Fans of the award-winning television drama Downton Abbey will remember the moving scene when footman William, mortally injured in the first world war trenches, married scullery maid Daisy with his dying breath.

The producers consulted the Law Society’s library on the rules around special licences at that time, to be told that they were indeed available, but only from the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury when one of the parties was ­terminally ill.