Another short and sweet case (or maybe not so sweet for the defendant). John Grey evidently sued Josia Milner to force her to recognize a marriage solemnized between them three years before. Her defence was that she was already married at that time to a man named John Nelson, thus nullifying her marriage with Grey. Her contention was rather vague — she contracted with Grey, she said, but she didn’t remember the names of the witnesses and (as usual) she doesn’t explain why soon after she married Grey. At least as far as survives, no witnesses appeared to support Milner’s case: so even if she actually did contract marriage with Nelson, she evidently could not prove it. That likely meant that the court ordered her back with Grey, whether she liked it or not.
LMA, MS DL/C/A/001/MS09065, fol. 187v
Response of Josia Milner, 28 Feb. 1494
Responses personally made by Josia Milner
Josia Milner sworn and diligently examined concerning the positions etc. To the first position, this witness admits that she contracted marriage with John Grey and that this marriage was solemnized between them on a certain day falling between the feast of Christmas and Lent three years ago.1 And she says that on a certain day falling before Christmas four years ago, this witness in her own house in a certain alley called Chequer Alley in the street called St. John’s Street, in the presence of a certain Beatrice, whose surname does not come to her mind, and of a certain other woman now dead whose name she does not know, she contracted marriage with John Nelson, and she says that afterwards John often and many times acknowledged in the presence of many trustworthy people that he had contracted marriage with this witness. To the second position, she admits it. To the third position, she admits it. To the fourth position, she says that what she said above is true, and public voice and fame circulated and circulate in the parish of St. Sepulchre and the City.
1. Lent began on 16 Feb. in 1491.
Consistory 