The legal rules concerning the formation of marriage adopted by Pope
Alexander III (1159-1181) gave considerable freedom to marriage partners to
form a marriage without the consent of their parents or lords. A preliminary
survey of the surviving records from the medieval church courts in both England
and France suggests that there were substantial differences in the types of
marriage-formation cases being heard in the two countries. The difference in
types of cases, in turn, suggests that by the end of the Middle Ages, French
parents were having more success than English in controlling the marriage choices
of their children.
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