18th-century incest?

[Pieguy259]

I need information on the practice of marrying distant (or not-so-distant) relatives in the 18th Century, specifically England, but Europe in general will do. If indeed it existed. Whether or not it was commonplace, attitudes towards it (was it frowned upon? approved of?), that sort of thing. Urgently, please.

Give details on sources please. Websites preferable.

 

[rosythecat]

Generally it was cousins, anywhere from ridiculously-distant ones to first cousins, and the trend in question was actually more often than not amongst the aristocracy instead of the peasants, as the nobles used this method in order to keep important and/or valuable land holdings and titles within the over-arching conglomeration that was the family property they could all pull from to various extents. It also helped enable nepotism-based appointments to various church and secular postings and positions.

The House of Hapsburg--which separately ruled both Spain and the HRE/Austrio-Hungarian Empire for centuries--was particularly infamous for their in-breeding, things slipping downhill quickly with the marriage of Johanna the Mad and Phillip the Fair--who was an egotistical, narcissistic a-hole--with succeeding generations inter-marrying of cousins, and even at least one matching of an uncle and niece pairing.

BLEH!!!

 

[Srikant J]

I don't think we should look at pejoratively this practice of incest. The Greek Goddess Hera is the spouse of Zeus and his sister.
It became abhorrent with the Romans, - when the king led a licentious life having sex-relation with anybody and everybody - the brother's wife ,son's wife etc..
However marrying your mother's younger brother (your maternal uncle ) is very much prevalent in Tamil nadu , S. India even today. In fact it is considered as a blessed relation.
Partly this comes with the idea of mainting the purity of the blood-line and partly to keep the family problems of wealth and property within the family.
This problem of sex and incest , - though we have gone to moon, are preparing to go to Mars, our nature remains animal. You scratch below the skin of a man and you find there a barbarian !
Can you imagine, in today's times, a father has imprisoned his own daughter in Austria for 24 yrs. He begets 7children from her and yet pretends and tells all types of tall stories.
i suppose the same existed evrywhere in England included.
In Karela, women were not allowed to wear upper garment as per law !