] Marrying a deceased wife's sister was legal in JA's time, but not later on in the 19th century (again, check the archives).

] The legality of marrying a brother's divorced wife is exactly the sort of nitty problem that the denizens of the L&T board love to get stuck into ;-)

Well, if I remember correctly, part of Henry VIII's marital problems stemmed from the fact that he had gotten a papal dispensation in order to marry Catherine of Aragon, who had been married to his brother, and then he wanted to have a papal dispensation in order to annul the marriage. I was interested in seeing if the Church of England continued with the prohibitions that had been set up by (and loosely enforced by) the Catholic church. Does anyone know?