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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Nick93 on Thursday 19 October 17 20:07 BST (UK)
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Hey guys, do you know if it was common in 17th century Germany in a middle class Lutheran family for a betrothed couple to be intimate before getting married?
One woman I've found in my tree, a Lutheran reverend's daughter, gave birth to her first child (not my ancestor, I descend from her second husband) six months after her wedding to her first husband. And her granddaughter when she got married some decades later had her first baby exactly nine months and five days after her wedding, though granted that one doesn't necessarily imply premarital sex, she may have just gotten pregnant very early in the marriage. I suspect in rural areas it was more common but I wasn't sure if in the towns it happened so much.
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I would think that happened anywhere throughout history, so it's impossible to say if it was common - you wouldn't know anyway unless the woman became pregnant and the marriage had to be arranged in a hurry.
In the case of the granddaughter the baby could have been premature.
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I have an ancestor in Norfolk who married 17 Nov 1578 and the first child was baptised 16 Feb the following year. The family were fairly well to do land owners / minor gentry. The bride's first cousin was an Attorney General under Elizabeth I and a future Lord Chief Justice under James I and, among others, prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. I don't think it went down very well with her father because in his Will her husband didn't get a mention and nor did he mention her married name, just her first name and referred to her children. Other siblings did leave her bequests. Her husband was the local butcher and the money ran out a few generations later leading to my direct ancestors working in the East End of London as shoemakers in the early 1800s. I suspect it caused a bit of a scandal at the time. ;D
As Groom says, it wasn't completely uncommon through history, but depending on the status of the family it could have been quite a scandal. ;D
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I am sure it happened in all social levels, in all countries since Adam was a lad.
As my dear old dad used to say, "Boys will be boys, and girls will be mothers"
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My understanding has been that it was necessary to prove fertility. At a gentry level i suspect the more estate there was, the more an heir was needed, though clearly there is a fine line between being just free enough to secure the wedding, and so free the wedding never happened. :-[
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To many being betrothed was the important fact, the wedding was the social nicety. Remember it's not that long ago that you could end up in court if you broke your engagement, it was called breach of promise.
The so called Victorian attitudes were not working class. Many lived together and hoped to afford a wedding before children arrived. My gt gt grandparents married 8 days before my gt grandmother arrived. That's what I call cutting it fine.
Taxes that had to be paid on weddings meant lots of working class or poverty stricken gentry couldn't afford the luxury of marriage and perhaps others helped pay for a marriage to help the pregnant bride get up the aisle.
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I'm surprised that anybody is ever surprised by pregnant brides and illegitimacy - it happened a lot in the last three centuries so why not the previous ones? I help run a library drop-in family history session and the usual reaction from newbies when we find this is "But they were so respectable!"
As for the upper echelons, the reason we see so few such cases amongst them is because there were proportionately so few of them anyway. Even one of George III's daughters had an illegitimate child - this was hushed up, whilst her brothers were fathering bastards all over the place, more or less publicly.
Chris (descended from at least three of my avatar. Only one of my grandparents conceived in wedlock.)
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17 Nov 1578 and the first child was baptised 16 Feb the following year
Don't want to go off topic but to clarify:
16th. Feb. 1579 will be over a year later as the Julian calendar was in use at the time & the new year started on April 1st.
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17 Nov 1578 and the first child was baptised 16 Feb the following year
Don't want to go off topic but to clarify:
16th. Feb. 1579 will be over a year later as the Julian calendar was in use at the time & the new year started on April 1st.
Not April 1st, New Year in English records started Lady Day, March 25th
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17 Nov 1578 and the first child was baptised 16 Feb the following year
Don't want to go off topic but to clarify:
16th. Feb. 1579 will be over a year later as the Julian calendar was in use at the time & the new year started on April 1st.
To clarify further as I'm well aware that the Julian calendar was in use and the calendar year ran to March. The child was born within three months of the marriage so the bride was very pregnant at the time of the marriage and the child was baptised 15 Feb 1578-9.
And as aelfric has already pointed out, the new year started on 25 March not 1 April.
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Now we're back on track, I seem to remember a piece in the old BBC Tonight programme in the sixties about a village in the Netherlands where the strong Calvinist tradition coexisted with the practice of waiting for the woman to become pregnant before marrying.
And Thomas Hardy records the time when a number of London stonemasons went to get stone for, I think the Embankment, from Portland Bill in Dorset. The same practice was usual there, and the men thought they had died and gone to Heaven until they found that the second part of the contract was compulsory.
In communities where fertility was essential for their continuance - either economically or socially - the custom would be likely, unless there was the possibility of divorce. And even Martin Luther didn't think Henry VIII had the right to get rid of Katherine of Aragon.
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Hey guys, thanks for the info. It's really interesting. Fascinating stories, especially liked Smudwhisk's. Didn't know that about the Julian calendar either.
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I am researching round Halifax in the 1500s and you would be amazed how many wills say "enfeoff my bastard son in all my lands". These were people with money and property and yet they were still having illegitimate children. I wondered if sometimes they spent so long arguing about the dowry, the baby arrived first.cb
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That doesn’t surprise me in the least as it was very common for kings, princes and lords to have illegitimate children with no intent to marry the woman. They often gave the child a surname that acknowledged them eg Kings’ children were called Fitzroy. John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford’s children were called Beaufort (although they were later made legitimate when John and Katherine married) The children were educated and often, if male, became squires or knights. Daughters were married off to lower gentry.
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That doesn’t surprise me in the least as it was very common for kings, princes and lords to have illegitimate children with no intent to marry the woman. They often gave the child a surname that acknowledged them eg Kings’ children were called Fitzroy. John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford’s children were called Beaufort. The children were educated and often if male became knights.
In fairness, I must add that John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford did eventually marry thus legitimising the Beaufort line.
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Sorry, yes I added that afterwards. That's a real love story with them isn't it?
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Sorry, yes I added that afterwards. That's a real love story with them isn't it?
:D Anya Seton's book "Katherine" is one of my all time faves.
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Sorry, yes I added that afterwards. That's a real love story with them isn't it?
:D Anya Seton's book "Katherine" is one of my all time faves.
I've recently read that and also The Scandalous Duchess by Anne O'Brien.
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No sex before marriage. How many people really took notice of that?
I have had several pregnant brides in my family tree. They may even had a trial marriage before finally tying the knot.
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Sorry, yes I added that afterwards. That's a real love story with them isn't it?
:D Anya Seton's book "Katherine" is one of my all time faves.
I've recently read that and also The Scandalous Duchess by Anne O'Brien.
Don't know it. Thanks. I will check it out. :-*
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To many being betrothed was the important fact, the wedding was the social nicety. Remember it's not that long ago that you could end up in court if you broke your engagement, it was called breach of promise.
A betrothal was a contract to marry, made between representatives of both families.
King Henry 8th used evidence of a previous betrothal (a pre-contract) to get rid of at least one of his wives.
Henry's grandfather, Edward 4th, as a young man, made a bit of a habit of going through clandestine betrothal or hand-fasting ceremonies to young ladies he fancied, if they wouldn't succumb merely to his good-looks and charm. Being king he got away with it. After his death, his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester had the account of one such ceremony made public, thereby claiming that Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, his Queen was invalid and their children illegitimate.
"Fornication" was punished in England until early 18thC. Whipping at the cart's tail was a sentence carried out publicly for the offence at one time. This would have acted as a strong deterrent on people having illegitimate babies. Illegitimacy rates increased during Industrial Revolution.
As others have said, pregnant brides seemed to be very common. It's been suggested that a contributory factor to the rising rate of illegitimate births in towns in late 18th-19thC Britain was naivety of country-raised girls who thought pregnancy guaranteed marriage.