There are two records of the marriage of Hopestill Tyler and Mary Lovett. One is in the Medfield, Massachusetts, town records. The other is a Middlesex County, Massachusetts, court record submitted for Mendon.
     A transcript of the Medfield vital records was made in 1850.1 The original town record of the marriage, if it exists, hasn't been seen. The transcript appears to be verbatim. The marriage records are nearly chronological for 1668. The first entry is 12 March, followed by 2 March, two on 21 May, 18 November, 16 December, 22 December, 15 February, two on 17 February and the last on 26 January. Following that and starting the 1669 group is a marriage on 6 March 1669 and the list is chronological for that year. The Julian or "Old Style" calendar prevailed at this time, with the first of the year being on 23 March. The record says "Hopestill Taylor and Mary Lovett were married before Ralph Wheelock February 17th 1668." This evidently means the marriage was on 17 February 1668 on the Julian Calendar, but the Gregorian or "New Style" year was 1669, therefore giving a dual year of 1668/69. Mary's brother James and Hopestill's sister Hannah (also "Taylor") were married on the same day and by Wheelock, a Justice of the Peace and representative to the Colony's general court from Medfield. Another transcript of the Medfield vital records done according to a state mandate in 18782 has the Tyler-Lovett marriage with the same information as above, but spells Hopestill's last name "Teylor." The Lovett-Tyler marriage is also there, with Mary's last name spelled "Teyler." Given this and possibly other differences from the transcript made in 1850, the one in 1878 may also have been taken from the original records and may be a better transcription of Hopestill's surname.
     The Middlesex County court record, part of the annual returns of vital records from the towns, is a submission from "Mendham" (an occasional misinterpretation of "Mendon") town clerk Daniel Lovett (Mary and James's father) and says "Hopestill Tiler and Mary Lovett maryed 20 January 1668."3 "James Lovett and Hannah Tiler" are shown with the same day of marriage. No officiate is named. These records are in a collection of births, marriages and deaths spanning 1663-1668, submitted by Daniel Lovett on 14 May 1669 and copied into the court records by Thomas Danforth. They are the only marriages in the group. The court records can be found copied and transcribed into an 1878 database of Mendon vital records by mandate.4 The original town records don't survive, so the later records that did survive were supplemented with the court records. The published Mendon vital records from 1920 are based on this, with the Tyler-Lovett marriage proceeded by "M.R.," meaning Middlesex record.5
     Mendon and Medfield were in Suffolk County in the 17th century. Although Suffolk County also kept returns of vital records, they were very sparse and don't include these marriages. The fact that the marriages were on 20 January in the court record and 17 February in the Medfield town record is baffling, as are "Mendham" records appearing in Middlesex County instead of Suffolk. The 20 January date would make sense for the publishing of marriage intentions, but recording intentions wasn't customary at that time. If this was the case, however, it is reasonable that the two couples published at the same time, since they were married the same day. There is no other plausible explanation for the discrepancy other than a transcription error by either Lovett or Danforth.
     The location of the marriage is also left unclear, but a General Court record from 1659 seems to settle the question:

There being several towns within this jurisdiction who are not only remote from any magistrate, but also destitute of any person impowered to solemnize marriage, the want whereof is an occasion of much trouble & sometimes disappointment, which to prevent, it is ordered, that Capt. Johnson for Woburn, Lt. French for Billerica & Chelmsford, Wm. Coudrey for Redding, Capt. Marshall for Lynn, Mr. Thomas Noyce for Sudbury, Mr. Edw. Woodman for Newbury, Lt. Robert Pike for Salisbury, Lt. Christopher Hussie for Hampton, Capt. Eliazer Lusher for Dedham, Mr. Wheelock for Medfield, Capt. Joshua Hubbard for Hingham, Capt. Wm. Torrey for Weymouth, Mr. Peter Brackett for Braintrie, shall & hereby are appointed & impowered to join in marriage such persons within their respective towns or limits as shall desire the same, being published according to law.6

     Daniel Lovett and his family moved to Mendon in 1667/68.7 Job Tyler, Hopestill's father, probably arrived in 1669 from Roxbury.8 Hopestill was an apprentice with a blacksmith in Andover, and his contract ended in 1668 or 1669.9 This doesn't pinpoint Hopestill's arrival in Mendon, but he undoubtedly did so before he met Mary. Hopestill and Mary's children's births are recorded in Mendon, the first was Mary on 31 January 1669/70.10 Another marriage by Wheelock and recorded in Medfield about the same time as the Tyler-Lovetts is for Jabesh/Jabez Tatman, of Roxbury, and Deborah Turner of Medfield.11 The Roxbury town records also include the marriage.
     The original towns of Mendon and Medfield shared a small section of boundary, which is where Milford and Medway now meet. This proximity makes a Mendon couple traveling to Medfied understandable if there was no one in Mendon to perform marriages. Marriages that appear only in Mendham/Mendon court submissions appear in following years, so the lack of an official may have been short-lived.
     Town vital records in 17th and 18th century New England were often gathered in groups rather than as the events happened. This is sometimes confusing when a family is know to have lived in one town at the time of a birth or births, but the records are in another. It seems the primary goal for Massachusetts colony towns (keeping in mind the record keeping from one town to the next was sometimes very different) was to account for families living there at whatever time the information was obtained, so it may not be so odd that the Tyler-Lovett and Lovett-Tyler marriages were recorded in Mendon even if they weren't performed there. Since the Medfield record came directly from Wheelock, his marriage dates are more reliable and therefore favored here. For these reasons, it's most likely the two marriages occurred in Medfield on 17 February 1668/69.

1. "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," familysearch.org database online (Salt Lake City, UT: 1972), Norfolk, Medfield, Births, marriages, deaths 1651-1876, image 138.
2. Ibid, image 558 of ms. p. 83.
3. "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," familysearch.org database online (Salt Lake City, UT: 1972), Middlesex, County records, Births, marriages, deaths 1651-1793, image 90 of original ms. p. 161.
4. "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," familysearch.org database online (Salt Lake City, UT: 1972), Worcester, Mendon, Births, marriage intentions, marriages, deaths 1663-1901, image 306 of ms. p. 67.
5. Vital records of Mendon, Massachusetts, to the year 1850 (Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1920), 412.
6. 18 October 1659 court session, Records of the Governor & Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,, vol. 4, part 1 (Boston: 1853), 383. This quote has been modified using modern spelling.
7. 27 January 1667/68, Annals of the Town of Mendon, from 1659 to 1880 (Providence: 1880), 31.
8. Brigham, Walter Irving Tyler, The Tyler Genealogy, The Descendants of Job Tyler, of Andover, Massachusetts, 1619-1700, vol. 1 (1912), 4, 11.
9. Ibid, 26.
10. "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," familysearch.org database online (Salt Lake City, UT: 1972), Middlesex, County records, Births, marriages, deaths 1651-1793, image 113 of ms. p. 204.
11. 11 November 1668, Vital Records of Roxbury, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 , vol. 2 (Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1926), p. 391.