Bastardy is a legal term for the marital status of a child born out of wedlock. Under English common law, illegitimate children were classified as bastards. In the eyes of the law, they had no parents, no parents, no ancestors. They therefore had no right to a surname unless they earned for themselves by prestige, and they were no one`s stepheirs. Although early North Carolina history sometimes provides examples of illegitimate children gaining fame and fortune, the vast majority of them were apprenticed to a master at a tender age during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and condemned to a low existence. Note: This bastard sentiment has not always been offensive. In fact, it was a relatively neutral term until the end of the 20th century, when it began to assume its offensive status. This change coincided with a positive change in society`s attitudes towards unmarried parents and a reduction in the social stigma of having children out of wedlock. The word bastard is still used relatively neutrally in historical references and historical fiction, but it is generally considered offensive when used in today`s contexts to describe a child born to parents who are not married to each other. The provisions of Merton 1235 (20 Hen.

3 c. IX), also known as the Special Bastardy Act 1235, provided that, except in the case of authentic acts, the act of bastards could be proved by jury trial instead of requiring a certificate from the bishop. Historically, being born out of wedlock was important because it deprived a person of their other inheritance, which was usually the only way to acquire real estate. The Church recognized bastards when the biological parents later married. Bastardization was not a status, like villeinage, but being a bastard had a number of legal implications for an individual. An exception to the general principle that a bastard cannot inherit occurred when the eldest son (who would otherwise be heir) was born as a bastard, but the second son was born after the parents married. The word bastard comes from the old French bastard, which in turn comes from the medieval Latin bastardus. In modern French Bâtard, the circumflex accent (â) simply represents the loss of the “s” over time. According to some sources, bastardus could come from the word bastum, which means pack saddle,[1] the link may be the idea that a bastard could be the child of a passing traveler (who would have a pack saddle). This is supported by the Old French expression fils de bast, which loosely means “child of the saddle”, which had a similar meaning. [1] A more precisely defined possibility is that such a traveler was a member of Bast`s Corps, which refers to the division of an army that came into the city the night before the troops with their pack saddles and left the next day so that they could take care of all the supplies of an army.

and even do advanced screening. This meant that they had unfettered access to all the women in the city for two days and were therefore more likely to be the cause of the city`s illegitimate descendants. (This explanation is apocryphal, but no attempt at controversy seems to have been made.) Blackstone stated in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) that a bastard “cannot be heir to any person, nor have heirs” and can only be legitimized by the “Act of Parliament.” In medieval Wales, before its conquest and incorporation into England, a “bastard” was defined only as a child who was not recognized by his father. All children recognized by a father, whether legitimate or out of wedlock, have the same legal rights, including the right to share the father`s inheritance. This legal difference between Wales and England is often mentioned in the famous series of medieval detective mysteries “Brother Cadfael”. [ref. needed] The only advantage of sometimes being a bastard (except for geneologists) was that the bastard did not take his father`s surname. They were considered to have been born without a surname and could choose who they loved. In North Carolina, whose legal basis was the common law, bastards usually took the surnames of their biological mothers, but otherwise they suffered from all the common law handicaps. Bastard children were therefore disadvantaged from birth. Bastard trials have been held to determine the likely paternity of an illegitimate child who could be publicly charged and to force the alleged father to provide for the child.

As early as 1700, the mother of an illegitimate child could voluntarily appear before two justices of the peace and name the father of her child in an affidavit, or she could be summoned by them and questioned after the father. Thanks to the mother`s affidavit, the man was generally convicted as the alleged father and forced to take out security, called a “bastard bond,” to support the child for a fixed amount. Or, if the man resisted the nomination, he could be bound to a full session of the district court, but even then the case was dealt summarily for more than a century. Many young men went west instead of going through the process. However, other jurisdictions accepted the birth of a child before marriage as legitimate if the natural parents married later. But at common law, bastards who were not legitimized by their parents` marriage found themselves empty-handed when their parents died (with an esoteric exception that concerns real estate known as the cool Bastard Eigné). As late as 1937, Eversley wrote: In 1814, an amendment to the Bastard Act made the mother`s affidavit prima facie and inconclusive evidence, granted the alleged father a jury trial, and required that the trial be commenced within three years of the child`s birth. (An 1850 statute strengthened the mother`s affidavit by giving her alleged testimony rather than prima facie.) Gradually, the minimum age up to which the child had to support himself was raised to 10 years (age fixed by the bastard law of 1933), then to 14 years in 1937 and to 18 years in 1951. “Guilford County, NCGenWeb: Bastardy Bonds.” Guilford NCGenWeb ncgenweb.us/nc/guilford/bastardy-bonds/ (accessed October 15, 2012). British Columbia`s Estate Administration Act defines “subject” without reference to marriage; as “all direct descendants of the ancestor”.

All this fades into the new use of the word, a generic term inspired by the vagaries of war (General Patton comes to mind), which now refers to someone who is offensive or unpleasant. Post-hoc legitimation was granted under the Legitimacy Act of 1926 (16 & 17 Geo.