parties to the marriage, and in Malta generally, to be perfectly valid, without any marriage by a Roman Catholic priest. This I am assured is the fact, by Sir Victor Houlton, by Archdeacon Hardy, Mr. Wisely, and Mr. Laverick, as well as by former residents in Malta, of whom I have made inquiry.
Archdeacon Hardy states that of the mixed marriages celebrated by him since 1878, he can only charge his memory with three in which the parties were also married by a Roman Catholic priest. Mr. Wisely states that the second licence granted for a Presbyterian marriage dated in May 1848, by Governor More O'Ferrall, was for a mixed marriage between parties who were subsequently his personal friends, and that he knows that they were never married by a Roman Catholic priest, and that from the position of the parties, the Governor, when he granted the license, must have known that the lady was a Roman Catholic. He also states that he has no reason to believe that in the case of the five mixed marriages celebrated by himself, the parties were ever married by a Roman Catholic priest.
Mr. Laverick states, that of the nine Wesleyan mixed marriages, there are two only in which the parties are known to have been also married by a Roman Catholic priest. In both of these cases the husbands were soldiers. Their regimental registers have been examined, and the only certificates entered on the registers of their marriage are those of the Wesleyan minister, and on the strength of his certificate alone they were placed on
the rolls as married men, and have since received the extra payments and other privileges conceded to soldiers who have married under the army regulations.
Mr. Wisely was informed by the officer at the Military Registry Office that these certificates, notwithstanding the marriages in question were mixed marriages, were quite sufficient to secure the soldiers the privileges above referred to.
In the Orthodox Greek Church there have been 52 marriages celebrated since 1816, and 24 of these marriages were between an Orthodox Greek and a Roman Catholic.
The parties to mixed marriages by licence have been permitted now for nearly 80 years, before the licences had been granted, to swear before the justices of the island an affidavit that they know of no legal impediment to the intended marriage, whilst if the marriage would be invalid, as being a mixed one, there was an impediment to its celebration patent on the face of the affidavit, which must have been known to the justice to be fatal to its validity.
Sir Victor Houlton informs me that during the 28 years he held the office of Chief Secretary to the Government of Malta, the applications for marriage licences came before him as Secretary to the Government and required his counter-signature before they were granted, and that during the whole of that time licences were granted from time to time for mixed marriages on the supposition that such marriages were valid.
Every licence, on the face of it, is framed on the assumption that the proposed ceremony to be celebrated under its authority will be a valid and not a sham ceremony. All licences granted either by the Chief Civil Commissioners, or by the Governors, up to 1836, were granted by an official who, for the time being, was the sole legislator for the islands, and each licence so granted during that period would be deemed to have the same force and effect as a private Act of Parliament relating to a marriage would have in this country.
In grants of probates, and of letters of administration to the parties to such marriages, and to their issue or other next of kin, both in Malta and in the Principal Probate Registry in London, and in suits in the divorce courts in England, these mixed marriages have always been assumed to have been valid, and property has been invariably distributed on this assumption; and I am assured that there is no recorded or known case in which the Maltese courts have ever pronounced such a marriage to be invalid.
The ordinance of 1862, establishing a Civil Register Office for marriages, contains provisions for the compliance with the following requisitions, previous to the registration of a marriage: "A declaration that the marriage took place, signed by the parties, or "the parish priest, or the ecclesiastic, before whom the marriage shall have been solemnized, or otherwise by a notary, who shall have been for that purpose employed by the parties." See chap. III., sec. 57, sub-sec. 6. Again, "In all cases the act
"s
"
of marriage shall be accompanied with a marriage certificate signed by the parish priest, or other ecclesiastic before whom the marriage shall have been solemnized, "unless the declaration mentioned in No. 6 of the preceding article shall have been
signed by such parish priest or other ecclesiastic," sec. 58.
64
It is obvious, that the term "ecclesiastic," and "other ecclesinstic sections of the ordinance, refer, not to a priest of the Church of Rome, but to ministers of other religious communions.
as used in these besides the Roman Catholic priests who were then permitted to celebrate marriages in At the date of this ordinance, the only ecclesiastics Malta, were the clergy of the Church of England and the Presbyterian ministers. resident in the island, and the priest of the Orthodox Greek Church. The ordinance therefore recognises them under the term "ecclesiastic parish priests to celebrate valid marriages in Malta, and the registrars of the Civil Register Office have now for 28 years in practice put this construction upon these as alike competent with the sections of the ordinance. For, since the establishment of their office in 1862, Protestant and Greek marriages, mixed as well as unmixed, have been regularly registered there without objection, on the faith of declarations of the acts of the marriage made by the English clergy, and the Presbyterian and Wesleyan ministers and the priest of the Greek Church, as being the " ecclesiastics" pointed to in these two paragraphs of the ordinances.
The present Registrar also states that there is not, to his knowledge, a single instance of the entry of a double celebration of a marriage ever having been made, in the office, and bis statement on being tested in various instances of mixed marriages, was proved to be correct.
In 1835 a Parliamentary Commission was issued to Mr. John Austen, the well-known jurist, and to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to enquire into the affairs of Malta and its dependencies. The commissioners "had full powers to examine into all laws, regulations, and usages of the said island and its dependencies, the principle and
65
A 3