There was the development of Feudalism, The Crusades, The Magna Carta, The Hundred Years' War, The Black Death, and the disagreements between Popes and Kings.
In 1753, however, the Marriage Act, promoted by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, declared that all marriage ceremonies must be conducted by a minister in a parish church or chapel of the Church of England to be legally binding.
Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act remained the prime legal statement on clandestine marriages and the marriage law until the legal reforms instigated by Lord Brogham in the 1840s and 1850s. 1  1. Lawrence Stone, Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England, 1660-1753 (London: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 236-274.