Jointure originally meant "the holding of property to the joint
use of a husband and wife for life or in tail, as a provision
for the latter, in the event of her widowhood" (OED Online).
According to Lawrence Poston's "Millites and Millenarians,"
Carlyle used "jointure" to mock the claims of an 1829 essay by
his old friend Edward Irving — "The Last Days: A Discourse On
the Evil Character Of These Our Times, Proving Them To Be the
'Perilous Times.'" Alluding to the Gospel of Luke, Irving had
written that "The poor evil-entreated widow, crying for
vengeance against her adversary, represents [Christ's] Church
now enduring widowhood, and to endure it until her Lord and
husband shall come again" (Poston 393). Irving here applies to
contemporary Britain the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke,
18:1-9), which demonstrates the importance of prayer with the
story of a widow who persistently demands justice until she
eventually succeeds (Wikipedia). Irving, a member of the Albury
Circle of Millenarian clergymen, describe