§ LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYasked the Lord Chancellor, Whether the marriages solemnized by a man not in Holy Orders, who fraudulently obtained curacies in several dioceses and parishes during six years, are valid?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR, in reply, said, the attention of the Attorney General was directed to the case; and he had very little doubt, if the Acts were at all as the noble Lord understood, that the law would be found not ineffectual to punish this description of fraud. With regard to the marriages which the person in question was said to have solemnized, he was happy to be able to state that, according to the best authority which he had been able to consult, there seemed no reason to suppose that those marriages, if contracted in good faith and in ignorance of the incompetence of this person, would not be held good. But even if there should be a doubt on the point, he had laid on their Lordships' Table a Bill of a retrospective as well as o prospective character, which he hoped would for ever set at rest all doubts with regard both to marriages solemnized in places which, for some formal reason, 1469 were supposed to have insufficient authority, and also marriages solemnized by persons incompetent by law to do so, but where the contracting parties acted in good faith.