Illegitimacy and Marriage

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the medieval model doesn't work for your story, why use it? Invent your own society from scratch. So long as it is logical and consistent, readers will believe in it. Just at the moment, fantasy is moving away from medieval settings.

As a suggestion, you might want to do a fair bit of research into the history of Venice. That was a city-state that became very powerful at an early date, on the one hand because of its naval power, and on the other because it was able to control trade throughout the region. If you invented a society that relied on trade to the same extent, you might be able to work it out so that merchants could, indeed, rise to the nobility. Of course it would help if you plunked them down into a similar region, where land was limited and they were advantageously located for controlling the transport of merchandise.

Make the society sufficiently different from any specific real-world era and region, and you can handle the question of legitimacy in the way that seems best to you. (As you build your society, the answers to such questions might emerge in the process.)

Here's a question. Her children would be legitimate, based on the fact that she's married to their father. Would they then have any claim to her father's estate? Or would it be a sort of one way legitimacy with the children only being able to inherit through their father's line.

It would be a very odd society indeed where legitimacy in one generation conferred it backwards to another.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

In England, at least, there was a very low level of illegitimacy - I have a table showing illegit. births as a proportion of all births, and for 1700-4 (the earliest it shows) it's 1.8, compared to 6.8 in 1845-9 and 21 in 1986. This was undoubtedly the result of great social pressure -- public disgrace, financial ruin, a loss of marriage prospects for the woman, at least -- as well as obedience to the moral and religious teachings of the time. So illegitimate children would have been comparatively rare, which alone would produce an alienating effect on some people.

Hmm.... I'm actually not sure if I would believe those stats. The numbers might be radically different not only because of the less-than-reliable data collection methods (which someone mentioned previously), but also because getting such numbers with any accuracy would be a near impossiblity.

The social pressure you mention would probably result in every *******-er and *******-ee, so to speak, to do absolutely anything and everything in their power to prevent that particular cat from getting out of the adulterous bag. Nowadays, while still not quite something to be proud of, being born out of wedlock is considered more acceptable. It stands to reason, then, that the numbers from recent times are higher, because people are generally more willing to admit to it.

Of course, there is also the question of precisely what you consider to be 'illegitimate'. Conceived before marriage? Born out of wedlock? The father impregnates the woman he had an affair with, runs away and refuses to have anything to do with the child? The child has no clue as to the identity of his father? What if they are, for all intents and purposes, a family but decided not to get married for whatever reason? It seems to me that the modern definition of illegitimate children is not what it used to be.

For example, I don't know many of you are familiar with NBA, but the best player on the planet is a guy named LeBron James. He's a 25-year-old father of two, who has been with his girlfriend/partner/pseudo-wife for something like a decade. Now they've never gotten married, and it doesn't really look like they will (not that I've asked him). They do, however, live as a family, together, happy and healthy. By all accounts, LeBron is a doting father and is doing everything for his kids that any 'legitimate' father would do. Are those children illegitimate, then? I'm sure LeBron doesn't think so. Yet, there is no denying that, in the classical sense of the term, they are.

 

[The Judge]

Hmm.... I'm actually not sure if I would believe those stats.

Source for the table: P Laslett, K Oosterveen and RM Smith (eds), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980) Table 1.1a) if anyone wants to check the research techniques. I doubt very much this was a let's-pull-these-figures-out-of-the-air job. And it appears the figures from other sources show much the same increase over the years. Strange as it may seem to us, it would appear that people in earlier centuries had different ideas about the desirability of full intercourse outside of marriage.

Er... it's very difficult to hide illegitimacy. In a rural setting where everyone knows everyone else - and 1500 England was predominantly rural -- it would be next to impossible. In a larger town, where the single mother could pretend her husband was dead, it might be a different matter but even that is not likely to skew the statistics to such a great extent.

Illegitimacy in English law is a child being born out of wedlock**, plain and simple. The only exception is where a child is born to a widow, provided she was pregnant before her husband died***. Pre-nuptial conception is not illegitimacy. A child foisted on the mother's husband is not illegitimacy unless the couple are legally separated or he otherwise proves the child isn't his. The father acknowledging the child or not is irrelevant, as is the child's ignorance or otherwise of her father.

** the definition of wedlock, that's another issue altogether, particularly pre 1753 in England.

*** I imagine this is different now a woman can be impregnanted by her husband's sperm long after his death, but I haven't checked.


Arthur - in legal terms, no - the legitimacy or otherwise of your heroine's children does not confer legitimacy on her, and therefore cannot affect her rights to inherit from her father, nor their rights to inherit from him through her. (Not in English law at any rate.) However, it would be possible for the king or whoever makes laws in your fantasy to legitimise her ex post facto if you wanted, so that, say, her eldest son could then inherit his grandfather's title and/or lands.

As to subsequent marriage legitimising children, I'm pretty sure that this was not always the case and it only changed in England in the 20th century, but I can't quickly verify that. Again, though, you can make up what laws you want, as long as they have logic and consistency within your book.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

As to subsequent marriage legitimising children, I'm pretty sure that this was not always the case

I am sure that it was rarely the case, although if the father was important enough and determined to see it done ...

John of Gaunt's illegitimate children by Katherine Swynford (his third wife) were legitimated after he married her, although I believe he was still married to somebody else at the time all of them were born. They and their descendents were given the surname Beaufort and barred from the succession, though not from other honors and titles, and became very powerful.

Henry VII -- who was not too particular about such things -- based his claim to the throne on his descent from Margaret Beaufort. Of course he backed that up by winning the throne of the field of battle, and made sure to marry Elizabeth of York a oldest daughter of Edward IV to back it up.

Although her legitimacy was in question, too, since Richard III had deposed her little brother on the pretext that Edward IV was not really married to her mother Elizabeth Woodville.

Quite sticky it all was, particularly if the little princes were still alive in the tower at that time and had not been -- as the Tudor political machine insisted -- murdered at the behest of Richard. If the younger Elizabeth was legitimate, then so must be her brothers, which would put them ahead of her in the succession. If they were illegitimate, then she doesn't do much to bolster his own dicey claim to the throne.

Which gave him rather more reason to have the boys killed -- supposing they were still available to receive that delicate attention from a kinsman -- than Richard had.

For ordinary folks it was a lot simpler: if the parents were married after the child was born, he or she was not the father's legitimate child; if the marriage preceded the child's birth, by however a short a period, then the child was legitimate. The mother could already be in labor for all that it mattered (although this, I think, is merely a staple of romantic comedies and may never have happened in real life).

 

[The Judge]

Interesting about John of Gaunt -- I know next to nothing about that period. But were the children made legally his legitimate heirs by the very fact of his marriage, do you know, or was it a case of a specific dispensation of some kind? I rather suspect the latter if they were barred from the succession. The surname and access to other titles is persuasive, but not conclusive -- I was thinking of Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII's child by Mary Boleyn, given his grandfather's title of Duke of Richmond and accorded precedence over the Princess Mary, Henry's legitimate child - and undoubtedly talked of as a possible contender for the throne until his untimely death.

Actually Henry VIII is an example that occurred to me after posting earlier supporting my thought that pre the 20th century legitimisation through marriage wasn't possible for anyone. If subsequent marriage legitimated children, there was no need for the frantic rush to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn, he could instead have taken things slowly -- and done the job properly, perhaps -- and married her after the child was born. Though whether he would have married her in that event is a moot point.

Taking things right off thread for a moment, I'm a firm believer that Henry VII was a much more likely princes-in-the-tower murderer than Richard!

 

[dustinzgirl]

I guess it would depend on which medieval society we were in............

Also, we are talking about a woman here, not a male warrior.

So both their statuses would matter, I suppose, and the society they were in.

Nobody gave Tanis Half-Elven a break, and his parents were nobility.

 

[Ursa major]

Interesting about John of Gaunt -- I know next to nothing about that period. But were the children made legally his legitimate heirs by the very fact of his marriage, do you know, or was it a case of a specific dispensation of some kind?

Wiki (John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) says that they

were legitimized by royal and papal decrees after John married Katherine in 1396.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

More on the Beauforts (who certainly got around), John of Gaunt, and Katherine Swynford née de Roet:

The heirs of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt are significant in British history. Their son John was a great-grandfather of Henry VII, who established the Tudor dynasty and based his claim to the throne on the lineage of his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. John (the son) was also the father of Joan, who married the Scots King James I, and thus was an ancestress of the House of Stuart[3]. John and Katherine's daughter Joan Beaufort was the grandmother of the English kings Edward IV and Richard III, whom Henry VII defeated to take the throne; Henry's claim was strengthened by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. John of Gaunt's son — Katherine's stepson — became Henry IV by deposing Richard II (who was imprisoned and died shortly thereafter, in Pontefract Castle, where Katherine's son Thomas Swynford was constable, and was said to have starved Richard to death for his stepbrother). His daughter by Constance, Catherine (or Catalina), was the great-grandmother of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII and mother of Mary I of England.

From Katherine Swynford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(The above named Thomas Swynford was Katherine de Roet's son by her first husband, Thomas Swynford.)

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Source for the table: P Laslett, K Oosterveen and RM Smith (eds), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980) Table 1.1a) if anyone wants to check the research techniques. I doubt very much this was a let's-pull-these-figures-out-of-the-air job.

I didn't mean that I thought the numbers were 'faked' or anything. I apologise if it came out like that. I just thought the numbers might be skewed because of the difficulty in determining which births were legitimate or not. You make compelling arguments about the accuracy, though, so I shall bow to your superior knowledge of history.

Illegitimacy in English law is a child being born out of wedlock**, plain and simple.

I was talking more from a societal and cultural point-of-view, rather than legal. What (if there is any way to know) would have been society's 'unofficial' definition of illegitimacy? I don't think it would have neatly tied into whatever the law states (human opinions rarely do).

** the definition of wedlock, that's another issue altogether, particularly pre 1753 in England.

Intriguing. What happened in England in 1753?

 

[Dave]

Intriguing. What happened in England in 1753?

Marriage Act 1753 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia