Also ... Maybe other listers can comment. However, my memory tells me that deathbed weddings weren't unusual to insure that the wife received the estate/inheritance. This might have been driven by fact that Robert Brand, a member of a seccionist church, was not a member of, and thus they were not married in, the "official" church of Scotland, or because the two had a "handfast" -- meaning trial -- marriage that was never formalized.