Definition
Valor maritagii (Law Latin: "value of the marriage") is a feudal remedy by which a guardian in chivalry could recover a financial penalty from a ward who refused a marriage offer the guardian had tendered. Under the feudal system of wardship in chivalry, a guardian held not only the ward's lands during minority but also the right to arrange the ward's marriage — provided the proposed match was not one of "disparagement," meaning the offered spouse was not of inferior social rank. If the ward refused a suitable, non-disparaging match, the ward forfeited to the guardian the valor maritagii: the assessed monetary value of the marriage opportunity, measured by what a jury would find any person would bona fide pay for such an alliance.
The doctrine was codified and regulated by the Statute of Merton (1236), chapter 6, which gave the guardian a legal action to recover this value. The remedy existed exclusively within the feudal framework of tenure by knight service and has no operative force in modern law.
Common Confusion
Valor maritagii is sometimes conflated with the broader concept of wardship itself, or with the related idea of disparagement. These are distinct. Wardship is the guardian's overall custodial and administrative authority over the infant and the infant's lands. Disparagement is the wrong committed when a guardian offers — or compels — a match that demeans the ward's social standing, and it entitled the ward to refuse without penalty. Valor maritagii is the specific financial consequence triggered only when the ward refused a non-disparaging, suitable match. A ward who refused a disparaging match owed nothing; a ward who refused a suitable match owed the valor maritagii.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources dealing with English feudal tenure, wardship in chivalry, and the statutory history of the Statute of Merton (1236). Researchers will encounter it in three contexts: (1) historical treatises on feudal land law, particularly commentaries on Magna Carta and the statutes of Henry III; (2) discussions of the Court of Wards and Liveries, the institution that administered wardship rights from 1540 until the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 effectively ended wardship in chivalry; and (3) comparative legal history examining how feudal marriage control translated into later equity doctrines governing infant welfare.
The term does not migrate into American law in any operative sense. The feudal tenures that supported the doctrine were never transplanted to the colonies in their full form, and the Tenures Abolition Act cut the doctrine off at its English root before American legal institutions fully developed. Researchers consulting colonial-era American sources should not expect to find valor maritagii as an active remedy; its appearance in American legal dictionaries is purely taxonomic and historical.
One navigational trap: primary sources from the Court of Wards period (roughly 1540–1660) will show valor maritagii alongside related fiscal incidents of feudal tenure — primer seisin, reliefs, and fines for alienation. These terms cluster together in court records and should be researched as a group rather than in isolation to understand the revenue-generating machinery of royal wardship.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries treat valor maritagii consistently, which reflects the term's narrow, well-settled historical meaning. Black's (both editions) relies directly on Blackstone's Commentaries, Book 2, for its formulation — the measure of recovery being "so much as a jury would assess, or any one would bona fide give." Burrill's adds the specific statutory anchor (Statute of Merton, c. 6) that Black's omits, making Burrill's the more useful starting point for tracing primary sources.
None of the historical dictionaries address the procedural mechanics of the action: how the valor was assessed, what courts entertained the claim, or how the doctrine interacted with the equity jurisdiction over infants that eventually superseded the feudal framework. For those questions, researchers must move beyond the dictionary shelf to Holdsworth's History of English Law or Plucknett's Concise History of the Common Law. The dictionaries also do not note that the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 (12 Car. 2, c. 24) rendered the doctrine obsolete — an omission that could mislead a researcher into treating valor maritagii as more durable than it was.
Jurisdictional Note
Valor maritagii is a doctrine of historical English feudal law only. No American jurisdiction ever recognized it as operative law. English law abolished the underlying feudal tenure that supported the doctrine by statute in 1660. The term appears in American legal dictionaries solely for historical and comparative reference.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feudal Tenure; Wardship in Chivalry; Statute of Merton