Divorce is perhaps the civil legal issue which most grabs the attention of modern society and one does not have to look far to see high profile media coverage of celebrity divorces and the intrigue surrounding them. Many people have a personal experience of divorce, either of their own marriage or of the marriage of a close relative or friend. Given that 42% of marriages in England and Wales now end by divorce and the average duration of marriages is 11.7 years (Office for National Statistics), it is surprising that divorce has only relatively recently become easier to obtain and for many centuries was first a legal and then a practical impossibility.
In the Anglo-Saxon period in England (pre-1066), there are examples of divorces being legitimate by consent only. It was the medieval interpretation of Christian scripture by Church scholars which led to the concept of marriage as unbreakable. For…
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