At the end of the 12th century, the pope gave deaf people the right to marry, and yes, kiddos, the right was very much his to give. It was his church, after all, and England being a Catholic country at that point, it went along with the change and carried over it into the Protestant part of its history, even while it was virulently anti-Catholic.

Did it say thanks? The hell it did. 

Which pope did that? Innocent III. What are the odds that we’ll remember? 

What sounds like a limited change set off a cascade of changes. By allowing a deaf person to agree to a marriage by using sign, the church had effectively recognized that the deaf could understand. They could communicate their wishes. From there it was a small step to allowing confession in sign, because if a deaf person could understand, then they could also sin. 

From church law, that recognition seeped into the secular courts. Before this, in a tradition dating back to ancient Rome, the courts considered the deaf infants. They could no more understand or defend their rights, make contracts, or give legal consent than my dog can. 

Now, though, they could go to court over property rights, and by the beginning of Henry VII’s reign, legal students were routinely taught that signs could replace speech in property law. The deaf could also be held responsible for their crimes. 

When was progress ever an unmixed blessing? 

Irrelevant photo: Flowers. Two different kinds, with two different names. They have nothing to do with anything, so let’s not get worked up about what they’re called.

So was this the origin of BSL–British Sign Language?

Probably not, but it’s not clear. Deaf people have been around for roughly as long as hearing people, and they show up in all classes, ranks, ethnicities, and societies. The one place they haven’t appeared often, at least until relatively recently, is in written history, and that’s what makes the marriages of deaf people important: they give us a bit of solid information.

If we look at the early histories of British Sign Language (and we won’t because if I’m using secondary sources and you’re one step further removed than that, but let’s pretend), we’ll find that they were written in English, which is a whole ‘nother language from sign, and a lot of them were written by people who didn’t sign. That’s almost as good an idea as me writing a history of physics even though I don’t phys. 

BSL isn’t a written language. It’s possible to write it, but most people who use it as their primary language will write in English. That was a significant barrier to the early users of BSL writing its history; they would’ve been working in a second language, one designed by and for people who hear. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle but I’m not sure how well I’d do if I had to climb it.

So at the point where BSL was–presumably–consolidating, the people who used it left us no written record. In other words, we’re relying on guesswork, and the best guess is that the roots of BSL reach somewhere into the 18th century, when the growth of towns brought enough deaf people together that they could form communities. By the 19th century, when deaf schools opened, they used BSL. But they were independent of each other and spread out around the country, which isn’t a great recipe for coordination. Still, teachers moved from one to another and the schools themselves were in communication. They taught a single language, but it either developed or already had regional dialects. 

But I’m getting ahead of the story. We were talking about those early marriages. The signs that the participants used were probably what linguists call homesign–a set of signs that develops in small groups of deaf people. Or (and I’m adding this myself, so throw a pinch of salt on it) possibly between one deaf person and the family or community around them. As a language, it probably wouldn’t have been as complex as today’s official sign languages but it would’ve been complex enough for a person to express themselves and for a friend or family member to act as an interpreter. 

The marriages

The earliest deaf/hearing person marriage on record in England took place in 1576, in Leicester Cathedral. It was the groom, Thomas Tilsey, who was deaf, and he was a blacksmith, which speaks to his integration into society: he and the people around him communicated well enough for him to have served an apprenticeship and learned his trade and done on to do business. He made his wedding vows in sign, which was unusual enough that the clerk noted it in the parish records.

Did somebody say “parish records”? There were almost surely earlier marriages involving a deaf person or two, but parish records only began under Henry VIII (1491 to 1547; you’re welcome). We’d have to figure that in the nearly 400 years since that papal decree, somebody would’ve married somebody who was deaf, but they did it without leaving any trace. 

And even after the start of parish-level record keeping, a marriage involving a deaf person could easily have taken place in sign without the clerk having thought to mention it. 

Were there any impediments to this marriage?

You bet your ass there were. Before Tilsey was allowed to marry, he had to prove to the mayor, the town council, and the bishop that he understood what marriage was. Or as the article I’m leaning on puts it, “that he was intellectually capable of understanding,” which isn’t exactly the same thing, so I’m not entirely sure what we’re talking about here. I’m going to guess that they weren’t worried about whether he understood the physical side of marriage, but I have no evidence for that. At all. 

Once he’d proved himself, his friends and family had to vouch for him. And in the ceremony he had to use pre-approved signs that followed the spoken service rather than the signs he would have chosen for himself. Sign generally, or maybe always, follows its own grammar. I’m guessing they threw it out the stained glass window here, coming up with something that made more sense to people who didn’t understand it.

Deaf people in conflict with their families

The question of whether a deaf person was capable of understanding might’ve been settled for centuries, but the minute a deaf person came into conflict with their family, the family could start arguing about it all over again. Was the deaf person able to give informed consent? Was this deaf person able to give consent? 

In 1618, the mother of apprentice Thomas Speller was hell bent to stop him from marrying Sarah Earle, his master’s daughter, and she got the bishop involved. Her son was being forced into it, she argued. Earle was a fortune hunter. Speller wasn’t capable of giving informed consent.

Speller testified to the bishop’s representative in sign, saying he wanted to marry Earle, and the marriage license was issued. They married a few weeks later, in sign, with the parish clerk noting, “We had never seen the like before.”

Fast forward a couple of decades and George Blunt wanted to marry a family servant–“one of our menial servants of unclear parentage.” Blunt’s father wrote to the local magistrate, again arguing that Blunt wasn’t capable of giving informed consent. That triggered an investigation, although by this time the couple was already married. The vicar and witnesses from the wedding testified that Blunt had been “full of understanding.” 

The couple moved away from his parents–wisely from the sound of it–and lived happily ever after. Or at least more happily than they would have been if they’d stayed close.