By far the most common matrimonial cause in the medieval Church courts was the suit brought to enforce a marriage contract. The preponderance of this type of suit is found for every year, in every court, and from every diocese for which records remain. It was not the petition for nullity which made up the bulk of marriage litigation. It was the petition which asserted the existence of a marriage contract and asked the court to enforce it by a declaration of validity and by an order, in most dioceses, that it be solemnized in facie ecclesie.

A few figures may make this dominance concrete. Between November 1372 and May 1375 ninety-eight cases related to marriage were introduced into the Consistory Court at Canterbury. Seventy-eight were petitions to establish and enforce a marriage contract; ten were miscellaneous; only ten were cases involving divorce a vinculo. At Lichfield between 1465 and 1468, suits brought to establish the existence of valid marriages outnumbered suits for divorce by a margin of thirty to fifteen. The Consistory Court at Rochester from April 1437 through April 1440 heard a total of twenty-three matrimonial cases; fourteen were suits to enforce marriage contracts; four were miscellaneous; only five were petitions for annulment. The exact proportion varied, but the same preponderance is found in whatever set of court records the searcher examines.