Abstract: The legal rules concerning the formation of marriage adopted by Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) gave considerable freedom to marriage partners to form a marriage without the consent of their parents or lords. A preliminary survey of the surviving records from the medieval church courts in both England and France suggests that there were substantial differences in the types of marriage-formation cases being heard in the two countries. The difference in types of cases, in turn, suggests that by the end of the Middle Ages, French parents were having more success than English in controlling the marriage choices of their children.