From the Council of Enham, celebrated by the Bishops Together with the Nobles of England, A.D. 1009

Canon VIII. Let it never be permitted that one imbued with the faith of Christ lead a wife within the space (of the sixth man) of his consanguinity, that is, within the fourth degree or little knee; nor the widow of anyone who had been of equal nearness in worldly cognation; nor the niece or near relative of the wife whom he had previously had; nor any holy nun; nor his sponsor from the sacred font; nor let any Christian have a repudiated woman as wife; nor let him take another wife while he has one, but as long as she lives, let her be the only one.

Those words, "of the sixth man," which we have included in parentheses, were copied by the editors of the councils; if you delete them, the sense of the discourse is ready and clear; on the contrary, if you retain them, it is very much hindered and hardly intelligible. Therefore we judge them to be expunged. But another reading of the same Synod is had from another exemplar, in which that eighth canon is presented thus:

We generally forbid illicit marriages to all Christians, but let them be bound to the divine law with fear of God. Therefore let no one defile himself with illicit conjunctions, that is, with cognates or with married persons or with those consecrated to God, or with other illicit persons.

But that canon seems to be the same as the law which exists among both the ecclesiastical and civil laws of Canute, King of the English, published in the year 1032, and therefore to be read in the same manner. For Law VII has thus:

Let no one tinged with the Christian faith contract nuptials within the sixth degree of his own cognation, nor let him lead into matrimony the widow of a cognate with whom he had necessity within the sixth degree; nor further let him join to himself in marriage someone near by consanguinity to her whom he previously had as wife. Let not a Christian lead into matrimony a sponsor at the sacred font, a vestal virgin, or a repudiated woman ... Let him have one wife, as long as she shall have lived, and that one joined by the legitimate covenant of nuptials, and not several.

Therefore, in this age, at least up to the sixth degree, marriages were forbidden in England. Cf. Canon XVII following of the Council of Bourges in Gaul, and what we shall bring forward from Peter Damian at A.D. 1065.

Canon XVII. That no one accept a wife from his own kinship up to the sixth or seventh progeny.

Canon XVIII. That no one accept in marriage the wife of his blood-relative or of some relative, because man and wife legitimately joined are one flesh.

The conjugal copula of two persons is the reason of affinity between one and the blood-relatives of the other. You see, however, that here the discourse is only about that affinity which arises from legitimate copula. Cf. Canon XXIX of the second Council of Chalon, A.D. 813.