Based on the desperate and sometimes scathing letter to the editor that appeared in the February 1815 issue of The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and ..., it appears that even after the banns were read men who had not yet reached their majority were still able to weasel out of the marriage…yet the same right was not allotted to young women.
I would like to see the original. I wouldn’t doubt that the women told the truth of what they were told. However, the book of cases and church law I have says that if the bans were published 3 times and the ceremony dutifully celebrated in church with no protests, the couple was married. as long as he was over age 14. However, it is quite possible that the boy and girl could think , it wasn’t true because they married as minors. People also thought one could sell one’s wife or that if a woman married in her shift the husband wasn’t responsible for her debts. People were told many false things and believed them.
A very good point! I think the rumours are as fascinating as the realities of marriage…and wonder how much this particular one was circulated as a cautionary tale to young women who had fallen for young men.