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[001] does not mention the word, ‘bastard,’ he will lose by judgment, as where he says
[002] ‘Brother, you have no right in that land because you were born before marriage,’
[003] 1<or ‘You have no right because your mother was never married to your father’ and
[004] the like>,2 as in the eyre of William of Ralegh in the county of Warwick, an assise of
[005] mortdancestor [beginning] ‘if William of Muneworth, father of Thomas.’3 Bastardy
[006] may be alleged for many reasons, sometimes in court, an action being brought, sometimes
[007] on the complaint of him who says that he is the true heir, with respect to which
[008] there is no need to send the plea to court christian or to an inquest, as where a posthumous
[009] child is born so long after his father's death that it is unlikely that he can
[010] be the son of the deceased; if that is proved he may be called a bastard.4 Another's
[011] child falsely substituted and nurtured to the disherison of the true heir, may also be
[012] called a bastard and illegitimate, as where a mother professes herself pregnant when
[013] she is not. 5<And so if it is asked how long a time after the burial of the father, whose
[014] son he is alleged to be, he was born, [and the time is such] that it cannot be likely that
[015] he is his son.>6 Also a child substituted on the death of the true heir in wardship may be
[016] called a bastard, as above [in the portion on] the kinds of and the differences between
[017] heirs, of a supposititious child.7 Also one begotten by some one other than the father,
[018] where it is altogether unlikely that he can be the heir of the husband, especially if the
[019] husband disavows him completely,8 unless a presumption militates against him, that
[020] the child may be his, as above.9 Truth may overcome the presumption,10 11<as where
[021] the father has been in the Holy land for a long time, but it will be otherwise if the
[022] husband was in the patria or outside it but nearby, so that he can have access to his
[023] wife secretly.> It is clear that of children, some may be legitimate, some bastards;
[024] sometimes all legitimate, sometimes all bastards, or one of the several legitimate and
[025] all the others bastards, and conversely, as above, ‘of the kinds of heirs.’ And note that
[026] when one has once avowed a supposititious child, if that he did so can be proved, he
[027] cannot later disavow him; he will be his son and heir no matter of whom the ancestor12
[028] holds. And when the chief lords or some of them



Notes

1. Not in list of addiciones supra i, 420; not an add.

2. Om: ‘nulla . . . bastardia’

3. Not in B.N.B.

4. C.R.R., xiii, no. 1339

5. Not in list of addiciones supra i, 420; not an add.

6. Supra ii, 201, 203; infra 304

7. Supra ii, 201

8. Supra ii, 204, iii, 311

9. Om: ‘et ibi . . . bastardus’

10. ‘Veritas . . . praesumptionem,’ from line 25; supra ii, 186, 204

11. Supra i, 420

12. ‘antecessor’


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