A treatise on the diseases of married females : disorders of pregnancy, parturition and lactation.
- John Charles Peters
- Date:
- 1854
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the diseases of married females : disorders of pregnancy, parturition and lactation. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![with all the advantages and profits. Sir Reginald Bray says, in his will: Whereas, I have in my keeping Elizabeth and Agnes, daughters and heirs of Henry Lovell, Esq., Iawill that Elizabeth be married to one of my nephews, son to my brother, John Bray, and the said Agnes to another son of my said brother. The dread of this unrighteous slaveship, that of wardship and marriage, often operated with parents in marrying their children at a tender age. Thus, Maurice, 4th Lord of Berke- ley, was knighted at 7, and married at 8 years old, to Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh, Lord Spencer, then but 8 years old. This early marriage prevented wardship, the payment of a large fine to the King, and assisted the party's own affairs with family interest and powerful connections. In fact, the Lords of Berkeley, some years ago, differed but little in their marriages from the customs of the most lascivious, depraved, and mercenary of savages, or slave-holders. The majority of the Berkeleys were contracted in marriage at 7 or 8 years of age, and in their family records more than a dozen instances oc- cur of paternity before the age of 14. Throughout all England such precocity was once unblushingly encouraged, assimila- ting the people of a Christian country, in this revolting fea- ture, to the Pagan inhabitants of the tropical regions.—Rob- erton. Grafton, however, a faithful chronicler in the reign of Elizabeth, gives the following extremely curious display of hu- mane and patriotic feeling: It is to be much lamented, that wards are bought and sold as commonly as are beasts; and marriages are made with them, that are many times very ungodly ; for divers of them, being of young and tender years, are forced to judge by an- other man's affections, and to see with another man's eye, andl to say yea with another man's tongue, and finally consent with* another man's heart. For none of these senses be ] erfected. to the parties in that minority, and so the election being urn- free, and the years unripe, each of them, almost of necessity,, must hate the other, whom yet they have had no judgment to*](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21008401_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
