The Church, Conscience and the Colonies: Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister in Britain and British Australia Rebecca Kippen R Kippen 2009. ‘The Church, conscience and the colonies: marriage with a deceased wife’s sister in Britain and British Australia’, in A Fauve-Chamoux and I Bolovan (eds) Families in Europe Between the 19th and 21st Centuries: From the Traditional Model to Contemporary PACS, Presa Universitara Clujeana, Cluj-Napoca, 463–473. ____________________________________________________________________________ Summary This paper addresses the ecclesiastical and political origins of prohibition against marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, the changing legal status of such marriages in Britain and British Australia, and the conflict between Church, clergy and the State once such marriages were made legal. When Henry VIII wished to be rid of his wife Catherine of Aragon, argument was dominated by reference to scripture, particularly the prohibition in Leviticus against ‘uncover[ing] the nakedness of thy brother’s wife’. If this scripture meant a man could not marry his deceased brother’s wife, then Henry’s marriage to Catherine was unlawful, since Catherine had been the widow of Henry’s brother. The Pope refused an annulment, so Henry broke with Rome, but he could not ignore the Church altogether; estrangement from the Holy See led to the establishment of the Church of England. Elizabeth I—Henry’s daughter with his next wife Anne Boleyn—secured her claim to accession by having prepared a Table of Degrees prohibiting certain types of marriages, including those to a deceased husband’s brother and to a deceased wife’s sister. These prohibitions meant that her father’s marriage to Catherine was void, his marriage to her mother Anne was lawful, and therefore Anne was legitimate offspring and entitled to the throne. The Table of Degrees received royal assent, but not parliamentary assent, meaning that any prohibited marriage fell into the twilight world of being, not void, but voidable; any such marriage was perfectly legal unless it was challenged in the ecclesiastical courts during the life of the marriage. Then it could be declared void and the children of such a marriage declared illegitimate. 1