Broken Lives

In Road to Divorce, Lawrence Stone explored and analysed the ambiguous nature of the law and pratice concerning marriage, separation, and divorce in England from 1530 to the present day. He showed how husbands and wives, lovers and lawyers, adapted, circumvented, of defied the law in order to achieve their end, namely either a secure marriage, or a marital separation on favourable terms. In Uncertain Unions, he offered a series of detailed case-studies, which painted a vivid picture of how certain individuals coped with the manifold uncertainties of the law of marriage before the Marriage Act of 1753. Now, Broken Lives completes the trilogy. In it Profesfs Stone offers a second set of detailed case-studies, this time about how the break-up and dissolution of marriages was contrived before the first Divorce Act in 1857. Individuals in their own words explain their actions and feelings about one another in dramatic court-room confrontations, while behind the scenes they were conducting secret negotiations, and offering massive bribes to witnesses either to commit perjury or to hold their tongues. These stories offer astonishing insights into many previously unknown aspects of marital life and marital breakdown in early modern England. They also provide sobering evidence of the huge gap between the enacted law and actual practice.